from James

An email from James, I'm also seeing emails flying around about a weekend training up that way a couple of weekends before Nationals, so keep an eye out for future announcements there...

Hello squaddies young and old,

I am planning the next d-squad camp immediately following nationals, starting monday 13th April - sunday 18th april. Obviously i would like the entire d-squad to attend, but would also like to open the invitation up to all national squad members that may want a good week long orienteering fix.

I will need some help with coaching (im envisiging about 5 coaches), so if you are able to help, it would be awesome to have you there.

The camp will be based in and around Auckland, and it is likely that we will be based at Kings College. At this stage i am planning on having one or two days down near Waiuku (as many of the squad have been there only a couple of times, or not at all), a few sessions focusing on sprint training around the city, and of course there will be a few days out in woodhill.

I am also going to invite about 8-10 up and coming juniors along to the camp as well, so it should be one big awesome camp with some kickass trianing and fun!

I am trying to get a clear idea on numbers etc..... so if you could please email me if you are keen to attend, or if you are likely to attend, but still a little unsure at the moment.

Sweet,

James

Mr McCarthy and the missus

these are chicken legs, not flea legs

Recent squaddie Andrew "flea legs" McCarthy is now residing in Singapore with his lovely fiancee Rachel, here is their blog for those that are interested...

http://mcthisty.blogspot.com/

Robbie

On the Squad PB topic, here's some an email sent through by one of my secret sources... "For Robbie I found:

http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1086075/1/index.htm

but didn't see a time for him. Interesting to compare 1972s underfunding with todays funding/selection gripes.

John Robinson 2:15:03.6 Christchurch 01 Dec 1973 (National champ) and John Robinson 25 km 1:20:31 1979 (NZ record)

ps my source now confesses he is unsure of whether any of the above are in fact in reference to the real John Robbie

I'm thinking Japanese

Why are the funny photos all of Brent?

Why are all the ridiculous photos of Brent? (any ridiculous photos of any squad member accepted for publication!).

Squad Email from Carsten

Attached is the information document about this coming weekends combined JWOC trials and SuperSeries. There will still be a couple of additions to the start list in the SuperSeries which might change the startlists a bit. It will be a challenging and great fun weekend! See you there!

Well, that's not all for this email, there is a few other things!

-> Updated World Games Selection Notice (Only the middle and the sprint at Nationals counts towards World Games Selection - and because of that the deadline for making yourself available has been extended (the ones that has already made themselves available doesn't need to do it again)). The new Selection notice is also attached - have a look!

-> IOF Elite Events programme - survey

I would like to encourage those who have competed overseas in the last 5-10 years to complete the survey. This is mostly about the senior program and maybe not relevant for the juniors except if you have competed at World Cups type competitions and upwards.

Here are the words we have received from the IOF:

Please forward this message to your coaches, officials and athletes – anyone who might have interest.

The IOF is currently conducting a project in order to evaluate various aspects of the Elite Events programme in foot orienteering and in particular the World Orienteering Championships. As part of the project, we are seeking the opinions of different target groups in a number of questions relating to the EE programme. We are asking for your opinion, and would be grateful if you could give us a minute to complete the questionnaire and if you could spread this message to your orienteering colleagues.

For the investigation, we are using a web service hosted by SurveyMonkey. Please click the following link to take the survey:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=X5TyWnkzwbqQ_2fzywAjdKLg_3d_3d

Thanks for your cooperation; your view is important to us!

The EEE project group: Edmond Szechenyi, Emil Wingstedt, Konrad Becker, Björn Persson (coordinator)

The survey is very much centred around WOC and World Cup, but it also leaves room for commenting on other stuff like what effects the new elite program has had on your region/country! Please fill it out if you have been overseas competing at high level events - we want our views to be heard. NZOF together with Orienteering Australia has been working hard on getting World Champs back to every second year to be able to better support our athletes financially and make it easier for athletes to earn enough money to fill the gap between the funding and the real cost!

-> World Cup 2009 Bulletins available on IOF's homepage.... http://www.orienteering.org/i3/index.php?/iof2006/events/foot_orienteering/w orld_cup

And here is the selection notice:

Selection Announcement: WORLD CUP EVENTS – ROUNDS 1-4

June 9th and 10th 2009, Salo, Finland, June 26th and 27th 2009, Fossum, Norway

Interested athletes are invited to nominate themselves for selection to run in the first round of the 2009 World Cup Series. Nomination must be made to the Convenor of Selectors, Marquita Gelderman by February 28th 2009. Selection will be based on all known recent form and team announcement will be made by 31 March 2009. Marquita Gelderman, Convenor of Selectors. Yep this is all for this monster of an email!!

All the best with competing, training and everything!

See you out there!

Ross is Sick

...but not too badly it seems, he can still run a heinously long flat event on something resembling Leithfield Beach. Check out his blog. And (I click) the lucky bugger is going to that training camp in Spain mentioned in the last posting.

Keep on that compass boy!

Training Camp in Spain

Just stumbled over this, training camp in Spain in February. Too late for us to go of course, just thought it would be worth thinking about as an alternative format for a summer carnival, who needs all those races, as opposed to some quality training, some fun times and a WRE to cap it off...