Centennial Park- Metro #4

In unusually cool conditions, (read $%^&%$@@^ cold) Metro 4 was run and won at Centennial Park. Dave Lotty set the courses which saw the start in the eastern section of the park. This assembly point opened up the complex areas of the map for all competitors. The compliments as people finished reflected the challenge that Dave had set aided by Doc Lisa who was the controller for the event.

It seems that Uringa is keeping up the 2 Up and 2 Down habit with Division 1 and Division 5 registering victories over Unis and WHO respectively and Division 3 & 4 going down to WHO

The win in Division 1 was a resounding one indeed with the Uringa Harriers scoring 34 points. Whilst Division 5 was closer 29 to 26 it is important to note that we only had 4 runners in the team  Our Juniors Sophie and Finn continue to develop and it was good to see Jakob flying the Uringan colours, his first run in a Metro team!

Overall Uringan results are as follows:

Place	Name	Course
7	Ondrej Pavlu	Division 1
8	Matt Westwood	Division 1
10	Paul McClellan	Division 1
14	Shane Doyle	Division 1
19	Alice Westwood	Division 1
33	Jaraoslav Pavlu	Division 1
7	Paul Batten	Division 3
9	Julie Calder	Division 3
17	Dick Ogilvie	Division 3
22	Jim Mackay	Division 3
28	Margaret Jones	Division 3
10	Finn Mackay	Division 4
29	Petrina Baldwin	Division 4
32	Jakob Doyle	Division 4
3	Sophie Jones	Division 5
19	Adrienne Kirby	Division 5
21	Angela Murray	Division 5
32	Maureen Ogilvie	Division 5
16	Alexander Batten	Easy
6	Jake Cutbush	Very Easy

The next Metro is on 27th July at Beacon Hill and as more runners will be O/S we will be needing all hands old and inexperienced on deck.

QB III / Dubbo

QB III took us back to Dubbo this year! A large contingent of Uringa members travelled to the country and apart form the usual suspects it was great to see the Nolan and Mackay families in action, with all the kids having a go on various courses.
For me it was the first time back since JWOC (World Junior Orienteering Championships) in 2007 with memories such as absolutely freezing weather, manning the start for 5 hours in the shade, and Aldo & me being sick for the entire week and our 12 year old nephew looking after us!!
Thus I never got the opportunity to run in this magnificent terrain and was looking forward to some challenging orienteering on some "crazy" maps. And Dubbo didn't disappoint - it
redeemed itself this time with the most amazing weather for starters. Blue skies, sun, sun and sun, "warmish" temperatures over all 3 days - thermals, Gortex, beanie and gloves were not required.
The maps used for the long and middle distance events were awesome, and the NSW Stingers did a great job with setting the courses in this rocky and sometimes diffuse terrain.  The compass was a must to keep direction, but I heard through the grape vine that Finn got around the 3 days without a compass and came 2nd in M14A in what is his first year of bush orienteering.....another Pasi Ikonen in the making??? (Pasi is an international Finnish orienteer and I believe is the only top orienteer to compete without a compass!!). These 2 events were definitely orienteering at it's best!!
The sprint event was organised by the Western Plains Club and was held about 25km west of Dubbo at Brummagen Creek - and was run entirely in the bush. Although the courses looked pretty straight forward, there was lots of room for error in the erosion gullies!! Don't mentioned the prickly pears or whatever they were; they looked a bit like tiny cucumbers with very, very nasty spikes on them, and it was really difficult to remove them with your fingers......and painful. There was also a certain grass which just seem to get "stuck" on everyone, with the main activity of the afternoon being plucking all the grass out of gaiters,  O pants, socks and shoes!!

Day 1 / Sprint

Day 2 / Long distance

Day 3 / Middle

Uringans featured prominently on the podium (overall over 3 days):

M/W10              Jonathon Nolan              completed

                          William Nolan                 completed

                                                 

W14A                Sophie Jones                 2nd

M14A                Finn Mackay                   2nd

W16A                Georgia Jones                1st

W45A                Linda Sesta                    2nd

M45A                Ian Jones                        2nd

W45AS              Gayle Shepherd             2nd

M45AS              Dave McKenna               1st

M70A                Dick Ogilvie                    1st

W80A                Maureen Ogilvie             1st

Thanks to everyone who was involved in running this fabulous 3 Day event, including our own SI Guru Ron who ran the finish/results etc!