Auckland Long Distance Champs 23 & 24. september!

I ran my first orienteering event down here on Saturday and Sunday. It was a pretty big orienteering competition in New Zealand, but it was really small compared to any competition in Norway. I would say that even a club championship in Norway beat this. We were only 4 persons in my class, but I still didn't win. I blame it on the compass the first day. I didn't think that it made a big difference running with a norwegian compass down here, but it definitly did! My compass just went spinning around, and since the terrain was very flat, it was hard to find the controls without a compass. On Sunday I got to borrow a southern hymn sphere compass, and that worked a lot better. Both competitions were held in a planted forest, as most of the orienteering forest down here. Most of the forest are industry forest that they plant and cut down every 20 year or so, that is why it is hard to make orienteering maps around here, because suddenly the whole forest is gone:) Since the forest was planted, it was really close between the trees so the sight was reduced. We could only look 5 meters in front of us, and on top of this it was really steep and sandy. So it was really heavy to run in, but it was fun to try it anyway. But I must say that the terrains back in Norway are a much nicer! The orienteering group is really small and most of the people were a lot older than me, with children and family, so that was a little disappointing. I had hoped for some younger people that I could exercise with :) The next orienteering event is not before the summer vacation so I have one month to get fit again:)