Details for Wellington MTBO Champs Announced

Maungakotukutuku, 19/20 June

MTBike The Wellington MTBO Champs moves to a new venue for 2004, in the hills behind Paraparaumu. A new map is being prepared by Steve Meeres, including bush and farm tracks, single track and a new feature: quad bike tracks! Meeres is currently mulling over whether these should be drawn as thick or thin lines!

The event on the weekend 19/20 June will follow the usual format of a fixed-order event on the Saturday (the championship) and a score event (the Maungakotukutuku Muster) on the Sunday. Orienteering convention is that once a championship area is announced, competitors must keep out of the area; so the Mangokotukutuku Valley and its immediately surrounding hills are out of bounds.

The event is being run by Orienteering Hutt Valley. Entries close on 9 June; download further details and entry form here (71K Word file).

St Pats Third in Wgtn Series, 15 May

Maungakotukutuku is unavoidably steep, so the best you can do is to practise on the third event in the Wellington series. This is on 15 May at St Pats Forest, to the west of SH2 as it bypasses Upper Hutt. The start is on the Hutt riverbank, city side, just south of the Moonshine bridge. Other details the same as last time.

Another thing you can do to practise is to set a course on any street map where the road pattern is non-rectangular, eg a modern suburb or a hilly suburb. After marking the circles, evaluate the route choices against the clock. To make it realistic, set your watch to beep every 60 seconds. Use one interval to study the leg and make mental "pace notes", eg "over railway, pass big on L, next on R, acute, indistinct". During the second interval concentrate on picturing the turns in your head, during the third interval look at the map again and assess how well the info was retained, repeat for another leg, etc. As you get better, shorten the mapreading time, and lengthen the mental picturing time.

Written by Michael Wood and installed on 20 Apr 04.