The Annual Orienteering Sprint Cup

For the past few years, whenever we have been in Gauteng for Christmas my family has made the effort to attend the Annual Sprint Cup. The vent has normally been held at the Witwatersrand Botanical Gardens but this year was held at the Kloofendal Nature Reserve.

This year my family, parents and one brother attended the event. None of us had previously been to the Kloofendal Nature Reserve so the terrain was new to everone. Our family entered myself on the mens course, my wife (Yolande) and daughter (Loreley) on the womens course and the reset formed into two teams.

I took the first leg very easily, unsure of my true level of fitness I walked as much as possible, and ran only when the paths were clear and easy. A lot of the route required trips accross country off the paths and in some sections the undergrowth was too thick to get through. I twice stopped and helped Loreley work out where she was, and Yolande also had to backtrack and assist Loreley with 2 points. Other than that she did quite well.

I finished the first leg in 50 minutes. It didn't feel that long but it had been a long time since I last did an Orienteering event.

The second leg of the event was started as a chasing start - so whoever finished first was the actual winner. I would have started some 30minutes behind the leader but the lower starts were changed to 1 minute apart. Coming to the second checkpoint I saw the two people who had started just before me, the had gone off the path too soon and I was able to catch up to them. The 3rd checkpoint was well hidden and I was able to get ahead of another 2 competitors, the 4th and 5th checkpoints seemed to be well of their actual plotted points but I was lucky to find them early and get ahead of yet another 2 or 3 competitors. Unfortuntly I overshot point 7 by quite a bit and lost most of the places I had taken.

The race got quite fierce with 3 of us (Craig Ogilve, David Pilling and myself) racing each other for the rest of the course. Slowly Craig and I dropped David and were purely racing each other to the end. On one of the very last points Craig made a navigational error and dropped back from me - needless to say I was looking over my shoulder for him right to the end anyway.

At the end of the second leg which took me 54 minutes, I had moved ahead David Pillign having caught up 6 minutes on him, and was just behind Craig having caught up 7 or the required 8 minutes on his time.