What Orienteers get up to with Giraffes and Camels

It just appeared on facebook....

The Rocketman tells us where to go....

Late last night, I emailled Ross asking him if he could write something up for us...this morning I woke up to a mail in my inbox. Great for someone to just get something done and help us out...you're a legend Ross, go hard into the winter my little furry friend!

No sweat!

You guys can all check out my blog at http://mapross.blogspot.com/ , most of my maps from the camp are on there (mistakes and all!). I guess I'll just do a brief spiel about the different terrains as some of you guys will be targeting different races for WOC next year.

Sprint: This will be my main target for next year. Like the sprints I did at the camp, the WOC sprints will supposedly be set in the same fashion. Starting in steepish forest and coming down to finish in either a park, zoo or town type terrain. This is the map for both the qual and final of the sprint. The zoo part is on the southern part of the map across the road. I am not 100% sure if they will use that because that road is quite busy, (and it looked pretty crappy when we drove past) The forest part of the course will generally be very open and fast, in nearly all of the legs it will be just a matter of going straight and hard. So you will need to be strong with your compass and direction changing out of controls. It is very important to be ahead of yourself on the map in this part of the course to get some flow going. There will mostly likely be one route choice leg in the forest area (possibly 2), so again being ahead on the map helps. If you have planned your route before you get to it you will save alot of time. However, in alot of sprint races done in nz in parks and campus style etc, the route choice is not so important, you usually save more time by making a quick decision (one way or the other) than you do by trying to work out which is the best way. But I think in hungary you should definitely make sure you pick the best route because there could be 10 to 20 seconds difference in it, and that can be the difference between coming in 5th place and qualifying well and coming 16th+ and missing out.

Ross in action in Sweden: Credit Paul Prudhoe

The second part of the course will be again quite technically easy, but you have to be aware of the changing terrain and to adjust your technique accordingly. There will be alot of chances to make small mistakes on this course. So my plan will be to run at 95% and have a clean run, rather than at 100% and risk making 30seconds of mistakes. Ofcourse apon making the final I will then be going 110% and risk winning! I think the best training you can do if you are targeting the sprint is to try and find a simliar map in NZ, or do seperate trainings in forest and park terrain. Do alot of terrain intervals and short hill intervals aswell (600m-1km).

Middle/Long qual: These will be on the same map As you can see its quite steep, so start getting in that hill training! This terrain is quite fast, and very open. The light green is also very runnable, but the darker greens are definitely worth avoiding. There are alot of weird negative features on these maps, so always be sure of what is up and what is down. Because alot of the hills are very broad you have to be able to use point features very well to know your height during the leg. It is very important not to do extra climb, or to lose too much height. The brown point features that look like nipple rings are called 'lime burning grounds' they are basically just a small flat area on the side of a massive hill. But they are quite obvious and can be very helpful. Some look like small depressions even. I recommend on some pre woc trainings to become well accustomed with these friendly features. There is alot of stony ground in this terrain, which you should avoid as much as possible. It is quite slow running, and an ankle buster. Alot of the big depressions have stony ground around the sides, so often it will be faster to go straight through the bottom and up the other side than to contour around the side.

Middle final/ Relay: These will both be run on the western part of this map: As you can see, quite steep again! This terrain is a bit more interesting than for the qual maps. Alot greener too, so route choice will come into play a bit more.

Long final: This is on a new map. It backs onto the map I trained on in slovakia called 'Silica L'adnica'. So Im guessing the terrain will be quite similar. They said at a lecture I went to on the camp that there is an abandoned city/town or something like that on the map. So it should be quite interesting.

The training camp I went on was in autumn, so there were alot of leaves on the ground and not so much on the trees. This means that at WOC time it will be the other way around. So running will be alot faster, and visibility will be slightly lower. It can apparently be very hot in Hungary in the summer. so be prepared if you're targeting long distance!

Hope this helps.

Love Ross

PS. Also look at the lecture on the website

Mmmm delicious: maps from Ross's blog

if you haven't checked out Ross's blog yet, its lovely and the link is out left there, otherwise go straight to this sprint map and critique his routes.

Elite Rankings Out.

Hey people, Greg has compilated the year end ranking lists again, thanks Greg awesome!

Big winners Karl and Thomas in the mens (I'll ignore the statistical anomaly of the Fornicator), with Lizzie the real star in the womens topping the rankings for the first time, closely followed by Greta. Will be awesome to see the rivalry between you two develop over the next few years! Makes me excited about the womens elite at Oceania, the young flyers facing up to the more experienced racers with particularly Tania and Penny returning after missing some big races!

See the womens here, and mens here.

Carstens latest email

Hi There All the Squad Stars!

Hope you're all good and training well and enjoying the nice warm weather that has been hanging around lately. This is a very short version of the normal emails I send out.

INOV8 First thing is INOV8 orders are received until and including Friday the 21st of Nov for handover at Oceania. $90.00 was the price for a pair last time and I believe it still is. Here's the link for the INOV8 homepage: http://www.inov-8.com/ - I'll need to know your shoe size and shoe model with your order.

COACH trainee at JUNIORcamp If you're interested in being a trainee coach at the coming JuniorCamp then please let me know straight away. There are up to 3 spots available and it is going to first in gets to go. The JuniorCamp is taking place at Scoutlands close to Wanganui on the 14th-19th of Dec. Further information at http://nzorienteering.com/

TRAININGCAMP after OCEANIA There is going to be a combined open D-squad NOS and Aussie training camp following the Oceania (the week afterwards) with trainings down and around Dunedin in the beginning and then ending up in Christchurch. James Bradshaw is coordinating.

SUPERSERIES 2009 Round 1 Oceania South Island (Oceania Champs events and a mass start at Naseby on sunday) Round 2 JWOC trials (PalmerstonNorth/Masterton) Waitangi Weekend Round 3 Nationals Auckland Round 4 QB 3days Central District

These are the 4 rounds in the SuperSeries 2009 and further information on the exact events and how many counts towards to overall and so fort will arrive in an inbox close to you.

Yeps, that was a short update - please get back to me with INOV8 orders and if in case you're interested in coaching and training at the JuniorCamp. And any other questions / feedback is also welcomed!

All the best with training and life!

Tane Mahuta Lord of the Forest

Squad Email

hey as acting squad cc, thought I better keep in touch. Has been awesome keeping an eye on you dudes over at the World Cup and JWOC in the last month or so. Its great to have you over there representing us all. I wrote this next bit a while ago,

"Lots going on recently. Ross and Bryn representing in Europe, great effort guys, and a real succesfull QB weekend final of the superseries, some great races, particularly that night sprint thanks to Carsten and Tessa and some interesting results. I am blown away by the talent that there is coming through at the moment, Lizzie, Tom and Scott to name a few that just get better and better. Keep it up people with hard training and cunning thoughts theres no shortage of people in our squads who could beat the best in the world.

A few psychological things I've been talking with people about recently:

I went for a run with Carsten the other day and we were discussing the attitutude necessary for success at WOC. We both agreed that an important approach was not to think of "peaking" at WOC at least not in a navigational sense. In WOC (or JWOC) you should be trying to cut out your normal performance not some mysterious super performance that people seem to dream of. This normal performance is the level that you perform at regularly during the super series and of course the key is doing all you can to make your normal performances as bloody brilliant as possible.

Perfect practice makes perfect. I remember reading about Nouredine Morcelli (a great runner a few years back) and how he cried when his training sessions didn't go well...it was so important to his performance to meet his goals in training. This is even more important in orienteering where habits and decision making are so important. Perfect decision making creates perfect decision making by encouraging the right pathways in the brain. Crappy decision making perpetuates crappy decision making. Don't ever forget this, there is a fine line between learning from your mistakes and continually suffering from them.

On this point. At the D Squad camp at Naseby a few weekends back I was thinking about the problem of how to coach "danger signals" into those speed demons that haven't yet mastered speed control. I experimented with running along behind someone, just stating one word "danger" whenever I thought there was a navigational issue that needed to be dealt with, they then had to explain what the issue was and how they were dealing with it. A variation on the old verbalisation exercise but focussed on specific decision making moments that you can think about, have a go with and adapt.

The "Zone". This damn mysterious zone thing, its a curse. As discussed with Tom recently...if you starting thinking "wow, I'm in the zone" during a race alarm bells should ring. Any zone that there may be can only ever be conceptualised in retrospect otherwise you're thinking about the wrong stuff.

Whats next: well heaps of you have wicked missions planned world cups/champs/university games....awesome!!! Go hard!

The others staying at home, well I'm still real keen to try and make the Squads Camp happen, maybe in Vegas around the weekend of the tough guy, which is 19/20 August see http://www.toughguyandgal.co.nz/ anyone interested in coordinating this get in touch with the Carsten.

Oh and I noticed some photos from the qb party at Ambers facebook page http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=579723174#/album.php?aid=27948&id=579723174&ref=mf Thanks to those that made an effort, great to do something at orienteering that didn't involve talking about sport, or shit talking or training or orienteering....gotta keep your mind open to different influences you never know it might somehow give you a competitive edge."

And yeah still looking for someone to organise a bit of a get together, physical training weekend in the north island when everyones back, if this persons you get in touch with me or Carsten.

And one other thing I was thinking of the other day is the need to have a real good plan or at least strategy for making the most of the post JWOC/WOC/big trip training time. Its way too easy to let a little rest turn into a big one, a few ideas to get you thinking

- have a recovery period training programme good to go before its needed - change tack a little bit, try and achieve something in one of your cross training sports, whether thats mtbing or whatever - keep that core strength through gym work or whatever it makes it much more pleasant getting back into training again. Awesome.

and by the way I can still run, started a race we stumbled upon in Singapore this evening and felt strong and sweaty. Looking forward to racing youse all again soon.

Take care

Jamie

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