Plenty of Variety and Challenges at Aranda Bushlands

Friday, 10 February 2012

Competitors enjoyed the relatively mild weather and the mixture of bush and urban orienteering offered for round 13 of the Runners Shop Twilight Series on Wednesday. The two long legs on both Orange courses through the suburbs offered many route options. Maps of six routes taken are here

Matt Crane was again the faster competitor on the Orange 1 course with a time of 31min 6 sec for 6.0 km.  Only five others, Rob Walter 32:36, David Shepherd 33:54, Anthony Scott (pictured right) 39:05 and Geoff Stacey 39:58 broke 40 minutes. Paul de Jongh (MJun) and Grace Crane (WOpen) were clear winners in their classes, but the Women’s Masters class saw one of the closest finishes of the series, with only 12 seconds separating Mary McDonald (pictured left) 61:51, Ana Herceg 61:53 and Carol Harding 62:03.

Shannon Jones (WOpen) demonstrated she is getting back into top form with the fastest time of 31 min 1 sec for all competitors on the 4.1 km Orange 2 course. Other class winners were David Simpfendorfer (MOpen) 31:51, James Phillips (MJun) 83:10, Tate Needham (MMas) 34:53, Celine Anderson (WJun) 42:37 and Valerie Barker (WMas) 42:01.

Matt Crane’s time earned him his sixth 125-pointer for the 2011-12 series and with Trevor Jacobs relegated to fourth on the evening, Crane has opened up a break of three points over Jacobs, who has an eight point margin over Shepherd, who was fifth on ‘corrected time’. Rob Walter was second on the evening and in his cameo appearance Anthony Scott was third.  Only three points adrift of Shepherd, Walter could move into third place.

Graham Atkins (pictured bottom right) with a standard deviation of only 1.3% has displaced Graham Fifield as the most consistent competitor.

The full results for round 13 are here, the progress points table is here and a gallery of photos is here.

With only four events remaining the emphasis will move from hill-climbing to Sprint Distance events with next week’s event at Murryong, details here, being a full SportIdent event.