Novelty event at the club end of year presentations. This event was a WINNER! Consensus is we need to do this again. Rules as follows-
20 minute score event with a mass start.
20 controls.
Teams of five.
Only the last valid visit to a control site scores for that control.
You can only visit a control site once.
If you are back late none of your control visits will count.
The inspiration was shared games of Quake playing Catch the Flag in our earlier days. Similar forms of behaviour to Quake were observed- camping, stalking, ambushing, feinting. No-one fully appreciated the tactics initially. My race consisted of a visit to the toilet after the mass start, and a jog to my planned most distant control. Once tehre, I hid in the scrub and watched an opponent hide in another piece of scrub. I wasn't sure if he knew I was there, but he did. I had timed my return run and punched the control with only seconds left on my count down. Opponent was waiting till I punched, but waited too long. I then ran back hard, punching three other controls on the way. I was confident that anyone punching after me on these needed to be a faster runner, and only one of them was. Arrived back and punched with no seconds to spare. The last 10 seconds was a frantic sprint with a verbal countdown in my ears.
Lest anyone think this is just for hard core, the person who collected the most valid controls was the four year old wandering around with his grandma. They visited a number of controls very close to the finish, and the more serious runners generally misjudged their time and were unable to visit them, or if they did, were back late and disqualified. You need insurance tactics in this game.
EXCELLENT game design by Peter Forbes.
This was followed by presentations and lunch. Notable winners based on popular vote-
Black Crow- Julie and I for both arriving in Qld without our compasses or SI sticks.
Noodle Award- twelve entries but almost unanimously voted to Karina Cherry.
http://doma.orienteering.asn.au/show_map.php?user=...Best Leg- 10 entrants with a closely contested result. The winning margin was one vote. Winner was Ilka Barr's long leg on course 2 at the Bendigo Bush 15. Close behind were a leg on our Kooyoora State Series (Andrew Cameron), a leg at a local event on Chewton (Shayne Hill) and a leg on Tarrengower (Julie Flynn).