Overnight our world turned wet and dreary.  Drizzle continued on and off as we got ready for our first race, but it was never heavy enough to justify donning raincoats.  We drove to Taradale, a suburb of Napier and home to the Eastern Institute of Technology, or EIT.

The map was described as one of the more technical of the 6, and was a typical complex campus.  It took me a while to realise that the “gradens” mentioned in the program booklet were not some weird NZ orienteering feature, but were actually gardens. Spelling is not its strong point.

It was a head to head race where two people on the same course started together, went to a pivot control, then each did a different loop before returning to the pivot and changing loops.

I never saw my “partner”, who was the fastest W50 in NZ, so I was not distracted by that aspect.  However, I never came to grips with the positioning of the pivot, and I made errors every time I departed from it.  The first and third mistakes were rectified reasonably quickly, but the second error was a real doozy.  I went out on a 90 degree angle and made a series of parallel errors that brought me into a control that wasn’t mine, and was nowhere close to mine (on the map above, I was meant to be at no 8 and ended up at no 11!) Luckily it was on my course later so I quickly relocated, but the damage was done, and I lost minutes.

The course setting was great, with a lot of traps and no “gimmes”.  Many controls were quite hidden, in that you had to be right in the centre of the circle, and it was easy to be a little “off” and waste time.  There was a hillclimb leg at the end, which required clambering through two fences as well.

Pete had trouble finding the start triangle – it was very hard to see, and because the pivot control was no 1, it was hard to trace the purple line back.  Ilze got round slowly and carefully, and it was good to have survived the first race intact, but we were all determined to improve.  Ted was an uncharacteristic 5th, and Margi was only a few places above me after making a big error midway through.

Afterwards we went into Napier and filled in a few hours revisiting the art deco town centre, sitting in the park, and doing a bit of shopping.

We returned to Taradale for race 2, Tamatea, this time starting in a large, open and very flat park which adjoined a school.  With starts in reverse order to our finish in race 1, we were all early starters.  It was so flat that there was no hillclimb leg at all, not even stairs.

Well what a schemozzle – the course setter had misplaced our control 3.  The first few competitors went to the right place and of course found no control.   After a bit of milling and communal discussion, they agreed it was misplaced, and went to control 4 and onwards.  The officials were then told about the mistake, so they sent someone out to relocate the control.  The next group of starters, including me, were told to omit control 3, as it was in the wrong place.  Margi, starting 3 people after me, was told that it was back on the course, and she and subsequent runners now had to include it.  Of course that was completely wrong – once a control is removed, it has to stay removed, to be fair to everyone.  Now we had 3 different situations on the same course, and no-one seemed to know how to resolve it, short of cancelling the whole course.

I ran very cleanly, at a good km rate (faster than my usual streeto rate in fact), and managed to come in several places higher up the list, in what will probably be my best run.  Pete lost time hunting for the misplaced control, but otherwise did well, and Ilze had a great run to finish 3rd – they even announced her over the PA, so her orienteering career has reached new heights!  We were all happy with our improvement.

As we left, we were still no closer to knowing what the outcome will be from the stuff-up. Very disappointing, but hopefully it will be sorted out tomorrow.