Even fresher than a South Sydney premiership, ultra sprint orienteering made its Australian debut at Callan Park today to great fanfare and much animated discussion.
Ultra is a bit like cricket's Twenty20 - short, fast, furious and loads of fun. Participants had a two-hour window to complete 3 line courses, each of approximately 1km.
With the temperature already nudging 30C by 9am, the punters were soon choosing to run early and take little rest time between courses.
Newcastle's Josh Blatchford flew around in 17m49s, a good 1m22s faster than anyone else. Catherine Murphy, from the host club Uringa, was the fastest woman in 21m46s.
While the format sounds simple enough, the complexity lay in the fact that there were more than 70 controls in an area roughly 250m x 250m, mapped at 1:1500, and included a maze (see top pic). Each tree was mapped and its shade cover shown. Controls could be either side of a tree, or three in a tight bunch - in that respect it was a bit like Trail O at times.
Further twists were:
* the maze held 11 controls - you visited the maze twice on each course, often for 2 controls each time
* there were no control descriptions and no numbers on the SI units
* the exact control location was shown by a dot inside the circle
* a mispunch meant a 30-second time penalty rather than disqualification
* you could do the 3 courses in any order (1-2-3 or 2-3-1 etc)
As well as being something new and exciting, today's event was an important test run for New Year's Eve when our annual Xmas 5-Days carnival - this year taking on a distinctly urban feel in Sydney - concludes at Centennial Parklands. (Speaking of which - enter now!)
It required a mountain of work from mapper Dave Lotty, setter Matt Peters and SI guru Ron Pallas, who were on site from 6am.
We offer these gentlemen - and pretty much the entire Uringa club who assisted in some way - a massive thank you for their efforts in putting on such a fantastic event.
Check out our Facebook page for some pics and the maps. And stay tuned for more ultra sprint activity in 2015 !
