Balls Head and Berry Island used to be the stomping ground for my cross country training back in high school. I’m pretty sure I held the record for the run from school to Waverton Park for many years. Teachers later concluded that a mass of kids crossing Union Street without looking probably wasn’t covered by insurance, and curtailed that activity.

Balls Head is also the place where my father had his car accident following a sudden heart attack almost exactly two years ago. The course went within metres of the bend that he failed to negotiate. He’d just finished a lunch with his Probus mates at the Coal Loader. He never recovered from the heart attack and passed away 6 days later.

Today my oldest son had a run too after I picked him up from school. The circle of life continues.

Map Comments

Firstly – why is the map called Lavender Bay? The map includes Waverton, North Sydney and McMahons Point but not Lavender Bay. A little strange.

When I was georeferencing the map that ended up at https://omaps.burnett.com.au/lavender-bay/ I had great troubles getting things to align. When I overlaid the GPS route from Strava the issues were confirmed – the map is very distorted!

The area around the old gas tanks in particular, as well as Balls Head itself, are not aligned to the real world.

GPS overlaid on the aerial imagery is very accurate

Same GPS, but orienteering map is way off

I notice also the map has not included roundabouts, and one is even mapped as a T-intersection.

Just a regular T-intersection?

Same GPS, but a four-way intersection with a roundabout

I’d love to get in and remap the area using NSW map resources. My name was on the original map from the 1980s, so I feel have some sort of claim to assist.

Course Highlights

Without a doubt, the leg between #23 and #10 was amazing. Check the GPS track points – there aren’t any! It was a 183m long TUNNEL.

Orienteering underground at the Coal Loader

Results

I can’t seem to break into the top 20 – this week I was 24th from 239. Perhaps not having a crap Achilles would go some way to an improvement, but speed is probably a bigger factor. I can’t blame age – my teammate from the 80s and 90s Richard Morris was the fastest competitor again, cleaning up with 590 points and no penalties. Way to go, Richard!

Results are at https://sportident.itsdamp.com/results/sss8.php

Both Richard M’s had solid runs again, keeping the young guns on their toes.

Strava

The prelude to the event suggested fun was in store:

THIS SUBLIME AND PEACEFUL POSER ALWAYS ATTRACTS.
From a scatter across the upper ‘home’ reaches, runners descend to the wonders of Vineyard Creek and beautiful creekside bush track running. As the controls draw you on and on, down and down, the clock ticks. One of Sydney’s hidden orienteering gems.

Race Review

This week I thought I’d play with a new way of presenting the final run using map tiles generated by QGIS. Here’s the final result – it took about 5 minutes to create the tiles and publish to my webserver.

Source: https://omaps.burnett.com.au/vineyard-creek/

I started off pretty fast in the footsteps of Bennelong runner Brian Brown. Brian was running fast, but making little mistakes in and around control circles allowing me to catch up. He said on Strava he had his best result yet, so I hope I helped him with that.

Sore Achilles and lack of fitness made the last two kilometres very difficult. They were mostly uphill and the time limit was coming up very quickly.

The segment from control number 2 to the finish was my fastest pace as I watched my watch tick closer to the minute 48. 47:40, 47:50 seconds, and still not there. I dabbed my SportIdent in and the record shows 48:01 – damn. 2 seconds over the minute earned me 10 penalty points on top of the other 20 points already deducted.

I finished with 500 points – two seconds faster and I would have moved from 28th to 24th. Top 20 by the end of the season?

Navigation Errors

Not too many this week!

It had been my intention to go from #9 to #16 if I was to make it back in time. Next thing I knew I’m standing next to a pipeline near #25 realising I was meant to go to #16.

Oh well, I’m at #25 now so better keep going. I lost 1 minute on the edge of the circle of #25 with a pipeline that also looked like a bridge. Decisions were made to go to #12 and grab those 20 points and hope the extra time was not wasted.

Result

According to https://sydneysummerseries.com.au/season/202021/event/7/results/order I earned a place of 28 out of 200. My best score (500) of the season so far, but still off the pace of Richard, Glenn and the young guns.

Strava

The venue may be familiar to competitors of the Great NOSH Footrace that passes through the area each year. It’s been years since I did that race, but I do remember the hard slog up the rock faces to get to Bantry Bay Road.

3D Animation

A humid afternoon greeted competitors in this Forestville event, starting at the home of Ferretville Rugby League Club. Great name for a sporting club!

The drive into the venue rang alarm bells – the road was very steep and there were many runners struggling to get up the hill to control #24. Time to check the contour interval – 5m on a 1:7500 map. All the planning was out the door as potential routes had to be checked for elevation!

Navigation Errors

Control 10

Coming out of the bush I missed the narrow pathway that went to control 8. A quick u-turn ensued and 46 seconds lost.

Control 13

I had promised myself before starting that I would only attempt the cluster of 24/13/3 at the end of the course if time permitted.

Temptation got the better of me and I thought I’d drop down to get #13 on the way to #20 from #8. Here’s the cartography at that area, with the route I took.

There is a lot going on in the circle for #13. There is a track that goes into the circle, then out, and around before re-entering the circle. There’s a large rockface, and a powerline too. Plus a boulder. In amongst the jungle was a water course but without the control descriptions on board I didn’t realise the clue was the track bend.

The result: a lot of fussing around trying to interpret the cartography before giving up and going back to plan A. A loss of exactly 2 minutes with no points earned. In review, I had to bash through the green to get the 20 points.

Control 30

Getting back onto Bantry Bay Road after a slog through dense vegetation meant decision time. Did I have time with 35:00 on the clock to get #30 as planned? I wasn’t feeling fresh so I elected to dump the 30 points on offer. Unfortunately, after finishing it worked out I had a minute or two to spare and could have got the 30 points on offer.

Results

According to the results at Eventor, I managed 27th out of a field of 204. A little annoying when #13 and #30 would have promoted the place to 10th.

There’s always next week – Orienteering Summer Series #7 at Telopea

Full Map

Map is copyright Bennelong Northside Orienteers

Strava