Monday 12 March: Deakin
Another Monday, another superb street orienteering event in great weather with great course planning by Mark Sparshott, this time in the leafy streets of Deakin. The assembly area was at the Deakin Anticline, an interesting historic site. Unfortunately the Canberra Day public holiday had numbers down to 54, half the usual for an inner Canberra suburb.
The A course saw a miraculous result with a 35 min 40 sec tie between Matthew Purcell and Geoff Stacey, despite one running clockwise and the other anticlockwise around their 18 control routes. David Alder was 3rd in 39.55. Florian Benz and Des Davis won the B course, Phil Walker and Tracey White the C, while Roger Edwards, Rebecca Tedeschi and the Gao family dominated the D course. Geoff Barker had a 7 minute win with 12 controls in the 1 hour walk. Rosemarie Edwards was the top female walker, also with 12 controls.
Monday 12 March Results
Maps and photos
Some tips from Melbourne street O
Keep an eye on the clock and your rate of travel as you move around the course. Don’t get back late – so plan to be within 1km of the finish as your time reduces to say 10-12 minutes to go. (I draw a mental circle, 1km in radius, on the map – and plan to be inside it with plenty of time to get to the finish. If I can’t get to the circle in time, I drop controls and head towards it – better to be 2-3 minutes early than 1 second late).
As you approach a control, read the control description so you know what you’re looking for, think about where you’re going to next, align the scorecard to the correct square……and as you reach the control, punch in the middle of the square (e.g. if you arrive at control 11, then you punch in square 11) and immediately head towards your next control. Standing around to think about where to go next will cost you 20-30 seconds per control … about 4 minutes on the course above. This is equivalent to about 400m of travel!
John Harding