Sydney Summer Series

Out with a bang! Our final Autumn Evening event at Macquarie Uni went off in fine style last night with around 65 punters wrestling with the LED and dodging the strange queue's of commuter traffic.

Course setter Warwick Selby greeted us with an excellent deployment of pots - 80 points in the sports fields, 70 to the close north, 80 to the west and the balance in the Uni itself. Most headed east to the Uni, tempted first by #28, and then ran around in circles as they tried to work a loop to pick up the rest. At 1:10,000 scale, the Uni buildings and pathways are quite hard to decipher, requiring close study as runners ducked first one way and then the other amongst the sculptures, car parks and puzzled students. Despite the challenges, it is glorious running here - especially the feeling of flying past queue's of bus commuters held up by hurtling orienteers.

It appears the northern pots were the least visited, especially the long haul to 18 and 26. In the inner north group, many runners had fun trying to find the elusive alley to #10, discovering many other 'roads' between the units in this vicinity. A rewarding loop to the west (15,2,22,12,20) as a prelude to the Uni work found favour, although correspondent Rosscoe did not enjoy getting stuck on a high fence NE of #20! Generally the running was open and free in the grassy stuff, and fast around the Uni roads as mentioned. A great course with lots of differing routes and results.

Best score on the night went to Glenn 'Dracula' Horrocks who swept the lot in just over 50 minutes! A spectacular run for 540 points, and a clear lead over Nick Earl 'Wood' with 460. Kar-Soon and Peter Annetts are other 400 plus runners (both 430), in front of the two old Amigoe's Ron and yours truly who managed 390 - and a couple of schooners afterwards. Paula 'The Roof Tile' Shingler led the women home with 340, a touch in front of Caitlin 'The Cake Tin' Anderson's 310 points. Great running with many happy campers at the finish.

So this brings us to the end of this night time series. Numbers have been encouraging enough this year and we may well programme a follow up evening series to the 08/09 Summer Series, using close in and runnable venues. The Night Champs is on this Saturday night at Ryde where AE addicts that have not entered the night orienteering courses can have a final Petzel/LED fling. It's a great area with a touch of bush track stuff to keep runners honest, so make it a date.

Given that both series are now over, correspondent Rosscoe (alias Pork Pie) will retire to the front bar and the winter orienteering programme. Details of the wider orienteering events calendar are now linked to this web site (on the programme page) so you can see what's on - and hopefully join in - there are many great and fantastic O events planned in the coming months, both in and out of Sydney.

The 08/09 SSS programme is in early draft form and will be posted to the site around July/August when details are finalised. We commence on Wednesday October 8 and can promise another exciting and challenging series. Can't wait?? Hey, only 22 weeks to go!!

Finally, big thanks to everyone for being part of Australia's greatest city 'navigation on the run' series - you are ALL champions and a pleasure to share Wednesday evenings with. We will return!