Event 12 - 15th June - Glen Iris

This week's tip
When running at night - take your sunglasses off.

O-Pairs - Louise

Thirty controls meant for a good night's entertainment - the only dilemma was that to get the 6 pointers you had to get both controls of that number. In effect these controls were worth 3 points each - unless you only got one...in which case they were worth even less than the Zimbabwean dollar (as an educational footnote here, we point out that Zimbabwe's inflationary problems are not history's worst - the German economy took such a dive around 1923 that inflation was more than double that currently experienced by Mr Mugabe and his cronies. As another interesting fact, toilet paper currently sells there at $417 - per sheet. If you wanted to buy a whole roll, it would cost about $150,000 Zimbabwean dollars).

It was interesting to see how many folks got only one number for one or more of the 6-pointers. Debbie noted, quite correctly, that the 4 and 5 pointers were the same distance apart, but worth more - as one had to run to two controls to get the 6 points.

STOP PRESS - Mark Jarvis scores a Personal Best (or worst) by coming in 24 hours and 5 minutes late on this week's training course - while there was some doubt about which side of the minute he got in on, we took a conciliatory approach and gave him the benefit of the doubt. In spite of this, his score eclipses the appallingly bad scores garnered last week by Ian Greenwood and Geoff Hudson. Rumour has it that the Park-Street Committee have confiscated his passport to prevent him from following Ian Greenwood's lead and taking refuge overseas.

Impassioned Plea

Please, please, please - try to arrive a little earlier than 7:00:00. As much as possible, we try to give people a 60 minute run...and we do this by starting on the dot of 7:00pm. If folks turn up right on the knocker, it disrupts everything and eats into our walking/running time. Nuff said...

Welcome to Muriel

We were joined this evening by Muriel Cummins, a keen runner from the Glenhuntly area. Thanks to Mike for briefing her this evening and kindly taking the blame for all the things that he might have omitted telling her about - like what to do if the light pole is missing, no number etc etc. As it turned out, she worked it out and by the time I saw her at #8, she was pretty confident and running well. Her comments afterwards indicated that she might have had some navigational issues but sorted these out by asking passers-by where she was (in my experience a notoriously unreliable tactic - as most folks seem to lapse into an unresponsive stupor when you shove a map in front of them. Years ago, Bryan Ackerley asked locals where he was on a bush-orienteering map and followed their directions. We found him 5-6 hours later about 6-8 Km off the map). Learn how to relocate - or ask a passing orienteer.

Ian Greenwood Escapes Overseas

The power of the press finally overtook IBG50 last week, when a momentary loss of navigational awareness compounded by an overwhelming over-confidence in his own running abilities, caused Ian to over-extend himself....to the tune of 6-7 minutes. While the resulting score of 59 wasn't up to his usual standard anyway, the 21 point penalty imposed as a result of late return home was devastating....dropping him a further 14 places to come bottom in A grade running this week.

Those of us that found out about his impromptu decision to head overseas for a few weeks until things cooled down, were not surprised. Ray suggested that this seemed an entirely appropriate response to what had happened. When last heard of Ian was winging (or was that whingeing) his way to London. Rumour has it the VOA President Ian Dodd is attempting to negotiate an extradition treaty with the British Orienteering Federation, so Ian can be returned to Melbourne to account for his poor performance last week.

Stay tuned here for more news as it comes to hand...finally, continuing our tradition of poetic injustice, we offer the following excerpts of emails to Ian following last Wednesday's run:

On the subject of being late,

Never leave it just to fate

But enjoy your run

Cos you’re having fun,

And in the process you’re losing weight.

 

But on the subject of Chocolate Mousse

There’s probably no excuse

For Ian by eating,

Has taken a beating

and his score is now in the caboose