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

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!

Canterbury Champs 2009

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

WOC - Sprint Final - NZs best ever male result

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

Chris at the spectator control

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

Ross starting out in the borrowed shoes

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

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

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

WOC - Update

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

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

(WOC 2009)

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

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

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

(WOC 2009)

The perfected sponging technique

(WOC 2009)

WOC - Long Qual

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

WOC - Middle Qual

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

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

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

Ross

Greg

Chris

Serious Stuff

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

WOC - Day 1

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

WOC - final training camp day 4

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

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.html . 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....

WOC - final training camp day 1

The NZ WOC 2009 team (minus Koach Kenneth) all arrived in Miskolc last night, with Bryn, Ross, Maja and Myself driving from Budapest, and Chris magically appearing at the accommodation (which was a surprise since no one had heard from him since Jukola and we had no idea what his plans were) After some difficultly trying to sort out that had actually booked in for the training camp (an email was lost and our final booking was never received) we smoothed things out and all got our rooms at the pretty sweet Miskolc University, slightly more up market than the derelict mental hospital that was the base for JWOC 01. Today was planned around 2 short and sweet sprint trainings, with the sprint boys checking out the terrain and racing some route choices. The first area was around the cave baths complex with some steeper forest slopes and a flatter park like area. The second a much steeper forest and some urban streets to finish on. The results, 'dirty d' pants are awesome (they are so comfortable and everybody should buy some), Ross thinks Chris is a nutter by the way he was canning it down some steep rocky bits, and the 3 of them are looking fit and fast!

The Adventures of Todd

Now I'm taking the positives out of the experience. I've improved my ability to run independently whilst taking note of a pack, I'm a lot better at running hard on a good bearing regardless of the visibility/footing and I'm confident in my terrain fitness compared to all but the very fittest guys.

Hello,

I guess you want to put something on the O-squad blog. So I've written a little about the WC races.

Middle race in Finland: went well for a leg and a half. You can see my race on the GPS but some of the controls are embarassing... I was slow at the start because I was careful not to veer off my bearing but I ran a good line and increased my confidence. Going to number 2, on a longish leg, I hit the big boulder I was using as a stepping stone and then got pushed off line a little by some close pines. I jumped down a cliff (by NZ standards) and ticked it off as a feature, considering myself relocated, and ran away on a bearing expecting to come across a wide re-entrant going up to my right. Pity I was 100m north of the cliff I thought I was on! Going into the pivot for the first time I got overly involved in a foot-race with a German, lost contact with the map and more importantly a minute or two.

On my way to my 8 (I think) I ran on the compass without a plan and didn't get lucky. Later in the course I was caught by an Italian and Norwegian. I wasn't about to repeat the mistake with the German. I could run faster because I had the back-up of two other navigators behind me. I led for a couple of controls and then we just pushed each other to the finish. Some satisfying legs but not good as a whole. The good thing was that all the training of the last year was paying off: an ability to run as fast in the terrain as a lot of the seasoned internationals (albeit seldom having the navigational confidence to be able to) but more importantly at that moment; some fresh feeling legs.

GPS tracking at Salo World Cup, check it out here. The Sprint race was the next day. Qualifying races in the morning and a final in the evening in the town centre. It was going to be a struggle to qualify. At this World Cup round the field was far bigger than at a world championships. At WOC a country can only enter 3 men but here the nordic countries and swiss could enter 8. At WOC there are 15 men from each heat who go through to the final. At this race it would be 11 due to TV coverage!

I started at the same time as two guys on the other qual races. I kept my head throughout the course, I mainly picked the right route-choices. On a longer leg half-way round I exited the control at the wrong angle and by the time I realised I had to take the long route-choice otherwise I would've lost more time. That cost 20 seconds. Apart from that it was a good fast run. I managed to lose some seconds by double checking a control code. During that split second 3 guys arrived at the control and I had to wait for them all to punch... with E-mit! Fortunately I then took the better route to the next control and didn't have to wait again.

One of my mates from JWOC, Christian Christensen from Denmark, had started a minute behind me on the same course. He had been running a bit faster early in the race and said he could see me for a few legs after first half but couldn't reel me in. Then he saw me make my mistake, caught up a chunk and was the first person to punch at my pause! He got to the finish line just ahead of me. Christian only missed out on the final by 9 seconds I think. Now I know that a lot of the guys making the final can run more than a minute faster than me for 5km and that I could easily have ironed out the 20 second mistake. So I feel quite happy that I was only about 75 seconds off qualifying and hearing that Christian thought I was going well.

Greg and I really enjoyed going to Jukola and then training for a week in Halden, Norway. Kenneth Buch (2009 NZ WOC Coach) had invited us to his town and was an awesome host as well as sorting us out with daily training out on fantastic maps. One day we did club running intervals with Emil Wingsted showing how fast he is.

I stuffed the first control in the Norway middle because I didn't see the start kite... ran too far along the track thinking I was following the tape, realised it was a TV camera cable after 150m and then corrected. Rookie error! Was running pretty well after that and caught a couple of guys. I was concentrating on good compass work to get to obvious point feature attack points, like clearings, cliffs and hilltops. Some very quick Czech came through and we formed a good train. I got off the train on a long leg as we started going diagonally down a slope. The Czech had pulled away getting to the hillside and the other guys went hard trying to catch him. There were very few features to use and the guys in the mini-pack didn't seem to be following anything apart from the Czech's footprints. I aimed for a small hilltop with a clearing on it on the otherwise sloping ground then slowed down for a fine bearing into the control. I arrived just after the Czech. He'd missed and had to relocate. So I was back in the pack and had a bit more puff than the others. We did a couple more legs. I was feeling good and was reading the map enough to cut some corners off the Czech's trail-blazing. Then I sprained my left ankle at about halfway. Managed to hobble/jog into the next control and saw Greg! He'd started 4mins in front of me.

Couldn't really run too well on the ankle so obviously the result wasn't great. I wasn't too happy to get beaten by the bunch of guys I'd caught! I got the best world ranking points I've ever had though, it's to do with all the top guys being there and some of them making huge mistakes.

After the race I got some ice and a compression bandage then limped home. The next day I strapped up the ankle really well for the long. The swelling was gone and I wasn't going to miss out on this race. Norwegians love their "Classic" orienteering and I knew the course would be cool. The other aspect was that it was a chasing start and I wanted to beat those guys I'd caught in the middle but had had to let run away. I was going ok until the control between the long legs. Made the same mistake on it twice and lost about 10 mins. In fields of that quality a mistake that big is just too much. It was nearly thirty degrees and when I couldn't find the control on the second attempt I almost lost the will to compete. I couldn't help but slow down a bit, the heat and guarding my ankle were nagging at me.

Now I'm taking the positives out of the experience. I've improved my ability to run independently whilst taking note of a pack, I'm a lot better at running hard on a good bearing regardless of the visibility/footing and I'm confident in my terrain fitness compared to all but the very fittest guys.

Part 2

I went to the Belgian 3 days the other week-end and was thrown by the 1m contours (the programme said 2m to be fair). I improved on day 2 but tweaked my ankle on day 3 and DNFed.

So that was good preparation for a 10km race I did the next day! The ankle wasn't swollen and felt fine doing some strides. I was hoping for about 34 minutes or under. Couldn't talk my way into the elite start box so I had to fight (almost literally) to get out towards the front at the start. I finished ahead of the first woman, just, in 33:08. So I was quite happy considering the slopes (hills if you're Belgian) and hard start.

I've just done the French 3 days which have been a highlight due to the terrain. Fountainebleu has awesome deciduous forests with some big hills, good for orienteering. The best thing is that the hills are COVERED in massive boulders. I had a really good run in the middle on day 2. I was concentrating on using the contours and tracks so that I couldn't get confused by the boulderfields. I had the cleanest run of my year so far and was really happy. I had had quite an early start so it was good to see my time compare well with the later starters who had trains and tracks. Good thing is that it was a world ranking event so I'm looking forward to the points going up.

Tommorow I'm off to watch a stage of the Tour de France and this week-end I head to O-Ringen so life is good.

Thanks to Wellington OC for contributing to my WC costs.

Cheers,

Todd

NOC Map

I borrowed another map from Oystein Kvaal Osterbo and the World of O is full of reports about this race, one of the years big ones, the Nordic Open Championship. It looks like established stars Daniel Hubbman and Minna Kauppi came away with the wins. The New Zealand connections at this race were Todd Oates and Greg Flynn, Todd just beginning an extended orienteering summer, Greg getting in some racing before WOC which he will return to Europe for in August. These two are both big movers in the New Zealand elite scene (Greg ranked 19th, up 7, Todd 21st up 17) finally coming to grips with things after difficult transitions from the junior grades. Its going to be great to watch how they progress in the next few months...go hard youse fellas!!

And if you look at Osterbo's blog, the previous entry is details of a sprint in Trondheim where he raced head to head with Chris Forne (or maybe really Chris's head to his backside:-)). I guess this terrain is quite relevant in regards to next years WOC sprint as well.

Off like Flynn

I caught up with Greg Flynn the other night and he has exciting plans for this orienteering season. Not one but two trips to Europe. Firstly to Finalnd and Norway for a month for some World Cups...then three weeks in Hungary for the World Champs. I asked Greg a couple of questions for public consumption....

Photo: Rob Crawford

How are you feeling about orienteering at the moment?

I'm loving it, loving the fact that I can actually run and not feel like a massive blob of lard running through the forest....I'm really enjoying my training, doing hard sessions that I haven't been able to do for years

And whats your plan between now and when you head overseas?

Train to my plan. a nice balance between quality sessions & building up some mileage

I'm thinking, good luck with it Greg and make the most of those chances! I'm also thinking while it is hugely motivating to see the improved performances of our top elites like Ross and Chris over in Europe. Its also great to see some others taking positive steps forward, creating new habits and making the most of the time and resources that they (and most of us reading this blog) pour into orienteering. Don't just accept your place in the pantheon of orienteers.