Last weekend I was up in Whangarei, the further-est north I had been in NZ for none other but another Orienteering competition. The north didn’t really live up to its expectation of warmth and sunshine, instead we were subjected to some serious wind and rain!

The orienteering was cool, some really nice gully spur terrain albeit a little slippery underfoot. Work had been a bit distracting during the week and I didn’t have much time to mentally prepare for these races. I was feeling a little less than enthusiastic come time to race in the middle distance. Once I was underway, everything seemed to go alright however. I felt I navigated quite well, making a couple of mistakes which in the end proved costly.

The sprint was a bit of a disaster for me, I got a little bit carried away and didn’t control my speed well. I ended up running too far on one leg and cost myself a huge amount of time. This left me pretty disappointed…but helped me get into a solid orienteering mindset for the next day.

The long distance was a good old fashioned 100min winning time long distance. This course included a nice big long leg, and with some pretty physical terrain. I went into the race focused on the orienteering, and forgetting about everything else. This worked well and I had a really solid run, losing a couple of minutes on minor mistakes but running confidently, as I knew I was fit enough for it to pull me through. In the end Ross managed to run a bit quicker but I was happy to finish just ahead of Matt and Thomas.