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!
Thursday, 20 January 2011
Sprint the Bay preview
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
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
Monday, 17 January 2011
How confusing is this?!
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!
Sunday, 16 January 2011
Map Interpretation Skills
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!
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
New Years Day Mission
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?
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?
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Back to Basics
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
Saturday, 4 December 2010
Course of the Year: Jukola, a kiwi perspective
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?!
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?!
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
World Cup 2011 schedule
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!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)