OSQUAD

World Cup 2013/Oceania teaser

2011-10-24T14:07:00.006+13:00

Once again the blog has fallen silent but by no means does that mean the orienteering has stopped!

In just over a year we finally see the return of World Cup orienteering to NZ, something I for one am pretty much indescribably excited about! Can't wait to show off our country to the best orienteers in the world, and show off the best orienteers in the world to our country!

Mick Finn has done his usual amazing work and made a pretty sweet teaser video, enjoy! :)

http://www.youtube.com/user/NZOrienteering#p/a/u/0/mUwYtQIb8Mw

WOC Preview

2011-08-13T17:39:00.001+12:00

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s92/sh/4cbdb181-46f6-4a23-a6f6-164c3da385e1/d60e2e3554ed07b6bd84c9e8f9848fda Eight of New Zealands best orienteers have gathered in the Savoy region of France to compete in the World Orienteering Championships. The championships, which run from the 13the to the 20th of August...

Aus WOC Trials

2011-06-06T21:02:00.006+12:00

A couple of weekends ago I headed down to Tassie for the Australian WOC trials. A bit late writing up you might say, well since then I’ve relocated myself across the world and am now in Rome up for a couple of months! So I’d say that’s a fair enough excuse! :) If you’re lucky I’ll put up some of my Roman running adventures here too.

(Warning you in advance, this is a long post, so just scroll down for maps if you want!)

Anyway, as I’m uncertain how much orienteering I’ll get here in Rome, I made the late decision to head down to Tassie and get some quality competition in the form of the Aus WOC trials. $400 of flights and a spacious, song filled drive up from Hobart later, I found myself lining up for the sprint race as the University of Tasmania in Launceston. Now in the past I’ve found I struggle to race well the same day as I travel, so expectations weren’t too high for this race, although I did enjoy the lack of pressure compared to the WOC trialees!

I won’t bore you with too many details, however shoe choice was critical for this race (interesting aye!). No but really, the ground was ultra slippery following the morning’s dew. So out went my initial choice of racing flats and in came the inov8s. Discussions post race made me very happy I made this choice, at no point in my race did I find myself unexpectedly on the ground (which given my proneness to faceplants is saying something)!

Anywho, map is below. Technical sprint racing seems to be a forte of mine, so this course was right up my alley and I had an incredibly clean run. The only real time losses came exiting 11, where I misread the white edging around the number 11 as a gap in the wall. A couple of others made the same mistake and was pretty annoyed with the number placement. Cost me 15s. And I took a sub-optimal route choice to 16. Infact, it was only the 3rd time I looked at the course post race that I even saw the path in the middle! In the end I won by 51s in a time of about 15minutes. Joint 2nd were Mace and Shannon, so a good start to the weekend for the Cockies!

A quick fuel up at the supermarket and another short drive later and we were back at it again, this time for the middle distance, held at Benbullen. Now I’m not going to lie, I see absolutely no relevance of this map to France, I think the only reason it was used was because it lies on the road between Launceston and St Helens, were the long the next day was. Anyway, you deal with what you’re served, and a fair few people commented that the map should suit me, being a kiwi. Well whatever was said prerace, I have run on very few maps this muddy and boggy in NZ!

For some reason the start triangle was in the middle of a stream and by the time I’d run through it, my map was covered in mud and illegible. It didn’t get too much better after that either! Now my track record for middle distances isn’t exactly impressive. I’ve made a mess of the last 4 NZ champs, including my spectacular mistake a month ago in HB (not sure I’ll put that up here!). I’ve made 3 A finals at JWOC, only to make a 20min mistake in one, mp in another, and throw away the race on the 1st control on the other. So my confidence isn’t exactly high when I line up for a middle, I just don’t seem to be able to hold my concentration together for 25-30mins. (15min for a sprint is fine though!)

Unfortunately this race continued my trend, although it wasn’t quite on Easter’s scale. Number one was very shaky, especially after getting stuck in a bog, only to see Jimbo happily jogging past on a track 10m away. However everyone, even Vanessa had trouble here. Things went smoothly through to 10 then, where I couldn’t fit the map to the ground, losing maybe 30s. Again things went fast through to 17 where I got a bit stuck in the marsh and veered left, not too fussed with that though. But the last control, oh the last control. Seriously?! Spotting a knoll across the marsh I shot off, up the re-entrant, and…nothing. What?! Oh no. It has to be here. Nope. Eventually I twig that the finish is too far away, I must be short. A classic parallel error which cost me a clear 2nd place and dropped me back to 3rd behind Vanessa and Kathryn. There’s no way I was going to beat Vanessa though, she seems to have middle distances sussed. Maybe I should ask for tips? :) (sorry for the blood all over the map, managed to slice my hand open somewhere, just thought it was mud for a while, then realised it was red not brown…)

And finally, after a well needed nights rest, we had the long distance trial, held on everyone’s favourite; Lively’s Bog. Personally I’d only run here once before, Aus champs 2005. And all I remember was getting pretty horribly lost. More than once. So on reading the planners notes in the programme (along the lines of ‘I have made these courses as hard as the possibly could be, I got lost putting controls out’), I decided it would be optimal to take things carefully and stay in touch with the map at all times. Not a bad plan and will definitely be needed at WOC.

I won’t bore you with details, but I just had the most average run. No big mistakes apart from 8, where I lost a few minutes after becoming disoriented in the ultra green strip in the bog (there’s an unmapped rock in there, just incase anyone wants to know). A couple of dodgy route choices, and a lot of hesitating. But I was simply running too slow and had little motivation to ramp it up. Unfortunately I was first starter and had no one close behind who was going to push me. However that’s no excuse, someone always has to start first, so a bit disappointed with myself on this one, but atleast I didn’t get horribly lost like last time I guess! Finished up a good 9 mins behind the leaders, and what’s more the place getters in the long won compasses. I’d have rested up in the sprint and middle and gone hard on the long if I’d known that! ;)

Running Free...

2011-05-29T22:31:00.000+12:00

One for the next interval session.....

O-Squad Blog - Jumping on the Train

2011-05-29T22:07:00.002+12:00

New Zealand elite orienteering is gathering steam, and the O Squad Blog is going to jump on this train...

Everything is looking up. The Regal Orienteering Carnival is upon us. Next weekend the Pinestars and Bushrangers have their annual faceoff in Woodhill forest and the Super series teams battle it out for the title. Soon after elites start departing for Europe where this year we have a strong team of 8 taking on the world in the French Savoy. Those staying behind have some great races to look forward to. The winter classic, the regional champs, the recently confirmed Sprint the Bay 2012, and a Nationals on Waionoke. For these later races we should see the reappearance of New Zealand's best orienteer. Chris Forne is back in 2012 from a long stint in Norway.

Chris is finally ready to come home

In the O-Squads blogs opinion though the two best things stoking the engine are 1)the sudden rise of a technically excellent and committed Auckland orienteering scene, athletes seeking to make the most of their potential and doing so ruthlessly, 2) the announcement of the World Cup heading down under to our capital city in early 2013, just 18 months away.

I am hugely excited by how these developments will come together. Is it too early to dream of a new epoch in NZ elite orienteering?

What this space, and all the other great blogs of our athletes, which you can link to from our site. There should be some interesting viewing!

NZ 2011 JWOCers

2011-04-11T20:15:00.004+12:00

Firstly, yes the little spurt of posts I had going has seemingly stopped. Sorry! But about the end of february I relocated my life over the ditch to Aussie. And as a result, let's be honest here, there prob won't be many posts from me in the near future! And as noone else is writing anything, well there just won't be any posts probably.

Unless anyone wants to put up there hand to write? But I believe the last three times we've asked there's been no response. sad. but who knows, maybe someone will volunteer, and chances are I'll procrastinate and put the odd post up.

ANYWAY, on a brighter note, following trials in the poland-esque New Plymouth in mid March, the NZ team for JWOC 2011 has been announced. Competition for places was the toughest I think i've ever seen it and there are a number of Juniors who will be gutted to miss the team. To them, just take it as motivation to go away, train harder and smarter and prove yourself next time around. Oceania champs in October anyone?

And to those in the team, well done, awesome work, but that was only the first step! Take that motivation, train harder and smarter, and prove yourself in Poland. Anyone who's been to a JWOC will atest to just how intense the competition is. It is a huge step up from anything you'll have experienced in our little bit of the world. But they will also atest to how much fun the trip as a whole, the races, and the banquet is.

Well done, good skill and do us proud! :) (on a personal note, stoked to see 3 of wellington area's top juniors in the team!)

Also a huge thanks to Owen and James for putting their hands up to help out our Junior team. Just gutted I can't get the time off to coach again this year!

The New Zealand team to compete at the Junior World Orienteering Championships being held in Rumia-Wejherowo, Poland, 1-9 July 2011, is as follows:

WOMEN
Jaime Goodwin (Hawkes Bay)
Anna Gray (North West)
Selena Metherell (Peninsula and Plains)
Kate Morrison (Hawkes Bay)
Laura Robertson (Hutt Valley)
Angela Simpson (Bay Of Plenty)
Non-travelling reserve: Cosette Saville (Counties Manukau)

MEN
Gene Beveridge (North West)
Nick Hann (Wellington)
Scott McDonald (Hawkes Bay)
Mathew Ogden (North West)
Tim Robertson (Hutt Valley)
Toby Scott (Auckland)
Non-travelling reserve: Alistair Richardson (Peninsula and Plains)

MANAGER: Owen Cambridge (Dunedin)
COACH: James Bradshaw (Counties Manukau)

Sprint the Bay 2011 - postview

2011-02-17T15:56:00.010+13:00

The answer would be 'yes' if you were at Sprint the Bay 2011...

The weekend started off remarkably dry on the friday evening, with a first up sprint around Frimley Park. A flat park and school map also used in the tour last year, this year two runners started at a time with a loop format, giving an exciting way to kick off the weekend. Piret Klade showed her speed to take out the win the the women's, with juniors Laura Robertson and Angela Simpson rounding out the top 3, whilst Oystein Kvaal Osterbo cleaned out the elite mens race by 26s, with Julian Dent in 2nd and local Ross Morrison 3rd.

Meanwhile, I occupied myself with the camera, and after some initial problems, eventually got a good photo!

However, STB isn't all about the yellow jersey and this year there were both the green (sprint) and pokadot (hill) jerseys up for grabs also. These were targeted by some runners, and it wasn't a rare sight to see people taking a good long breather before the sprint and hill climb legs. On the first evening the jerseys were taken out by Angela Simpson, Olle Poland (hill), Jula Mcmillan and Ian Lawford (sprint). Of these four, only one would go on to relinquish their singlet all weekend, making for some very muddy and sweaty singlets by Sunday evening!

Saturday morning brought with it the rain, and the courses around Te Aute college required real concentration not to slip over around the technical school buildings. The yellow singlet changed hands in both the men's and women's grades with Julian Dent taking out the win and overtaking Oystein in the yellow jersey stakes, whilst Elise Egseth showed her class with a 34s win while Piret slipped back to mid-pack.

The third stage, held on Maison de Sante, brought with it some tough hill climbs, more rain, and some tight intricate navigation among the accurately mapped blackberry labrynth. Oystein was back for revenge with almost a minute win over Julian, whilst the Kiwi's were packed in close behind; Karl, Darren, Carsten and Toby all within 13s of eachother (and Rassmus, is he a kiwi yet?). The hot potato Yellow Jersey work continued in the women's race, with Elise mispunching and Amber taking a well deserved win by 1.21!

The third race of the day, held on Sleeping Giant (te mata peak) was primarily down hill, with the last 1/2 of the course in beautiful pine forest. To add to the technicality, with the overcast weather it was getting pretty dim in the forest too! The yo-yoing continued in the men's class with Julian taking the win by 58s over Karl Dravitzki, and with Oystein a further 33s back, Julian reclaimed the yellow singlet. Piret claimed her 2nd win in the women, however Amber was close enough behind, and far enough ahead of Angela in third, and the rest, to ensure that she'd enter the last day wearing yellow.

Torrential rain overnight turned central Hasting's the next morning into one giant puddle. However the show went on, with the few passerbyes wondering what all these people were doing running and splashing around in the rain. Amber struggled with a 10cm diameter bruise on her thigh from a fall the previous night, allowing the on form Angela Simpson to slip by into the yellow singlet position, Piret sneaked in 2nd with Laura in 3rd ensuring a tight contest between Amber and Angela for 1st/2nd, and Piret and Laura for 3rd spot, going into the final race! In the men, Julian extended his lead with 40s back to Oystein in 2nd, followed by Rassmus and Ross seperated by a single second.

The finale for the weekend was held at EIT, one of my (and many other's i'm sure) favourite sprint maps. This year the technicality of the tight knit buildings was added to with slippery wet grass, and plenty of surface flooding to boot. It was the juniors' turn to shine, with Laura Robertson picking up her first elite win and placing 3rd overall for the weekend. She was 22s ahead of fellow junior Angela, who continued her consistant results to take Yellow jersey honours for the weekend. Amber came in 3rd for the race, and 2nd over all for the weekend. The men followed a similar tune to the previous races, with Julian again dominant in first, ensuring he took the Yellow Jersey home. Ross Morrison came in 11s back, with junior Toby Scott rounding out the top 3. That left Oystein in 2nd overall for the weekend, with Karl Dravitzki hopefully starting his comeback, taking out 3rd overall.

However, as mentioned earlier it's not all about the yellow singlet, with the green and pokadot singlet's also hotly contested throughout the weekend. Ian Lawford and Jula Mcmillan both dominated the green singlet standings, with Sara Bailey smashing the women's field on the hill climbs. Olle Poland looked to have the hill sprints cleaned up in the men's grade too, however Greg Flyn pulled out all stops to tie with him in the very last race of the weekend. As with the green singlet last year, this lead to a hotly contested race off infront of the crowd at EIT. However, after one tied race off, and a controversial head to head race, Olle Poland ensured that all of the men's race winner singlets would head across the ditch this year.

Of course, STB isn't all about the elites, as much as we forge sometimes! A huge congrats to winners in the other age grades: George Engleback and Danielle Goodall in the U12, Callum Herries and Lauren Turner both took out the U16 grades by large margins. John Robertson was almost 11mins ahead in M40, whilst Raewyn Simpson took out W40 by 25mins! Debbie Byers and Geoff Morrison had wins in the 50's classes whilst Nick Collins finished ahead in M60.

So once again, STB turned out to be a huge success. Personally, despite not running, I feel the more varied terrain, together with added features such as radio controls with results direct to Duncan commentating, ensured that despite the rain this year's version topped last years. Here's hoping next year is even better!

Cheers Morrison family for making this event happen. And thanks Val for the subway at EIT when I was soaked through, freezing and starving!

Sprint the Bay preview

2011-01-20T18:11:00.002+13:00

Pretty much everyone connected with the NZ orienteering scene will know that this weekend sees the 2nd instalment of Sprint the Bay, a series of 6 sprint events over 3 days in the sunny (although rain is forecast this weekend) Hawkes Bay.

The brain child of the Morrison kids and a huge success last year, the weekend is run as a tour format; complete with yellow singlet for the leader, green for the sprint leg leader, and this year a new polka dot singlet for the leader on the hill climb legs.

Last years elite woman grade was won by Maja Alm (we take part credit for her stunning european season after her summer training in nz :), closely followed by our own star Angela Simpson. The men's was taken out by Darren 'the flash' Ashmore, showing his experience and skill, with a number of other contenders crashing out with mps in various stages.

This year the areas look, if possible, even better, and the competition will be just as hot, with a mixture of nz's best and some overseas stars.

Unfortunately for me, I won't have the chance to improve on last years 3rd placing, with doctors orders not to compete in sprint races. (too much sharp turning and stop/start for my poor bruised talus). So I'll be spectating, and hopefully get out jogging around some of the maps.

Anyway, enough from me, I'm off to drive up to the bay. much more info about the races, format, competitors and results can be found on STB website!

Headcam and GPS fun

2011-01-20T17:45:00.002+13:00

Whilst procrastinating at work the last couple of weeks, I've been keeping track of an interesting discussion going on on attackpoint.

Pretty much, if you don't want to read through all the comments; someone asked if there was available tools to sync up your GPS tracking data with headcam footage. This resulted in ken (one of the guys behind attackpoint) scripting up a function for use on attackpoint (for donating members). You can find an example of it on newpatrick's log here

Some seriously cool stuff aye?! We've seen it done by Gueorgiou and a couple of the other top elites before, but now given you have the correct equipment, we could all do it. And it would be a pretty amazing tool for training and analysis of your techniques. Imagine being able to watch yourself make a parallel error, and seeing on the headcam exactly how you made it.

Unfortunately for me, I'm too poor to have a GPS watch, let alone a headcam. (although i'm seriously tempted). But certainly as a training group we could probably pull it together, and the benefits would be great, let alone the entertainment!

Anyway if you want more indepth info and better writing on this subject, Jan Kocbach has just written about it on o-training.net

How confusing is this?!

2011-01-17T16:42:00.003+13:00

A good way to make use of a small area, looking forward to trying it. Gutted I didn't find this map til after junior camp, would have been carnage!

Map Interpretation Skills

2011-01-16T10:49:00.004+13:00

Above is the night event map from Junior Camp. courtesy of Nick Hann and Jamie BW who field worked the area, but unfortunately ran out of time to put it on ocad. Not to be put off, we just took their rough sketch to the printer and went with it.

You think it's hard reading now, try racing on it in the dark and rain! Much to our surprise the kids actually followed the map reasonably well, and even found the controls we'd hidden (including teaming together to get one down off the flying fox!). All of this whilst running from coaches with waterbombs, and avoiding having their maps stolen by waterbomb-less coaches! Fair to say the coaches had fun, the kids seemed to too.

Personal favourites of mine from the map:

- the unscaled gap between the right and left parts of the map

- the blow up of the maze, which holds no correlation to the actual maze

- two number 24's (by mistake)

- northish? and safety bearing off the left of the map

- number 7, which was hidden inside a shed. like shooting fish in a barrel with the water bombs!

New Years Day Mission

2011-01-11T10:45:00.012+13:00

To anyone who actually checks this blog (Jamie, Carsten, anyone else?), a happy new year! Yes, I survived junior camp and made it to 2011!

Having spent a wicked new years at Jamie and Penny's, including some geekish orienteering celebrations (ie. orienteering), some 10 year old fire works which barely made it above the 1m hedgeline and a good game of space chicken helmets, someone had the bright idea that we should conclude our celebrations with a 6hr mission in the akatarawas the next day. yay!

So come 11am, 8 of us were gathered at the end of moonshine valley, ready to take on some hills and rivers. Or not ready, but with little choice at that stage! Interestingly enough, it was those who didn't make it to town the night before who were there for the mission. Although Greg had the best intentions of making it to town but got lost somewhere on mt vic on the way.

Anyhow, the mission for the day was the Whakatikei river, which it turns out, has a wikipedia page. Not that you'll learn anything from it. However we started in same place as the NZ rogaining champs, which were held in the area last year, and a map can be found here. good luck following my description on it!

Pictured Right: Nowhere near the ridge that we were on, but thanks for the pic Jamie!

Off we started, pretty much straight into a rugged uphill on a 4wd track. After 10mins we'd had enough of that, so went off track and literally straight up the hill, eventually reappearing on the ridgeline, minus greg. He materialised out of the bush a couple of minutes later, to be serenaded by my "I see greg, I see greg, I see gre-eg!" (to tune of "I see red" for those in need of an explanation). He wasn't appreciative, well he was, but he hid it well.

We continued along said ridge for about an hour, passing a couple of hunters and a couple of dozen hunting dogs along the way. Which made me glad that I was wearing a relatively bright, non deer like top that day. One of the dogs mistook us for her pack and stayed with us for half an hour. Apparently we look and smell like dogs?! Maybe after another 3-4 hours, but hopefully not at that point! All of the dogs had fancy garmin's on their necks, which made me slightly jealous. Perhaps I could start a new fad with necklace garmins?

Pictured: Actually the whakatikei river, but not us.

Anyway, eventually we slipped and slid our way down to the Whakatikei River, and after 1.5 hours we entered the water. What ensued was 4.5hrs of wading, rockhopping and swimming down the river. Casper had some good fun with his new waterproof camera,trying it out on us and the few eels we encountered enroute. (I haven't got the photos off him, as apparent by the lack of them here)

Being the wimp that I am, I tried to avoid having to swim, mainly so I could keep relatively warm. However, after 4 hours in the river, the final gorge left no option but to brave the chance of large deep water eels and swim. I once again showed my swimming prowess, almost catching Casper up. This was, however, at the expense of any energy left in my muscles. Not to worry, the end was just around the corner, and with it a chance to collapse and warm up in the sun.

Pictured: "feed me!"

So all in all a good start to the year, got to love summer and the adventures that come with it! What missions has anyone else been on lately? Anyone?

Back to Basics

2010-12-12T13:52:00.002+13:00

Whilst organising training for the national junior camp this week (wish me luck...) I've come across a fair few interesting sites. Here are the ones I can remember for the moment. Have a look, play around, and hopefully you'll come up with some fresh ideas for your own training.

It's always good to take a step back and remind yourself of the basics every now and then.

Forgotten some of the more obscure control descriptions and map symbols? try these quizes.

Some inspiring stuff, and some food for thought on what we may be doing right/wrong in NZ with our training approaches and structure, you'll find full presentations on "how to become a woc medal winner" and other talks given at a recent meeting of swedish coaches. Some good training ideas too, I like idea of the relay exercise set zigzagging over the road. Will have to try it sometime :)

For the complete o-geek in us, there's this article on how often and how long you should read your map. And how to analyse this! This is something I've often wondered about, as I feel that compared to the top girls in Europe anyway, I read my map far too much, or rather for too long. If you ever watch a video of the top orienteers in the world, you very rarely catch them more than glancing at their maps. So perhaps the way to go is more looks at the map, but for shorter periods of time. So does it then come down to training your eye speed, and how fast you can take in the map? Have a read of the article anyhow.

And finally, before i stop procrastinating and get back to last minute preperations for the camp, for anyone out there setting exercises and short of ideas. O-training.net will see you right

Course of the Year: Jukola, a kiwi perspective

2010-12-04T15:09:00.009+13:00

As some of you might have noticed, last week World of O named Jukola this year's course of the year

I was actually lucky enough to be in Finland for Jukola in June, having just run the first round of the Nordic Tour near Helsinki. And I have to admit, it was probably the best course I've run this year, it was definitely my best race in terms of placings anyway! So I've taken the liberty of sharing with all of you my course of the year; leg one of the Venla relay.

With the help of some handy contacts, Todd and I managed to set ourselves up with runs for the South Yorkshire club at Jukola. Which was neat, and meant that we got to wear snazzy tiger pattern tops. It also meant that I got the chance to run 1st leg for their 2nd women's team. Which i didn't mind in the least, I was stoked just to get a run! and in a mass start of 1100 women! eek!

So before I knew it, I was lining up in the biggest mass start I've ever seen (until I watched the Jukola start 7 hours later). Now I honestly don't know what the largest field I'd run in before was, but safe to say it was about 1/10th of the size of this field...and it wasn't a mass start. As South Yorkshire had never had a 2nd women's team before, we were unranked. Meaning that, lucky me, I got to start towards the back of the pack! 961st place to be exact. When the moment came to line up with our maps, all I could see was rows and rows of women in front of me, and a row and a row behind me!

Luckily for me, I was about 3rd from the end of the row. So when the gun went off, I grabbed my map from the line above my head, elbowed my way across to the side (you really do have to sharpen your elbows the night before these events!), and powered down the side of the mass start...like a tiger... yes, i went there.

The actual start triangle was a good 500m from the mass start, which enabled me to pass, well, more people than I've ever passed in a race before. From the triangle we entered the forest proper, and everyone had to kind of form lines to get through the passable bits of bush. I found that to pass the hundreds girls still ahead I had to hop out of line and bush bash my way through, lucky I'm used to NZ bush bashing!

After all the craziness of the start, I messed up the first control, hitting it too high, thinking the girls below me were heading to a different split. Little did I know at that point that there were actually only 2 first controls, so over 500 girls were heading to the same control as me! Number 2 I hit alright, but again, 3 was a mess, and I dropped over a minute.

After that, things calmed down a bit, and I found myself jumping from group to group as I worked my way up the field. By the long leg to 6 I was in a group of about 8 girls about the same pace as me, although I still felt a bit faster. Having said that, I was a little worried when I found myself leading the group to 7, did they realise this was my 4th day ever running in Finland? Would they follow quite so confidently if they knew? And with those thoughts in my head I hesitated and didn't hit 7 as cleanly as I'd have liked.

Turned out that didn't matter so much, as by 8 I was away from the group, I realised later I had a different split but I remember at the time running along and suddenly spotting my control to the right, whilst the others all kept going in a long line. So on to 9, where a familiar back popped out in front of me from the trees. After about 10s I realised it was Maja Alm. Well that's about when I realised I wasn't having such a bad race. And we stayed together until the last couple of controls...when my lack of experience with emit let me down and I couldn't get the freaking thing in the control!

Maja completely dominated me in the finish, but that's alright, as is obvious from the picture, i don't think I could have gone much faster down the chute... It wasn't until after we finished that I realised she was in the top ranked team. Must have been a bit of a sight to see teams 1 and 961 coming down the finish together! In the end I came in 36th, which I was stoked with, somehow I managed to pass 925 girls in the forest?! Not quite sure my 2nd leg runner was so stoked, she wasn't expecting me for a good 20mins!

So all in all a wicked experience, plus I got to watch Jukola proper, the men's race later in the night. (when it started raining and everything turned to mud...) A huge thanks to the south yorkshire crew for letting me run for them. And if you want more Kiwi views on Jukola, Todd O, Chris and Em, and Keith Agmen were also there!.

And finally, for those of you scared of bulls (as a number of us are in NZ, for a good reason), how about this for a last control?!

World Cup 2011 schedule

2010-11-23T10:38:00.002+13:00

As this blog seems to have missed the vast majority of 2010, perhaps its time to look forward towards the 2011 season. The World Cup schedule has been announced in the last few days, including a number of first across the line races, one of which being a knock out sprint. exciting stuff!

full details can be found on the IOF website here

And for the record, I'll try and post a few more things on the blog now that I'm well on the road to recovering from injury, and starting to think about proper training and competitions again!

Fornicator flashing up the rankings

2010-03-12T20:38:00.003+13:00

Check out Chris and Em's blog for the latest on the heroic story of the Fornicator vs the world of orienteering.

I couldn't help noticing though that Chris is looking more and more like Dazza 'the flash' Ashmore every time I see a picture...

What lies under these trees?

2010-03-12T20:25:00.001+13:00

What exactly does Nationals Sprint 2010 have install for us on the banks of the Clutha?

Training training training!

2010-02-15T22:19:00.001+13:00

Very comprehensive resource!

B4 Nu Years

2010-02-05T16:06:00.012+13:00

Things have been pretty quiet on here for a while, but that doesn't mean there hasn't been any orienteering going on! For me the last month and a half alone has included coaching on the national junior camp, the B4 Nu years events, the epic inaugral sprint the bays, national/d-squad camp and the jwoc trials. Sprint the Bays is definitely worth a write up, but i've been meaning to write about B4 Nu Years for a while, so here goes and if you're lucky (or unlucky) i'll get round to STB in a month or so!

SO between Christmas and New Years, Orienteering Taranaki hosted 7 events in and around New Plymouth in the B4NY tour. 6 of these were short park-o style events held over three days, culminating in the 7th race, the Turkey Traverse on New Years eve. The traverse connected all of the 6 previous maps in a 21km race from the mountain (almost) to the sea. And I have to say, aside from the curious use of text speak in the name, i thoroughly enjoyed these events!

The first day kicked off with an open course on Brother's Farm. Angela Simpson showed her intentions for the year with an outstanding outright win. 2nd place was Magnus Bengtsson, closely followed by Mark Lawson, who may have been just a bit tired from his mission around Lake Waikaremoana the day before! That afternoon we all moved on to Audrey Gale, where the courses consisted of open park running, seamlessly combined with jungle bush bashing.

The second day of races saw us once again relocate, this time to the magnificent Pukekura Park, home of the festival of the lights. For both races the start and finish were located in perhaps the best setiing for an event centre I have ever seen, with a massive semicircular bank providing seating for a couple of thousand people. Unfortunately for us, the rain was pretty settled in, and there were only 60 odd people at the event, so racers had to instead settle for an audience of a couple of hundred confused ducks. Both races at Pukekura park provided plenty of practice at public dodging, mud sliding and bush bashing. All in all, great fun!

spotted: one confused duck

Unfortunately for me, by the morning of the third day of races, i succombed to the stomach virus that had been eating away at me all week, and finally conceded that racing probably wasnt the best idea for me. (up until then my race technique was to roll out of the car 5mins before my start, and promptly collapse back in bed after finishing). So for the final two days my role was reduced to team photographer, which i thought i did a decent job of!

sarah gray succombs to some surprise photography Mark Lawson on Hoaketanga west

Anyway sob story aside, i can't say much about the 5th race, as i spent the entire time curled up in bed. However i did crawl out in the afternoon to watch and support the crew at Hoeketanga West. Of the 6 short courses, this was definitely the most sprint like, with Karl Dravitzki setting some good courses through the parks and complex building systems. Aside from the courses, the cloud finally cleared for the first time in the week, revealing that there is indeed a mountain in Taranaki!

New Years Eve dawned bright and sunny for the climax of the week, the Turkey Traverse. Having dropped the survivors of our group off at the start, Lisa and I went out to various points on the 20km course to support and photograph. It was great fun, and certainly a new perspective for me to see the race from a spectators view. It was great being able to see the gaps widen and close and positions switch over throughout the race, and then having to hear the full stories later from tired but excited competitors! In short, local boy Karl ran away with the win, with Mark Lawson finishing 8 minutes back. Greg Flyn, Angela Simpson and Magnus Bengtsson were running together for a large part of the course, before some costly mistakes and tiredness after the final map change split the trio up. Greg finishing 3rd followed by Magnus and Angela. An amazing race especially considering she is still a junior! full results can be found here

Magnus traversing like a turkey Tessa Ramsden traversing it up

With the main race over, all that remained to be done was to see in the New Year, or in my case collapse back in to bed and sleep of a stomach virus!

All in all, despite the sickness i thoroughly enjoyed the week. It was great fun to have a series of reasonably low key, social events which were very well organised and run by Orienteering Taranaki. A huge thanks to them, and also to Sarah Tessa Lisa and Magnus, for putting up with me all week. cheers guys!

2009 (unoffical) Rankings

2010-01-17T12:12:00.004+13:00

The 2009 'unoffical' Rankings have been completed, link here http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pkvOxodCJmjJng8BQvWB5ZQ&output=html At the top there are 3 sheets, the type sheets have been split into Long,Middle and Sprint, with differences from each

Orienteers at the Frontrunner Off Road Running series

2009-12-23T16:55:00.005+13:00

This series set up by Al Cory-Wright, has been happening for several years now. As it is pure off road running the events have typically been dominated by Orienteers. There is 3 events in the series, The first is a race up and down Mt Vernon - A brutal single track up a valley that gets steeper and steeper the closer you get to the top followed by a steep flat out decent that gets steeper and steeper the closer you get to the bottom. I find this one the toughest, there is no let up. The next from Taylors Mistake out to Godley head and back - Fast and flat, small hill at the Godley Head then flat along the top with a steep decent into Taylors Mistake. The final race is in Sumner - Flat hard run to end of the beach then up a steep hill, long hill up followed by a long down hill and a flat long straight at the end. Its no coincidence that Carsten and Marty Lukes have battled it out in the previous years. But this year it was time for some others to take over...

Carsten did himself some damage selling off his rocks on trademe and rendered his back too sore to compete in the series this time....All three events were won by a Temporary visitor from England, Mark Tucket. Tane Cambridge had to play second fiddle to Tucket and ended up a close second in the first two races and third place in the remaining race to take out second overall for the series. Lara Prince was out paced by a very quick triathlete who did very well and would have placed in the top ten in the mens grade. Lara ended up second overall in the women's grade. Tim Farrant screwed the system and managed to compete in the junior grade, completing a clean sweep of all the events to win probably his last Junior event...he even got all the competitors in his grade up for a photo (only thing is he didn't have any one with a camera to take a photo....). Junior Alistair Richardson was also second in the series to another Papo Orienteer Ryan Batin who completed a clean sweep of the under 16 grade. Ryan's Sister Rebecca also came second in the under 16 girls grade.

Full Results

The NZ Great Santa Run

2009-12-18T22:21:00.002+13:00

Forgive me for blowing my own trumpet but I am officially the fastest Santa in Christchurch. Just imagine a hot Nor-west day in Christchurch, putting on a 100% polyester Santa Suit and running around Hagley Park. Probably not a wise idea in dodgy Hagley Park on most occasions except... last Wednesday evening! Half of the entry fee went to Cure Kids so it was all in aid of a good cause, and plus we ran past the hospital so all the kids in Hospital got to cheer us on...well so they told us in the briefing...When I ran past in the lead going into the final straight they all had a good laugh!

There was a series of Santa runs all around NZ all co-ordinated to start at the same time. A few orienteering names popped up in the results. The best performed orienteers were those in Christchurch, Myself winning and Tim Farrant coming in third. It was a pretty cool event well worth doing for the extra heat and Sprint training!

HP Calender

2009-12-15T07:10:00.001+13:00

In the spirit of information and keeping things as transparent as possible a High Performance Calender including important events and selection dates has been released by the High Performance Director Carsten Jorgenson. The calender is here, and a link has been added to the links menu on left.

Rotoiti Training

2009-12-11T18:41:00.003+13:00

Show day down in Christchurch a month ago was a perfect excuse for a training weekend up in the Nelson Lakes, made all the more exciting by the Nelson OY on the famous Rotoiti Map on the Sunday.

Thursday night we headed up in some nice warm weather, camping in Deer Valley up by the Lewis Pass. Overnight it rained so our plans to cruise around the hills near by was quickly canned and instead we headed straight to St Arnard....where the sun was shining. Lara, myself and Tim had a race up and down Mt Vernon in Christchurch the Wednesday before so we were feeling a bit tired and a lot sore. Anyway we headed up to and unnamed peak which Georgia decided to name for her self on the St Arnard range. Then in some pretty strong wind cruised along the cool knife edge like ridge and down a spur that looked nice and enticing. Turns out there was a trap line down he spur so we smashed it and ourselves going hard down the steep slope pausing only briefly to do some yoga and allow the girls to catch up. Surprisingly only Joe and Myself were keen on getting in the lake at the end. It was a nice relief for my legs after a long run!

Next day it was Lara's mission to destroy us all. We headed up to Mt Robert Ski area and then back via a different track. Tim the hard man of the day decided run an extra 8 or so k's back to the bach (what us Southern South Islanders call a crib!). I took the opportunity to use the lake for some leg therapy once more and got attacked by two huge Swans who flew in to gate crash my little paddle in the water. Then while we all sat around and cooked dinner Lara took Matt out to smash him Mountain Biking in the evening.

So then came the Sunday, the day we were all looking forward too. Rotoiti. Its a special map like none other in NZ. Go fast and your likely to get smashed by girls...which turned out to be true for some of us. Smithson was very smooth and beat us all by a good margin, Matt stuck in there and only just beat that damn adventure racer Nathan Fa'avae...Lara was pretty close behind him and the rest are just not worth the embarrassment of mentioning!

NZ Orienteers Dominate Goat

2009-12-10T17:05:00.003+13:00

Just to clarify that title; the Goat is a mountain running race traversing the 22km of round the mountain track between Whakapapa and Turoa ski fields on Mt Ruapehu. Personally it's about my favourite mtn running race and being quite a rough track and requiring concentration the entire way, the race has proven to be popular with orienteers. Such was the case last weekend when around 490 runners lined up for the start, including over 10 current and former NZ (and adopted NZ) orienteers.

Having run the race last year in near perfect conditions, Rita Homes and I were hugely amused to be called out as 2nd and 3rd seeds respectively in the womens race. Turns out her seeding was well deserved, i still think mine was a bit of a joke...a lot of women from last year can't have been racing this year!

Unfortunately the week prior to the race had seen a fair amount of rain, leaving the single lane track perfect for the front runners to mulch up. I found the track slippery and treacherous in the 1st wave of starters, so i can only imagine how Tessa found it in the 4th wave! Despite my plan to stick with Rita for as much of the race as i could, i somewhat lost my gameface (see below article) in a pile of mud about 3km into the race. Once I found my feet again, i could just see Rita disappearing off into the distance! I spent the rest of the race watching Rebecca Smith's back gradually get further in front of me, and Greta Knarston staying a steady couple of hundred metres behind me.

Meanwhile, somewhere in front of me in the boys race, Tom Reynolds had decided after reading Jamie's version of our profiles that his gameface needed a little bit of work. This was successfully accomplished with a full face plant, landing on rocks (as opposed to the only other option of mud). Must have worked though, Tom one of many impressive results coming from orienteers:

Women:

2nd Piret Klade
4th Rita Homes
6th Rebecca Smith
8th Lizzie Ingham (2nd junior)
10th Greta Knarsten (3rd junior)
Tessa Ramsden (6th junior)

Men:

7th Karl Dravitzki
8th Dennis De Monchy
10th Bryn Davies
11th Tom Reynolds (2nd junior)
24th Jourdan Harvey (7th junior)

Also hard luck to Penzy Dinsdale, who busted both ankles early on in the race.

Forget Fornication

2009-12-02T13:07:00.003+13:00

It was only second this year at the World Adventure Racing Champs for the Fornicator, and I love this photo (stolen from Chris and Em's blog) of the man himself having given everything washed up on a strange beach in a strange land.

A belated congrats to the Adventure racers amongst us. Aaron and Brent ensured three out of the top four teams had NZ Osquad members guiding them around!You guys rule the world...now lets just sort out your priorities aye?

Lizzie and Tom

2009-12-02T09:40:00.004+13:00

Well they had the opportunity to introduce themselves, but declined to take it so I guess that gives me the opportunity.

Lizzie Ingham

For a long time the most ferocious Tom boy of New Zealand orienteering, far more ferocious than Tom himself, Lizzie has spent 2009 slipping out of adolesence, putting on her party dress and revealing her sense of humour to the elite scene. Indeed her dry wit recently led Darren Ashmore to comment "Lizzie is a crack-up", heady praise indeed from the man that has seen talented, and occasionally funny, young elites come and go over the last twenty years.

The question now is whether Lizzie can enjoy the finer things in life and still put her game face on when required. It is going to take a big effort to keep rivals such as Amber Morrison and Rita Holmes at bay, let alone to edge the more experienced elite women. Key race for Lizzie on 2010 - It has to be the Nationals Classic.

Lizzies game face - photo credit Rob Preston

Tom Reynolds

The most talented junior man since Karl Dravitski, Tom was in danger of falling vicitm to tall popply syndrome at a young age, but has since bulked up and like Ingham lost his game face to some degree. Call it the dangers of a balanced life. In the middle of medical school Tom is one of a cohort of young orienteering professionals coming through the ranks. His career is now likely to peak in 2023 when he finishes his specialist training programme.

In the meantime he has dabbled with adventure racing and now increasingly mountain running. Look forward to interesting and varied reports on outdoor activities from this correspondent.Key race in 2010: Nationals Middle.

The control beeped and Tom was startled - photo Martin Peat

Orienteering Achievement of 2009

2009-11-30T17:18:00.004+13:00

It's time to vote for what you think was the greatest orienteering achievement of 2009. Follow the link below to vote for your favourite, and be in the draw for a few prizes.

http://poll.worldofo.com/poll2009.html

Somehow The Fornicator was omitted from the list of finalists unfortunately.

Toi's Challenge

2009-11-17T11:19:00.003+13:00

James, Greta, Rebecca and I headed out to Toi's Challenge in Whakatane on the Sunday of the MTBO Champs. Toi's is an 18km trail run from Whakatane over to Ohope and back. It is also the first race of the 2009 North Island Mountain Running Triple Crown. We picked up our numbers and discovered Denis de Monchy was also running so a good crew of orienteers in the race. The race has a road bash to begin then the steepest climb up from the center of town. Includes stairs and some steep bits of trail. In my usual style I took off fast. Once on the steps I started drifting backwards and was impressed when Denis passed me to take 6th or 7th place. He was flying up the hill! The trail from here ducks and dives down to a bay, before climbing again after a little rock dodging. As a popped onto Ohope Beach I could see Denis in the distance and set about catching him. James was doing the same behind me. I managed to get past Denis on the next climb and set about finding a good rhythm for my failing legs. Meanwhile James was starting to take splits on the gap between the two of us. It hovered around a minute for the rest of the course. I came in 10th just over 90 mins with James 40 sec back in 12th. Denis held on to 15th about 2mins down on James. Rebecca ran a solid race and was held back at the end by some stitch. Not going to be drinking water before the last hill next time I think. She was a little disappointed to be 6th, but it was a classy field. Ex-mountain biker Annika Smail took the win in a very impressive fashion. Greta was pleased to finish and be alive. After competing in her first two MTBO races yesterday she was on the start pretty tired. Finishing in just over 2 hours was a good start to her month of running races. We're all looking forward to the Kauri Run next week (except James who is running the Kerikeri Half). Would be cool to have heaps of the national squad at the races, would be some very interesting battles.

NZ MTBO Champs 2009

2009-11-17T10:58:00.004+13:00

Anyone worth their salt in New Zealand mountain biking knows all about Rotorua. Whaka forest is one of New Zealand's best mountain biking locations. Trails like Corners, Huckleberry Hound, Split Enz or Tahuroto Ariki. A dry day on Rotorua trails is like a day in heaven for me. Saturday was one such dry day. The trails were dry without being dusty and we had a full day of mountain biking to enjoy it. I have neglected MTBO a little of late. An event last month at Rob and Marquita's was the first time I had ridden with a mapboard (not in an adventure race) for quite a while. The nature of the navigation means that it doesn't take too long to get back into it. I was very rusty at the start of the middle but got into in time for the sprint. The Whaka forest map has the added challenge of unidirectional tracks. The caught out a few people leading to big punishment for lapses of concentration. Saturday began with the middle. Starting up past Waipa Mill we had a course with not too much climb but plenty of route choice. In this race one bad route choice wouldn't ruin your race but it would cost you time. I was loving the trails and lifted my pace through the course. The race was looking close at the 3/4 mark with only 20seconds between me and Andrew Bott. The duel to the finish didn't eventuate with Andrew losing time on a a leg with a taped route option that also caught out Jamie. Marquita showed her absolute class and easily rode away with the women's race. Marquita in the middle. I couldn't resist the call of the forest so went and rode some of my favourite trails between the middle and the sprint. The forest was the best i've seen it for ages. The sprint was up near the old haro trail. This area has a really intricate track network, with heaps of junctions and lots of unidirectional portions. It was interesting to note the weaknesses and strengths of various riders. Nick Mead was quick through the singletrack but nav mistakes cost him a good result. Andrew Bott was the same. Jamie was looking good to challenge for the win only to make a mistake on number 8, a control that caught lots of people. I managed to get 8 right and pick the fast routes on the last loop to get a win. It turned out in the sprint that the longer road routes were faster, just too many corners and intersections on the trails to be able to keep enough speed. Marquita once again won, a big margin showing fast bike speed and spot on nav. I didn't race the long on sunday, I was racing Toi's Challenge. Andrew Bott grabbed the win in mens and Marquita made it three from three. Greg doing some sweet skids

Hawkes Bay Training Weekend

2009-11-16T15:49:00.001+13:00

Now that I've just about recovered from the stressfest that is the end of the university year, thought it was about time to give Tane a bit of a break and start contributing to the blog again.

So a week ago, the Wellington o-gang ventured up to Hawkes Bay for a weekend of adventure, sun-tanning, training, and in general to make the hb crew jealous of our awesome little training group and amazing skills. Todd Oates, Michael Wood and Jamie Stewart set up some exercises for a fun filled day of training on Smedley on the Saturday. (well, Todd and Jamie set their's on the day, but we'll forgive them so long as they bring amazing food to the next potluck). First up was Jamie's exercise, aiming at reading all the detail on the map, but keeping moving the entire time. After half an hour practically canyoning we got to Jamie's start (we could have taken the road around the gorge but where's the fun in that?) Every control in the exercise was a distinctive tree...on a hill side covered in literally 100's of mapped distinctive trees, and a fair few unmapped! Personally i found the exercis good, although i did hear a few grumbles about the multitude of trees. But reading the contours and other non-arboreal features it was possible to determine when you were at the right tree!

Once everyone had regrouped we progressed onto Todd's exercise, with the aim of being 'smooth'. Having found our way back across the gorge to Todd's start, the exercise then took us in a loop across a spur, and then through a series of controls back across the gorge again! The final leg of the exercise was a meaty route choice, although having been through the gorge a fair few times already, it was apparent that biting the bullet and taking the climb rather than the gorge option was optimal. Undeterred by this, i took up Rita's challenge of trying out the different route choices. This resulted in her beating me to the finish by 10 minutes whilst i tried to bush bash and rock climb my way out of the gorge!

After lunch we moved on to Michael's exercise. going in pairs, the leader would navigate a leg by memory, whilst their partner ran along behind with the map, memorising the next leg. As Michael intended, it was apparent from this just how much faster you can run when you have your route memorised and arent constantly checking the map! A real valuable exercise i thought, even if my legs were shot by the time we did it!

On the Sunday we ran the HBOC OY event on 'the Slump'. A few of us were a little apprehensive of the stroppy cows on this map, given previous experiences, however we all managed to escape unscathed. Despite all feeling rather tired from the full days training the day before, it's fair to say the wellington o-gang dominated the red-long and medium courses. Jamie Stewart and Penny Kane took out the Red Long wins whilst Nick Hann and Laura Robertson showed up the locals, winning Red-Medium.

All in all a thoroughly enjoyable weekend, hope there are more to come, and bring on wellington champs next weekend!

(I'll attach a map of the training when i find it...)

An attempt at writing something Interesting about TONIC 09...

2009-11-11T20:59:00.005+13:00

Its over a week since TONIC...thought maybe some of the North Islanders would be keen to write something up about it...but its exam time and Jamie apparently has a lot less free time these days...so here is a brief attempt by me to give a run down of the weekend.

Friday night, myself, Matt and Lara took the afternoon off work and flew up to Auckland to arrive in time to the Mini-multi-sprint event. Three intense short races in quick succession. First race was trickier than it looked and you were forced to orienteer straight from the word go. No easing our way into it, just blam, control, control control, finish. Next race was Mt Albert itself. Steep, short and a big(?) scale...which caught a few out. The third was probably a more traditional type of sprint race, lots of buildings fast running and quick decisions with a little longer to sort yourself out. Darren dominated winning by 20 seconds over three races, I was second and local boy Gene Beveridge showing out in 3rd place. The women's grade was cleaned up by three speedy juniors, Angela Simpson, Laura Robertson and Kate Morrison in that order.

Then after buying some over priced Albany apples it was off to Woodhill for day two. Middle distance race with no tracks on the map...not sure what the planner was up to here but it wasnt too hard to switch of the tracks in my mind as well as the map. Jamie showed that he still had it in him and finished in second (Smithson was unofficial due to doing the 1st 3 controls of course two before starting...) Darren dominated again and James Bradshaw jumped into the mix. Lara Prince with lots of orienteering under her belt in the previous few weeks showed the North Islanders how to navigate in their there own forest. Lizzie Ingham was second and Rebecca Smith third.

The evening was preceded by a meal at a Muriwai Golf course with some rather stressed and under prepared kitchen staff running around pulling their hair out...what was there tasted good anyway... Then the big race the Halloween special night event. I believe Duncan Morrison was victorious beating Greg Flynn who decided half way through to start taking it seriously...Batman had all the light in the world but lots of trouble seeing through his mask...

Finally the weekend was wrapped up with the Long Distance race in and around the infamous Maze area at Woodhill. A varied course with some interesting sand dune features and some mysterious areas was once again dominated by Darren, Second was James with Myself making up the "best of the rest" in third. The W21E grade was just a complete reverse of the top three from the day before!

Some nice orienteering in a nice area...think I'm starting to get a hang of these sand dunes....or else I'm just beginning to get like everyone in Auckland and Im starting to get to know the area quite well....Stand out performer in the weekend was Gene Beveridge, keeping the current crop of elites on their toes!

Seven kinds of Prickly

2009-11-03T21:47:00.004+13:00

Orienteering at Labour Weekend this year was held down in the deep South...and although some of those pansy North Islanders (Mark Lawson excluded!) decided it was too far to come down and had their own crappy OY's in cutty grass filled sand dunes... the 3 awesome events went off without a hitch.

Saturday Afternoon, Otago University/Polytechnic. Fast, Intense urban sprint. Carsten blasted around the course to win the M21E grade, only to be beaten unofficially by the mapper (yours truly....) by 3 seconds. 4th Place getter from JWOC 2008, Anna Forsberg from Sweden took out the women's grade.

After a feast of a few slices of pizza on Saturday night it was off down to Gabriels Gully in the small town of Lawrence. Carsten had finished this map just in time for this event, and the map didnt disappoint. It was a really cool little area except for the massive ammounts of green shit. There was just about every type of green prickly stuff you could think of excluding matagouri, cutty grass and Spaniards. I ran first and got very frustrated blazing a trail through the sticky prickly bush and ended up at the head of the pack a few seconds in front of Matt Scott. Mark Lawson was just a few seconds behind that. Anna again took out the womens grade just ahead of Lara Prince. It was the kind of map that Chris Forne would just eat for breakfast! Very frustrating but very fun...especially when you win!

The end of the good weather came on Monday at Cuttance Block, opposite the airport in Dunedin. The map has recently had an extension and the addition has just made this awesome map ten times better. Carsten was dominant in the wet and steep conditions, with Matt finishing close behind. Anna completed a clean sweep of the weekend beating everyone on course two including the M20 winner by 20 seconds.

Overall an excellent weekend of Orienteering down in the South. Would have been better had there been a good number of elites turn up but obviously it was bad timing with exams for most of the juniors falling in and around the same time of the year....but such is life!

Map

Results

Chilling out with the Southerly Storm

2009-10-13T20:50:00.003+13:00

Christchurch the home to New Zealand's best orienteer has had a strong group of regular Orienteers, with regular Pack Runs and regular O-Training for many years now.

The Famous Wednesday Night run started out as a women's training run but quickly the boys worked out it was a pretty cool idea and started coming along. Now going for many years are the usuals of Matt and Lara, Myself, Tim Farrant and Georgia. Then there's the extra non orienteers that keep us all real like Calvin and Boyd. Sometimes when the run is from Sign of the Takahe Andy J will bless us with his presence. These runs are really good for the motivation especially in the depths of winter on a dark, cold and wet night.

Then there is the training usually on Thursday nights after work/uni/school/sitting in front of a computer reading orienteering blogs all day long. Jenni keeps us all busy organising us to organise training. Everyone has a turn, and there's lots of variety.

Just lately Carsten has started up regular weekly interval trainings so us Southerly Stormers will start carving it up with our sheer speed...to become a dominant force at these Turkey traverse and Sprint the bay events coming up.

Last weekend there was a group of us who braved the cold weather and waded through thigh deep snow to the top of Mt Oxford. The weekend before it was out into the hills on the Port Hills...and this weekend who knows its only Tuesday but Im sure Bloomberg who has found his mojo again will have some ideas.

Recently we held our regular fund-raiser, the Night Nav. Which involved putting controls out, untangling Kaia's kite, handing out maps, gorging on fish and chips, then running again feeling a little quezzy.

Right better get ready for this Rogaine tomorrow, the first of three!

Hangin with the O gang

2009-10-12T22:25:00.003+13:00

I have been promising for a while to ramble on about the developing O scene in Wellington, and after another great Monday night run with the dudes I'm feeling inspired, so here goes...

Wellington has always been an elite orienteering backwater. The terrain is average, and there are too many other adventure, and other temptations in the capital city. It has almost rivalled Otago University as a spoiler of talented young orienteers. A place where people go and have careers and do a bit of running.

For some reason though, this year has been different. Its probably numbers. There is the focused troika of young elite women: Sarah Gray, Lizzie Ingham and Tessa Ramsden, who when they are not designing orienteering board games, thinking of new names for our Super Series team or looking at foreign orienteering boys on the internet, plan us training and get us out running. There's Magnus and Lisa, who both hate orienteering with a vengence but keep coming back. There's Todd back from Europe, the Super talented Robinsons, Ramash - NZ's only orienteering Taranaki Bogan of Indian descent, The young guns, Jamie Brigham Watson, and Nick Hahn, Marvellous Mike Wood and the list goes on .... add in a few resurgent or crapped out elites like Bill Edwards, Jason Markham and the Kanewarts and there is almost depth. Bryn and Piret won't know whats hit them when they get back to town this summer.

But what do we do? Well eat mainly, garlic bread and ice cream. The potluck standard needs to be lifted! Next week at Lizzies lift your game people. We run on Mondays, some of us also run on Thursdays with a wider group of rogainers/runners/adventure racers. We plan trainings, and we try to encourage the youth of today. Probably most importantly we get fit. There is nothing better for your motivation as a group, and I am hugely impressed by some of the improvement in many of our groups base endurance in the last six months.

What have we got coming up? Well there is the road trip to TONIC, a seat or two still available at this stage, a training weekend in the Hawkes Bay, 7/8 November, all fit bastards welcome, and then there is Wellington Champs where we will be trying to smash each other into the ground and run a sprint race at the same time! Choice. How about some updates on what else is going on around the country....

World Masters 2009

2009-10-10T11:57:00.002+13:00

Australia is where all the Orienteering is happening at the moment. Schools team is just back, the Aussie nationals was last weekend and this weekend World Masters kicks off. A few NZers (including Irish, Danish and US citizens by origin) are all ready to race this afternoon in the Sprint Qualification.

From Jenni: Carsten is already there and has so far done the Canberra two days, in which he was beaten into second place by Bill Edwards on the first day but managed to have a convincing win on the second day.

In Carsten's words: it was pretty fast terrain - just race along on the compass and after "bom" on the first two controls I got my compass out and it all went well the rest of the way.

Swing dancing proven as beneficial to orienteering performance...

2009-10-10T11:53:00.001+13:00

Canterbury Champs 2009

2009-10-04T20:59:00.004+13:00

Been a week since the Canterbury Champs. For me personally it was a weekend of lots of fast running in what turned out to be the wrong direction...The weekend was basically a re-run of the Kairaki/Cragieburn maps at Oceania.

Kairaki beach was really intensely vague sand dunes. The large majority of the elite fields made horrendous mistakes. The map and courses gave little room for error and most were punished accordingly. So Carsten was left to mop up the M21E grade, closely followed by the Sneaky Michael Smithson and Greg Flynn. Georgia Whitla took out the W21E grade, 6mins ahead of Claire Paterson and still running around was a fairly pregnant Jenni Adams in third.

Cragieburn was as cool as it was the first time round. A map that requires a hundred percent concentration 100% of the time. This time round instead of intense heat as for Oceania it was extremely cold (So cold that it threatened to call off this event). The bad weather never eventuated to the extent that was forecast, but none the less there was the odd patch of snow here and there in the higher parts of the map. Jason Markham who mispunched on Day 1 cleaned up the competition, minimising on mistakes and out running all those who dared challenge him. Sneaky Smithson who claimed to be slow, unfit and injured the week before snuck into his second second place, followed by Matt Scott. In the elite womens grade there was not much competition for Georgia and She won by 55mins. Maybe she should have run in the mens grade, cause she would have been close to beating a Junior boy(or boys) who shall remain nameless....for both my safety and their own!

Another solid weekend of Orienteering under the belt, bring on the South Island Champs in 3 weeks time. Will be a big field of internationals at these events as WMOC finishes the weekend beforehand. Entries close on the 9th of October....I think?

Cragieburn

The Last Cambridge

2009-09-30T18:21:00.001+13:00

Nice article in the ODT.Its possible they are saving the best for last.

Aussie schools champs

2009-09-30T09:25:00.005+13:00

Looks like our future elites are again dominating the aussies on their own turf. Some impressive results in the Australian schools individual champs yesterday, held near Bendigo, Victoria:

Liam Paterson 3rd Junior Boys

Lauren Turner 4th Junior Girls

Gene Beveridge 3rd Senior Boys

Angela Simpson 1st Senior Girls

Laura Robertson 3rd Senior Girls

Selena Metherell 4th Senior Girls

Sounds like the results were pretty close in the fast open terrain, in particular, Angela took out Senior Girls by 1 second ahead of Belinda Lawford!

full results can now be found on winsplits

NZ are nicely ahead in the southern cross challenge heading into todays relay, on similar terrain.

Compression Socks

2009-09-28T20:32:00.004+13:00

Personally I'm a big fan of compression for recovery. I think that for me it makes a difference to my recovery. A couple of months before JWOC my coach suggested that I try out some compression socks to help my lower legs with recovery since I was having trouble with my shins at the time. I cannot speak highly enough of them, I don't know if its placebo or what but I feel like my legs feel fresher after a run with the socks on. I don't race without them now, sure I look like a gimp in knee high white socks, but that's a small price to pay. . I had a wee look to see if there was much research to back this up. I found one paper that found running performance at anaerobic and aerobic thresholds was improved using compression socks. Another paper I found showed a reduction in markers of muscle damage following a series of athletic tests while wearing compression tights. . A remarkably small amount of research about it. I have read some on the AIS website in the past but it hasn't let me in today. I think, be it placebo or not, compression has a place in maximising the performance of runners. I think at orienteering in New Zealand we don't acknowledge the toll that running at speed on uneven ground takes on our legs. For me this is one of my efforts to reduce that damage and hasten recovery.

Beautilful Hills at Auckland Champs

2009-09-27T17:18:00.003+13:00

Last weekend we had the Auckland Champs up here. Day 1 and Day 2 were very different. Day 1 started with a loop in the native area North of Inland Road. The middle of the course was flat out with lots of track. The last loop to finish off the course was my favourite. I have scanned it in at the bottom of the post. It was low pine trees, much younger than Spaghetti Soup, with not too much cutty grass. Was quite similar to the green area from the Celebre map. Out of the elites, most of us managed to hash at least one of the native controls, and it was this final loop that made the difference in the end. 16 caught out Jason Markham, who had been leading at that point. 18 caught a few; difficult to get a nice attack point and very easy to drift past it into the broad re entrant beyond. My route through this part of the map aimed to keep my speed high for as much of the leg as possible before using a big feature to prompt me to slow down. It worked pretty well, except on 18 where I lacked a strong feature and slowed it down to micro navigate. The course was definitely not boring, I really liked having to use very different techniques throughout the course. Probably very very different from Canterbury Champs this weekend

What the stick guy reckons

2009-09-22T19:44:00.003+12:00

What should happen to the WOC relay results? Read what the guy who ran into a stick reckons (for what it is worth I agree - the results should be voided they are meaningless).

Beautiful Hills

2009-09-22T19:38:00.003+12:00

The famous Beautiful Hill's got another run in the weekend. First used for the World Cup in 94 this map has seen much glory and even more despair. In the latest edition the star was Thomas Reynolds, showing a clean pair of heels to the field. Check out the map here, and go on people get those routes up on the gadget!

Ross

2009-09-22T19:22:00.002+12:00

Great post by Ross on his recent training week in Trondheim. Ross and Chris are going to be lethal at WOC next year, who is going to be the 3rd wheel on the relay team?

Ongoing goings on

2009-09-14T22:49:00.005+12:00

So all has been quiet on the Western Front as we have been having some internal discussions behind closed doors on the future of High Performance in NZ. Its good to hear some positive opinions/ideas being expressed. It would be good to hear a few more so don't be afraid to have your say, its your National Squad...but I guess it comes down to how much time one wants to use/(waste?) on such matters....

Next weekend the Auckland Champs starts up with only half of Auckland rumoured to be turning up (and me), the following weekend the Schools Team is off to Aussie. The same weekend is the Canterbury Champs on that crazy Cragieburn Map. Then onwards to World Masters, SI champs and Tonic! So its all starting to warm up to a nice little pre-season prior for next years exciting new and rumoured to be improved Super Series!

Also I managed to find myself one of these Job things, so it may be a while before you hear from me again....

World of O - WOC2010

2009-09-07T08:50:00.002+12:00

It looks like the focus of the international orienteering community has switched suddenly to Trondheim, and the best elites in the world are now trampling madly over each other to get to grips with this challenging terrain. The World of O has some great coverage and particularly maps...

World Games Middle

2009-09-06T17:26:00.007+12:00

Ages ago one or more people asked me to run through (no pun intended) my experiences and races at world games. So, now that all the excitement's over, and many of you have forgotten that world games ever happened, i've finally got around to writing about my middle race. Thought i'd choose the middle race to put up here as it was, mentally atleast, a better race for me than the sprint, and marginally less of a straight running race than the middle. Actually, the decision was pretty arbitrary...

Being one of the lower ranked competitors in the field, i managed to draw the 4th start in both the middle and sprint. This meant that i was always on the first bus out to the event, not such a great thing in the intense heat...and also not such a great thing as the bus drivers didnt quite know where they were taking us! So my middle experience started with an hour and a half lying under the trees in the prestart as the buses were timed ridiculously early. Having got myself in racing mindframe, proceeded to the start arena. I spent the last minutes before the start scraping mud and clay off the bottom of my shoes as they were clogged up before even starting!

So pick up the map and off down the start chute. immediately see route choice to 1. left choice looks slower so i take middle road to 2nd junction then cut through green stripes and white and through to control. clean, nice. two downers: firstly as firstish start cutting through is bit slower, although already theres a bit of atrack, secondly, didnt see track to right which prob was way faster. still im happy to get no.1 cleanly which has been a problem in the past.

2 is a short leg, up and over. then 3 routechoice, we'd kinda figured they'd give us a routechoice over the zigzag path. looks pretty even to me so i make decision to take the zigzag and just go for it. About this point i realise that despite my careful preperation, i have a song stuck inmy head. and not any old song, but the world games theme tune that was playing over and over at the start...and its in taiwanese so i dont even know what im singing!! anyway... 4. make my way through the little paths, control is sneakily hidden away in the tiers of garden, but i spot it pretty quick :P

out of 4 and i do a double take as i notice a patch of olive green on map right where i am, so i turn around and go round it like a good girl...betting 90% of the field went straight though it... anway pick and weave my way through paths then get shoes soaked from the water logged grass round 5. up the hill to 6, legs starting to feel it from sprint the day before... back the way i came to 7, giving me a little time to read ahead. same with 8.

mistime my jump coming out of 8 and run straight into fence, right infront of a roaming patrol of policemen, they laugh, i hurt. straight through to 9, then i make a complete mess of my exit. If there's one thing i learn here its not to bother trying to cut corners,just stay on the track...actually i dont learn this cos i make the same mistake later! according to the gps replay i then decide to cool off and swim across to 10...really i hurdle the hedge and up the spur. back down my track from no1 and in, nice. have trouble with a wall thats a little high to jump on way to 11. eventually overcome my height issues by going around it. must admit i walk a bit up hill...so hot...so tired. and down the hill to spectator control, flip map over whilst running across carpark, almost die when i see 2nd half... also spectator control is real hard to spot! luckily clem is there with water, he isnt hard to spot :)

second half of course has a lot more straight running in it. not good as 1st half was like a sprint course and i prob expended more energy than i should have on it! so yeah 12-13 is a long (or feels long) path run, so so tempted to walk but no i did not come this far to walk, so somehow find a way to keep going! more road running to 14, cut the corner through funny shin high grass stuff. Decide to just go for it over the stony ground to 15 instead of tiptoeing along the paths, same across to 16.

up to road from 16, bump into another roaming patrol of 10 or so policemen. dont think they were the same as at 8. if so im running real slow...(or theyve got cars). Into the jungle for 17 and 18, vines everywhere (if i remember correctly) just like the wellington bush :) decide it isnt worth going down to path 17-18 so contour it, hit it fine. then hurdle the stream and ditch and guts it up the hill to 19, and back down to 20, do my best to smile at the camera, but probably comes out as a grimace.

halfway through the road run 20-21 it occurs to me that im actually going to finish this course, so i somehow manage to up the pace (i was in self preservation mode up til now). Another guts up the hill to the control. mind is gone with the heat so for some reason bash through tennis court rather than taking path. however do remember to take it carefully into 22, which alot of people forgot to and lost time on. so happy there. still, didnt hit it 100% cleanly. THen bush bash it out to 23 and into the finish chute, i try to put a sprint on, but die instead. Still, having started 4th I'm the leader at the finish which is awesome...until hanny comes in a couple of minutes later and smashes my (and everyone elses) time!!

And the rest of the day is consumed with trying to cool down (icepack down bra is a proven effective method) and then watching everyone else race ! :) Overall world games was the most amazing trip i've been on. the terrain was certainly different, if not entirely suited to my strengths. But i've come away determined to improve my running speed and encouraged that i can foot it with the best in the world!

Onwards and Upwards

2009-09-03T10:56:00.003+12:00

WOC is over, JWOC is over, the analysis has been done. Some have had a break, some have just started having a break and now its probably time to start thinking about where to from here?

So where do you want to go? What do you want to achieve? You need some goals...or if you have already got some you need to re-evaluate. If you dont already know how to set goals then here's a website that might help you. The key things to think about when setting a goal is to make sure it is: Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevent, Time-framed.

Bad example of a goal: "Win Nationals next year"

Good example: "To be M21E National Champion in the Middle Distance at the NZ Nationals 2010"

And remember...

“Goals that are not written down are just wishes.”

Ross: Sprint Final

2009-09-02T07:58:00.000+12:00

An Em's Eye View of WOC

2009-09-02T07:46:00.003+12:00

I enjoyed the post and picture's on Chris and Em's blog. Although Im surprised living in Trondheim she didnt mention anything about setting up a campsite in her lounge for visiting kiwi orienteers...Ross has also posted all his maps

Why we dont have a hottest elite man poll...

2009-09-01T22:44:00.002+12:00

Because nearing 40, the Flash still has it going on...

Race Analysis

2009-08-27T23:42:00.003+12:00

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

2009-08-27T08:28:00.003+12:00

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

2009-08-26T16:37:00.002+12:00

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

Reaction to the WOC 09 Relay

2009-08-26T16:09:00.002+12:00

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

2009-08-24T17:47:00.002+12:00

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???

2009-08-24T17:19:00.003+12:00

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

2009-08-24T06:57:00.002+12:00

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

Tribal Sports

2009-08-22T17:00:00.007+12:00

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

2009-08-21T07:45:00.008+12:00

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

2009-08-20T21:59:00.003+12:00

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

2009-08-20T20:07:00.013+12:00

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

2009-08-19T10:01:00.002+12:00

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

2009-08-18T08:04:00.002+12:00

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

2009-08-17T14:02:00.004+12:00

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

2009-08-17T10:44:00.001+12:00

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

WOC - Middle Qual

2009-08-17T07:03:00.006+12:00

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

2009-08-16T07:58:00.012+12:00

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

2009-08-15T08:47:00.018+12:00

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

Get2Go

2009-08-15T08:27:00.001+12:00

The Get2Go series co-ordianted by our own Darren Ashmore on behalf of his employer the OPC, has been a huge success in getting kids out there...Good to see JWOC representative Andrew Peat out there as well lending a hand.

WOC - final training camp day 4

2009-08-14T07:53:00.004+12:00

Not much to report today, most of us were having a final hit out, that was on Olasz-kapu, it was another longish drive up through a semi-close nature park, by semi closed it meant we had to pay to drive in. Also having the full team meant someone was in the boot, Bryn drew the short straw on the way there and thankfully I managed to hitch a lift back with the Danes (wasn’t too much of a problem to organise, considering our entire support crew is Danish). This map was a bit older and Chris found lots to scrutinise, it was also mapped rockier but didn’t seem that different to the other places we have been. Again visibility was good, and the biggest help is just looking around and using the obvious features. This afternoon we moved in to our official WOC accommodation, in the Uni Hotel, its much nicer than anywhere else I’ve stayed for a NZ representative trip. We also had our first ‘serious’ team talk with Koach Kenneth, about the competitions and oing, it was good as he put some pretty straight forward, common sense stuff on the table, which I’ve never had come from a coach before, and made some good points about certain techniques for certain controls (don’t want to give to much away...)

(Typical forest, photo stolen from an Irish, but he owes me money so its ok)

Its really starting to feel like WOC is here, we have our accreditation IDs and final bulletin packs and the team seems relaxed and comfortable and I’m getting amped, just the way I like it.

WOC - final training camp day 3

2009-08-13T09:11:00.003+12:00

Day 3 in Miskolc and again it looked like it was going to be a scorcher, but was just a mild 28 degrees in the end. There was some set training on a map next door to the Long Distance area, in Slovakia in the afternoon, so I took off in the morning and did some o intervals on Hollóstető, wanting to get a good final speed session in. I did 2 sets, C+D and again had some problems with the ‘40cm’ high stakes, which were mostly about 4cm high, and also with the vegetation. The distinctive boundaries are hard to see, there is a vegetation difference but I have not been able to spot the boundaries or the distinctive trees for that matter, and again the charcoal burning places shouldn’t even be mapped. I also got re-acquainted with Hungarian stinging nettles, they are not too bad but from 01 and today, any clearing is full of them. But on the positive side visibility is good and if it is not too rocky it is fast (super fast, winning times are at 5min/km).

In the afternoon, after a 2 hour drive into Slovakia, in a rental car not permitted out of Hungary, and with Chris having a small panic attack near the border after we told him he needed his passport which he left behind (all EU so of course no border control) we made it to a map called Torzó, that was mainly the karst depression terrain. The long boys went out for a mission, working out if there were any faster route., Bryn was successful, he worked out not getting lost is way faster. The routes on the map show the choices between Ross and Chris, Ross had some problems in rocky slopes (where the pen is) and also in the green where the track did not exist, but still thinks Chris’ way is faster. All in all its much of a muchness as to picking as straight as line as possible through the depressions and staying on it.

Kenneth arrived tonight so we are now the complete WOC09 NZ team, and are also making some news stories since we have Kenneth as our coach, for those that don’t know, he is the full time coach of Halden SK, one of the best clubs in Norway (and Scandi), http://www.orienteering.is/halden-coach-leading-team-new-zealand.4617848.htm l . Tomorrow we move into the offical WOC accommidation, Me and Bryn are hoping the beds are just as good in the building next door (where we are moving) as both think they are the best things we have slept on in ages, and in a student hostel in the back blocks of Hungary of all places, go figure....

And check out Ross's muscles...

2009-08-13T09:08:00.002+12:00

In this article on a Norwegian website featuring Kenneth Buch's involvement with our WOC team. Also just realised Ross has a great blog on the world games experiences. I especially like the references to icing ones scrotum and old fogies...

Forne Tilting at 3rd World Title

2009-08-13T08:54:00.004+12:00

Well if anyone can win a World title in adventure racing, rogaining and orienteering, its going to be the Fornicator. Chris was recently the first Norwegian in a Norwegian 3 day, and third overall in the Swiss six day. On the eve of WOC Hungary I am excited about the results we might see from our teams. Alistair Landels position as New Zealand's best ever male performer at WOC is definitely under threat. Oh yeah then there is the rocketman as well. Ross Morrison, JK sprint winner, and top ten at the World Games!

Educational Video Part 1

2009-08-12T19:25:00.001+12:00

Classic NZ orienteering humour from the early 90's

OSQUAD

World Cup 2013/Oceania teaser

WOC Preview

Aus WOC Trials

Running Free...

O-Squad Blog - Jumping on the Train

NZ 2011 JWOCers

Sprint the Bay 2011 - postview

Sprint the Bay preview

Headcam and GPS fun

How confusing is this?!

Map Interpretation Skills

New Years Day Mission

Back to Basics

Course of the Year: Jukola, a kiwi perspective

World Cup 2011 schedule

Fornicator flashing up the rankings

What lies under these trees?

Training training training!

B4 Nu Years

2009 (unoffical) Rankings

Orienteers at the Frontrunner Off Road Running series

The NZ Great Santa Run

HP Calender

Rotoiti Training

NZ Orienteers Dominate Goat

Forget Fornication

Lizzie and Tom

Orienteering Achievement of 2009

Toi's Challenge

NZ MTBO Champs 2009

Hawkes Bay Training Weekend

An attempt at writing something Interesting about TONIC 09...

Seven kinds of Prickly

Chilling out with the Southerly Storm

Hangin with the O gang

World Masters 2009

Swing dancing proven as beneficial to orienteering performance...

Canterbury Champs 2009

The Last Cambridge

Aussie schools champs

Compression Socks

Beautilful Hills at Auckland Champs

What the stick guy reckons

Beautiful Hills

Ross

Ongoing goings on

World of O - WOC2010

World Games Middle

Onwards and Upwards

Ross: Sprint Final

An Em's Eye View of WOC

Why we dont have a hottest elite man poll...

Race Analysis

Orienteering and Facebook

JWOC 2012 - Slovakia

Reaction to the WOC 09 Relay

New Rankings

Primal Quest winners???

Amongst the Best in the World

Tribal Sports

WOC - Sprint Final - NZs best ever male result

WOC - Sprint Qual

WOC - Update

Go Wellington

WOC - Long Qual

Recent happenings

THREE 1-HOUR ROGAINES

WEDNESDAYs 2nd, 9th AND 16th SEPTEMBER

WALK/RUN OR MOUNTAIN BIKE

A FUNDRAISING EVENT FOR THE SOUTHERLY STORM ORIENTEERING SQUAD

Major Prizes and Spot Prizes Sponsored By: Bivouac Outdoor

Primal Quest Update

WOC - Middle Qual

WOC - Day 1

WOC - Day Zero

Get2Go

WOC - final training camp day 4

WOC - final training camp day 3

And check out Ross's muscles...

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