Glorious sunshine woke us. We opened the blinds, eager to see our surroundings in daylight.  To our surprise, there is a mountain on our back doorstep!  There are parrots, cockatoos and lorikeets in the trees, and we had a leisurely breakfast on the verandah, watching their antics.  The back yard has an enormous tree stump – it must have been a magnificent tree before it gave way to development.

As the first day of Easter competition features highly civilised, post-lunch starts, we had time for some local sightseeing.  A short drive took us to Lake Somerset, where jetskiers were happily disturbing the serenity.  We couldn’t see the appeal – but then they probably can’t comprehend why we would run around in the forest. Each to their own.

We stopped to look at Somerset Dam – quite an undertaking back in 1937.  It made the news recently when they had to release water due to the floods.  So far we haven’t seen any signs of flood damage.

Sandwiches and o-gear packed, we headed for the first event, on a rural property which rejoices in the name “Taromeo” (pronounced Ta, Romeo). It was a very pretty drive on good roads.  The arena had plenty of shade, and we spent a pleasant couple of hours greeting old friends and enjoying the carnival atmosphere.

Billed as a “sprint”, it didn’t fit that description. The terrain was open paddocks with scattered rocks, with more complex rock on the steeper slopes either side of the creek.  We had to cross said creek four times.  Long grass slowed things down – the elite winning times were not quite as quick as they should have been, and they should have cut off the final (and pretty pointless) last loop for us non elites.  Some of the controls were set quite technically, ie hidden in the rocks, which is middle distance style, not sprint.  The saving grace was the elephant tracks – the grass had been well and truly trampled, and for those of us with later starts, it was a matter of following the right track.

I used this technique almost flawlessly for the first 9 controls, though the first creek crossing had me wasting time because I was not agile enough to jump straight across, and finding an alternative took another couple of minutes.  Even so, I was making my way quite efficiently around the course, with controls appearing on queue.  It all came unstuck on no 10.  Having not really needed to read the map with particular care up to that point, I drifted down a slope on the wrong angle, lost the lead-in trail, and hit the creek in the wrong place.  There were numerous others all looking bemused, so I wasn’t alone – but I wasted a good 5 minutes minnowing around. 

If we’d finished at no 13, which was immediately below the finish, it would have been enjoyable, and served its purpose. But the last 5 controls were just more paddocks, more rocks, and two more very superfluous creek crossings, before an uphill finish.  The course was fine in itself, it just wasn’t what was advertised, and there really should have been a Short Hard option for people who didn’t want to do the Womens Elite course (which was what we did). Another course would have shortened the Start window (over 140 people on Open Medium, because the only shorter option was Easy).  Today’s “Sprint” course was actually longer than my “Middle Distance” course tomorrow!

Pete is busy cooking spag bol and taking photos of a gecko on the kitchen window.  It’s All Good.