Elite Orienteers Show Their Emotions

Just picking this up from the very good okansas blog.

Thierry and Simone article

Great article on Attackpoint. If you can't take me seriously promoting the benefits of catching features listen to Thierry, "I sometimes play 4 hours a day, sometimes less"!!

Heres an excerpt, a Tuesday training session and the importance of maps:

Those details have a lot to do with map exercises for Thierry and the gang in St. Etienne. The ice-cold Tuesday training session in the park Le Jardin des Plantes, just a stones throw from Thierrys house, is both impressive and a little odd.

Olivier Coupat runs the workout like a soccer coach, and on the track in the lower part of the park, 10 elite orienteers are doing bounding and strength exercises mixed with stretching. Even though were in France, land of freedom, your thoughts go unbidden to Eastern Europe -- not that that is necessarily a negative thing.

The runners are divided into three groups. One does bounding drills, another balance exercises and the third strength, in a circuit format. During each 15-second period per circuit, they have to look at a map, a detailed Norwegian map with a course on it. When they get to the strength station, Coupat is there with an assignment: If theres a stone at control number 2, without looking at the map again, the runners have to decide whether its to the left or right of the actual control point.

We dont have so much detailed terrain here around St. Etienne so this is good for learning to read many details around the circle, explains Gueorgiou.

To keep up to the Scandinavians and Swiss we must be better than them technically. Therefore the map is almost always present in some way in our training, says Olivier Coupat.

Party at Oceania's

Think we need a squad get together at Oceanias. So the day is the 7th after the Classic. Venue: Jamies parents house next to Avalanche Creek. If people are up to it we'll meet there say maybe 4pm, then the BYO BBQ/Party will begin maybe six.

This is from maptalk.

"Latest NZOF news states that council is looking forward to a "decent trial" of the code of behaviour.

I hereby announce I won't be organising or coaching at any more official NZOF squad camps. Maybe I'll organise Jamie and friends camps.

I refuse to kowtow to the the PC brigade that put this policy through to stop me having a beer with my mates. Its ridiculous. But neither will I be set-up for a fall.

AND on a brighter note, I noticed that the Oceania barn dance has fallen through, but don't worry there will be a BYO BBQ/Party/BoozeO at Jamie's parents house in Arthurs Pass on Wednesday the 7th of January following the Oceania Classic.

The party will finish on nightfall but the celebrations will continue in the local pub. There is a DOC campsite adjacent to the venue.

In no way should this be considered a "National Squad Camp".

Jamie

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.