Rob wins SILVA Du-O in Ballarat

Rob Preston has won the first SILVA Du-O race for the year. The SILVA Du-O includes 2 legs of orienteering on foot with one leg of mountain bike orienteering in between. The navigation standard is pretty easy to encourage athletes with limited orienteering experience to participate.

The field of nearly 100 competitors started off with a scatter course- requiring Long course runners to collect all 12 controls before returning to the transition area. Rob's commentary continues...

The main competition today was from Matt Schepisi, Jim Russell, Dave Brownridge, Luke Haines and some fast triathlete. I ran most of the first run with Schepisi until I buggered up a route (started towards wrong control), thought about readjusting route but just got back on track and lost about 40secs. The gap to Schepisi was about the same at the TA onto bikes, with Luke on my heels the whole way.

We passed Schepisi on the way to #1 when he dropped his control card but I didn't see him. Didn't push to the max physically as I was trying to concentrate on not making any nav mistakes. Only made one mistake, missing a track junction out of 6, then getting slowed by the locked gate. Finally got a gap on Luke when he stacked going down the steep gully towards #8 and I had about 1-1.5min lead into transition.

The last run leg was a traditional line orienteering course but the nav was even easier. I was hurting up the hills to #1 and could see Luke behind which made me nervous. Started to feel better on the long leg to 4 and saw Luke again on way to #5 and realised he'd lost time and I had a few mins to spare. My calves were totally shot up the last long hill from last nights street-o and I'm glad I didn't have to challenge anyone at the finish. I finished first, 4mins in front of Luke and 6 in front of Schepisi.

I really enjoyed this race and love the SILVA Du-O format. Unfortunately scheduling problems will prevent me from racing the next 2 races in the series. Thanks to Eureka Orienteers and Dion Keech for the work in organising the race, and also thanks to SILVA for their continued support.

Results
Total time Run 1 time MTB time Run 2 time
1 Rob Preston 01:39:21 00:28:44 00:42:22 00:28:15
2 Luke Haines 01:43:50 00:28:50 00:43:04 00:31:56
3 Matthew Schepisi 01:45:29 00:28:43 00:47:40 00:29:06
4 Jim Russell 01:48:25 00:32:28 00:44:39 00:31:18
5 David Brownridge 01:53:53 00:32:02 00:45:27 00:36:24
Full results

Photo: Michael Brown / Photoworx