Saturday, December 22, 2007

The last event before the Christmas break was another excellent workout at Balmoral Beach. Terry Bluett was in charge of event #11 and added a small new area to the south of the existing map. This area, and the control groupings around these steep hill sections, tempted many, and proved essential if a big score was intended.

The weather turned out to be pleasantly cool and just under 200 fronted the starter. At first glance there was a nice low route to the north, this time avoiding Chinamans Beach, and a connecting run back mid hill to the curly stuff south of the finish. Many looped back to the finish via 13, 15 and 24 (or 15, 14, 3 and home), but the speedsters returning high went wider cleaning up 14 and 22 before encountering the high 'no-go' fence that would have yielded #12. The real power horses lifted from the nice #14 #22 alignment to capture the high ones and the new mapped areas and probably avoided the fence problem.

There were other runners that did the above in reverse, tackling the hills first, and returning along the Esplanade. Good time judgement was needed for this option as there was nothing to add if arriving back early (other than a stretch along the beach to #11). There were also some good scoring from just the hilly sections, and going no further north than #25.

The best score on the night appeared to be Michael Burton with 540. His strong run got everything except #22 and #14 to better clear the southern high stuff and was in on time (remember that only 490 points were on offer, with #4 going awol at the last minute). A brilliant outing, just shading Robbie Preston's equally impressive 530.

Christmas cheer now intervenes with the series resuming on Wednesday 2 January at Gladesville. The second half looks particularly strong with three new series maps on offer. Should be fantastic.

Also please note your 'correspondent' is on leave for much of January and may be irregular with the event updates.

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