Race Analysis

For most Kiwis we get a month or so of full on racing in Europe each year if we're lucky. The month is full of racing and training and often by the end becomes very much a day to day focus instead of looking at the big picture of improvement. Now we have the other 11 months of the year to look at the races we have done in Europe and consider mistakes, successes and learnings we can take. I have been using some different ways of considering my mistakes to try and gain even more from my European experience this year. This evening as I was procrastinating about studying I found a very in depth analysis on Estonian Junior Lauri Sild's blog of his season last year (WorldofO does really have alot of information). Lauri is a year younger than me and is a consistent top 10 JWOC runner, and one of the nicest guys I've met. The depth of analysis he uses suggests we could spend more time reflecting on our races as a way to make the Europe experience last. It's made me grab my maps out and open up winsplits to have another look at what my mistakes really cost me. The link is http://laurisild.blogspot.com/2009/01/last-seasons-biggest-mistakes.html

Orienteering and Facebook

Crikey, glad Facebook wasn't around when I tried to go to a WOC party. It's not my business to post photos, but I stole one off Ross. Greg Flynn, always confident in his sexuality, and team blogger for WOC 2009, thanks Greg!

JWOC 2012 - Slovakia

For all you budding juniors out there, Denmark 2010, Poland 2011 and now Slovakia 2012

Reaction to the WOC 09 Relay

Now that its all over its time for the critical analysis that's always associated with sport and particularly Orienteering which it is an inherent part of the game. A discussion over on Attackpoint has prompted the Secretary General of WOC2009 to speak out on the happenings behind the scenes of that fateful race.

New Rankings

With Chris's fantastic 17th equal placing last night his ranking has moved him up into 45th equal place. The best a NZ athlete has been placed in a few years. Ross has moved up to 80th, and Tania into the top 100 again(80) along with Lizzie (94).

The rankings website has also had a bit of a make over and is much more user friendly even if it looks a bit 1995-ish. One feature worth pointing out is that you can now sort rankings by regions....which shows that Chris is currently ranked 1st in Oceania...no supprises there!

Primal Quest winners???

For such a climactic finish to the Primal Quest 2009, waiting around for the final result has proved to be quite anti-climactic...not sure if its official yet but Brent's Team OrionHealth seem to have won this years PQ in the Badlands of South Dakota.

Report on SleepMonsters

Recap the action on Team OrionHealth's website

Brent of Oropi/New Plymouth/WACO/Counties/Rotorua and the rest of the Orion team at the Finish.

Amongst the Best in the World

A clipping from the WOC long overnight. Chris produces New Zealands best ever male WOC result. Golds won bu Hubbman and Niggli.

Tribal Sports

My first post as one of the new contributors to the blog. It is a somewhat different topic from the excitement and results related to WOC, but I've been thinking about it for the last few days anyway. Supporting a particular team in a sports competition is something we all enjoy doing. New Zealanders, however, seem to lack the tribal element that these allegiances have in overseas sports. We don't have as much of the passionate to the end support for our mainstream sports teams that Europe has. While this means we don't have the problems associated with this, like hooliganism in football, it does mean our sports teams are sometimes left high and dry if results don't go their way or if the game stagnates. Look at the Warriors fan base, changing with the wind, or the falling crowds at any NPC game. This does infact relate to orienteering. I thought it was so cool the amount of support and loyalty that clubs have from their members while in Sweden. It was awesome to stand at the finish at oringen and see the fields of team flags and tents all around. We're lucky in New Zealand that alot of orienteers are club members (not like triathlon, with few clubs) so we are already halfway there. It seems the loyalty to clubs is present in New Zealand. I know I would find it very hard to run for anyone apart from NorthWest, and the same can be seen in juniors who move away but stay with their home clubs. I think we just need to add a bit more intensity to the club scene. Perhaps clubs aren't the way to do it to start with though. Maybe the Superseries Teams would be better. We could reinvigorate the Superseries by emphasising the team element. This could add to the competition for the athletes and get the wider orienteering community more involved. Looking to other sports for ideas; we could have 'powerplays' at each round, each team pre-chooses two runners who can double the points they score in the races at an event. We could include fastest split competitions. The Swedes had an uphill leg at O-ringen that had prize money for the fastest split. We couldn't do prize money, but perhaps bonus points for the winner. Anything we add needs to be simple and easy to understand and enhance the competition. The Superseries is so valuable to the elites in New Zealand, and we need to make sure that it remains relevant. Adding a tribal element might boost support from the wider orienteering community.

WOC - Sprint Final - NZs best ever male result

Chris finally broken into the top 20 in a WOC race, the first time for a NZ man. His time of 16:42 was good enough for 20th, 1:32 behind defending champion Andrey Khramov of Russia. Chris wasn't totally happy, loosing 20 sec on the 2nd leg, by taking the wrong route choice, but is still pretty stoaked.

Chris at the spectator control

Ross also had another creditable result in 30th, 17:15, 2:05 behind. Ross was going great to start with, climbing into 10th spot, but made some mistakes through the zoo (see map below), what might surprise a few people is that lightning can strike the same place twice, or maybe it should strike Ross, he again forgot his shoes for the final, even after all the teaming asking him in the car if he had them, fortunately he found a much more suitable pair to borrow than last year and owes Mikkel Lund a beer or six. It was also great seeing Kathryn Ewels (AUS) take 5th spot, (after some support and help from us of course), and personally also seeing my old flatmate Kiril take 6th was awesome.

Ross starting out in the borrowed shoes

The map and mens course is below, the 'zoo' had all the short legs, with lots of direction change and no go areas.

Relay
The relay team has been decided for a few days now, so the team in running order will be:
1st Greg Flynn
2nd Ross Morrison
3rd Chris Forne

The start for men is 11am local (9pm NZT) with leg lengths of 5.96km, 8.76km and 8.72km, Chris is giggling like a school girl about it.

WOC - Sprint Qual

Yeah, 2 NZers in the Sprint Final, Ross and Chris both cruised in. Ross in heat B, 5th place 27 sec down, Chris in heat A, 7th place 50 sec down, awesome stuff.

The mens final starts at 4:20pm local time (so 2:20am NZT), Chris should be away around 5:00pm and Ross around 5:07pm (start times not out yet)

Here is Chris official route from his Middle Final as well

WOC - Update

Sorry had a couple of days off, getting carried away with the happenings here and also being in the same time zone makes watching the World Athletic Champs a lot easier.

The biggest thing since the last WOC posting has been Chris' 34th place in the Middle Final. A very creditable result, especially when he choose not to follow Peter Öberg when he went past him and instead run his own race (which is more than some other people). Chris said he made some mistakes early on but was flying around the last loop leaving Anders Nordberg in his dust. The course was described as physically and technically challenging, and there were some blow outs by some big names, notice the lack of Scandinavians near the top of the results board. It was again "The Great One" Thierry Gueorgiou that took the victory, ahead of the threesome of Swiss.

(WOC 2009)

Other than that we have had the opening ceremony and a couple of model events. The opening was a standard affair, with a small team march, some speeches and traditional singing and dancing.

All the maps and courses can be found on route gadget, with some routes choices entered, here:
http://live.woc2009.hu/RouteGadget/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi

Here is Chris' map from his Long Qual
Ross doing his last speed session (while being paced in the car)
Bryn punching the spectator control in the Long Qual

(WOC 2009)

The perfected sponging technique

(WOC 2009)

Go Wellington

Sometime soon I am going to post about all that has been going on, and is planned, for the rebranded (maybe) Central O-Gang;-). But in the meantime great to see an article in the Dominoion Post about the five Wellingtonians selected for the New Zealand Schools team...

WOC - Long Qual

Again it was the Fornicator show, he easily made it into the final, even with a couple of small hiccups. Ross and Bryn both made mistakes that they are not too pleased about. Me and Maja perfected our sponging by the time Chris came through (which of course lead to his performance). Not much else tonight, will try and get some courses and photos up tomorrow when there is only the sprint model and opening ceremony, as right now we are all a bit tired from the day out in the sun.

Recent happenings

While we all wait for the next round of WOC qualification races I thought I'd mention some of the recent happenings around Christchurch and the OSQUAD Blog.

First off it seems that my prediction was right according to the results of my highly scientific poll that Orienteers tend to be interested in Engineering. The highest number of votes was in the Other category which was probably to be expected as Orienteers tend to have strange passions outside of Orienteering and hence a wide range of jobs.... One category I probably could have also included was one for teacher/lecturers. But as I have found out you cant win 'em all.

Rogaining has become quite a large sport in Canterbury over the past few years, I think mainly due to the Taylors Mistake Rogaine series started up by Jamie and the many passionate PAPO orienteers who are also heavily keen on rogaining. This weekend Darfield High School Held the Annavale Amble/Attack 3/4 hr rogaine as a fund raiser for the school. It turned out to be a highly successful event and a great idea for a fund raiser with over 80 teams turning up. Of course it was down to Orienteers when it came to winning with Matt Scott and Michael Smithson connecting all except one of the dots to win first prize and a romantic Jet boat trip for two. Greig Hamilton and Tim Sikma dropped a couple of controls to slot into second and not far behind Rogaining specialist Tim Farrant and myself in third. Lara Prince's Team of four won the Open Women's category by a clear margin but still was not fast enough to beat her Mum! All in all it was an Awesome day out in the hills.

One thing I have noticed recently is the rise of the "Adventure Racers/Multi-sporters" doing well in Rogaines. It seems some of them are finally starting to understand the tactics and skills involved in Rogaining and the finer points of Navigating precisely.

Today's post has been proudly brought to you by the Bivouac Outdoor Night Navigation series. This event has been running for around ten years, held annually in Christchurch as a fund-raiser for the Southerly Storm Orienteers. Funds raised over the years have been used for various things such as subsidies for travel costs to Super Series events and Team uniforms. This year the 3 events all start from Spencerville on successive Wednesday Nights beginning the 2nd of September. So if your in Christchurch with nothing to do and dont fancy boy racer cruising on a Wednesday evening then come out and give it a go! The specific details:

THREE 1-HOUR ROGAINES

WEDNESDAYs 2^nd, 9^th AND 16^th SEPTEMBER

WALK/RUN OR MOUNTAIN BIKE

· LOCATION: 2^nd September : Spencerville Picnic Ground

9^th September: Spencerville Picnic Ground

16^th September: Spencerville Picnic Ground

· REGISTRATION: From 6.00pm

· BRIEFING AND MAPS: At 6.45pm

· START: 7.00pm

· GEAR: Torch or headlamp, compasses for hire

· INSTRUCTION: Freely available from 6pm

· COSTS: $12 per race or $30 for all 3 races

Students/unwaged: $6 per race or $15 for all 3 races

Electronic Punch Hire: $3 per race or $5 for all 3

(Sport Ident)

CONTACT: Carsten Joergensen 9601345

Carsten.nz_AT_gmail.com

A FUNDRAISING EVENT FOR THE SOUTHERLY STORM ORIENTEERING SQUAD

Major Prizes and Spot Prizes Sponsored By: Bivouac Outdoor

Primal Quest Update

Looks like Brent and co, are going ok. Its not as much fun supporting the favourites!

WOC - Middle Qual

The Middle Qual was held on a map called Galuzsnya, Kenneth had pretty much guessed bang on where the start was and the general area of the courses as well (he had the 2nd to last controls off)

Chris was the stand out performer today, easily making it into the final on Wed. He had passed Emil Wingsted early on in the course and then enjoyed Emil pushing the pace over the last few controls (Chris has the fastest last 2 splits) as he could have been in danger of missing the cut. Ross could be forgiven for feeling a little hard done by, having the tightest heat of the 3, he made a mistake in the earlier part of the course and despite some fast splits in the middle, never made up enough time to get into the final. I made a few small mistakes, loosing just over a min in total if I was being picky (which I am), but was never really fast enough in this terrain, with the leaders doing just over 5 min/km.

Chris is all excited, Ross and Bryn are looking forward to good days tomorrow, and Me and Maja are on sponge duty, with the temp looking like it will nudge 30 degrees like today, Kenneth has devised some cooling techniques with state of the art bucket and sponges from Tesco.
The course are as follows in heat order:

Ross

Greg

Chris

Serious Stuff

The starts for tomorrows Long Qual are:
9:10 Bryn
9:26 Ross
10:02 Chris
Thats from 7:10 NZT, the live link is here
http://live.woc2009.hu/?p=home

WOC - Day 1

Today we headed out to the model for the Middle Qual (also same as Long Qual). Kenneth had a few things for us to concentrate on and joined a few of the controls together for these. Nothing new really, it was a bit more stonier on the top but otherwise it was business as usual, apart from Ross, Chris and Myself all getting confused at the missing flag, which was an extra control Kenneth had drawn in, but none of us realised at the time. Afterwards we went and saw the old castle 'The Castle of Diosgyor' (this was where the opening ceremony of JWOC 01 took place), which was set up like medieval times with actors, shows and jousting. Serious Stuff
We have the starts for tomorrow Middle Qual, they are:
10:10 Greg
10:26 Chris
11:04 Ross
We are 10 hours behind NZ, so 10am here is 8pm in NZ. There should be live results(no GPS) and the best places to try and find these will be on:
The world of O website - http://www.worldofo.com/
or the WOC 09 website - http://tajfutovb2009.hu/
Sweet

WOC - Day Zero

Today was the final day before all the real serious stuff starts tomorrow with the model events. Most teams seem to be here now, and all living in the Uni Hotel complex (apart from the Swedes and Finns). Myself, Chris, Ross and Maja spent the day relaxing while Bryn took Kenneth out for one final training with some route choices. In the afternoon Kenneth, Chris and Myself went to the famous Cave Spas, where there is a series of hot springs, spas and waterways inside a cave system, its pretty cool. With nothing much else to report we'll put up some profiles..

Ross Morrison

WOC races: Sprint, Middle, Long, Relay

Age: 24

Club(s): Hawkes Bay OC, Odense OK, OK Pan Århus

Best International Result: 10^th Sprint World Games 09

# Previous WOC's: 3

Favourite Song / Band: Mister Love, Toadies

# of Electronic devices with you: 5

Favourite Movie / T.V Show: Shaun of the Dead

Supporters: Dirty d., Maja, Val and Derek

Favourite game on Bryn's laptop: Peggle

Chris Forne

WOC races: Sprint, Middle, Long, Relay

Age: 32

Club(s): PAPO, Wing OK

Best International Result: 27^th Sprint World Champs 05

# Previous WOC's: 4

Favourite Song / Band: Sash

# of Electronic devices with you: 2

Favourite Movie / T.V Show: Team America World Police

Supporters: Emily

Favourite game on Bryn's laptop: Peggle

Bryn Davies

(www.worldofo.com)

Greg Flynn

(www.worldofo.com)

WOC races: Middle, Relay*

Age: 27

Club(s): North West OC

Best International Result: 21^st Middle Junior World Champs 02

# Previous WOC's: debut (3 as a spectator)

Favourite Song / Band: Faint – Linkin Park / Steriogram

# of Electronic devices with you: 5

Favourite Movie / T.V Show: The Crowd Goes Wild

Supporters: BCS Group, Dirty d., Claire, Garden Party Estate

Favourite game on Bryn's laptop: Peggle

Maja Bramming

WOC races: Manager / Coaching Zone

Age: 23

Club(s): Odense OK

# Previous WOC's: Few

Favourite Song / Band: No Stress – Laurent Wolf

# of Electronic devices with you: 1

Favourite Movie / T.V Show: Family Guy

Favourite game on Bryn's laptop: Peggle

Kenneth Buch

WOC races: Coach

Age: 30

Club(s): Halden SK

Best International Result: Winner Beer Relay Student World Champs

# Previous WOC's: 2

Favourite Song / Band: Loosing My Religion – R.E.M

# of Electronic devices with you: 6 (2 shavers.?!)

Favourite Movie / T.V Show: Lord of the Rings (Danish Actor, NZ landscape)

Supporters: Norwegian and Danish Teams

Favourite game on Bryn's laptop: Peggle

* The relay team will be finalised after the qualification races