Middle distance qualification JWOC

Today was the middle distance qualification race at Kollerup. About 5km inland from the long distance map we found the forest to be much more open and runnable. This also meant visibility was better and more like what we are used to back home. The courses involved many short complex legs so full concentration was required. Angela, Matt and Scott qualified for the A final back on the other half of the map tomorrow. The rest of the team will race in the B and C finals earlier in the morning. Hopefully the forest is just as open and we will all be able to have a clean race tomorrow.

Angela

JWOC Long distance

It was an early morning for the first runners supposed to be starting at 9am. After arriving, exploring the warm up map everyone was annoyed to hear the start was put back 40mins.

From our preparation we planned to take it carefully for the first few legs before the early spectator control, then let speed come as we took on the longer route choice legs.

The forest was very tough going and thick in most places. Fallen logs and dense spiky pines made the going tough and largely reduced visibility for navigation. Later in the course we entered the open dunes with almost knee high heather requiring determination to get though. Everyone did very well to make it round this mission of a course.

The New Zealand boys had similar times in the tight field and placed: Gene Beveridge 76th, Toby Scott 78th, Matt Ogden 84th, Jourdan Harvey 86th, Scott MacDonald 99th, Duncan Morrison 126th.

The New Zealand girls placed: Angela Simpson 32nd, Laura Robertson 77th, Kate Morrison 92nd, Jula McMillan 96th, Jaime Goodwin 107th, Selena Metherell DSQ punched boys control but otherwise great run.

Now having relaxing rest day.

Jwoc Sprint

We have moved into the accommodation at the barracks now however we have restricted internet access so our postings will be brief.

Today we had the sprint distance in Aalborg University. The maps and results can be found on the JWOC website or can be found through www.maptalk.co.nz. We had some very pleasing results as a team today with Angela placing 17th and Laura 27th. The best of the boys was Toby getting a very solid 33rd. The team coped very well, especially those who were racing in their first ever JWOC.

The results show how close the races were with just a few seconds separating nearly 30 placings. This meant that small mistakes or poor flow through the controls quickly resulted in a drop in placings. I found this especially dropping a few seconds each control just because I was not clinical enough in my leg execution. The majority of the teams loss in seconds came through route choice or 1 or 2 big mistakes. The pre-start area was just before the event arena with the start triangle visible to all spectators. This was a particularly brutal start, not only did we have to cope with the at times overwhelming nerves but also the roar of hundreds of spectators screaming at you straight from the get go. Our biggest hope in the sprint, Jourdan felt the full wrath of this killer set-up losing 2 minutes on the first control. The map was much more technical than the old map suggested and the courses were set very well set forcing us to navigate to the best of our abilities. We could probably ramble on for ages about today but we have to get ready the long tomorrow, a race that will surely be very tough. Thanks for all the support back home!

Results:

2010 Junior World orienteering Championships, Aalborg, Denmark.

Sprint, Women 2.3km.

1 Bobach, Ida Denmark 13:36,
2 Wisniewska, Hanna Poland 14:00,
3 Gajda, Monika Poland 14:03,

17 Simpson, Angela New Zealand 14:53,

17 Sund, Gøril Rønning Norway 14:53,

27 Robertson, Laura New Zealand 15:25,

47 Mcmillan, Jula New Zealand 16:27,

52 Morrison, Kate New Zealand 16:36,

61 Metherell, Selena New Zealand 16:52,

94 Goodwin, Jaime New Zealand 19:12.

Sprint, Men 2.7 km.

1 Hansen, Rasmus Thrane Denmark 13:04,
2 Jones, Kristian Great Britain 13:23,
3 Danielsen, Vegard Norway 13:25,

33 Scott, Toby New Zealand 14:29, 70

70 Ogden, Matt New Zealand 15:15,

75 Mcdonald, Scott New Zealand 15:24,

103 Morrison, Duncan New Zealand 16:14,

107 Beveridge, Gene New Zealand 16:23,

118 Harvey, Jourdan New Zealand 16:56.

Long/Middle Model distance and Emit trial

Today we had the Long and Middle distance model event on a small section of the Svinklov map, the map we will be using for the Long distance on Tuesday. The map had a 1 in 10,000 version and a 1 in 15,000 version for middle and long distance practise respectively.

The team was pleased with the accuracy of the map, everything was very well mapped including small bits of light green vegetation in patches of dense dark green vegetation which could be used in route choices. The focus of the model was map contact and reading pretty much every bit of detail so that come next week we will be orienteering to the best of our abilities. Before the training Jenni commented on the reduction in map contact we will see on race day through nerves and excitement so by excessively reading the map now we will be reading the map well on race day. Most of the team are getting use to the terrain and maps now so we are all really looking forward to competition week.

After the model event we had an emit test at the Barracks. We grossely underestimated the seriousness of the testing with the majority of the team turning up in casual gear, most the guys were shirtless and in jandals. It was good to see the start procedure in operation and the use of these wierd arm bands we will be using for our finish split. We did manage a victory in the boys course with Toby picking up the fastest time on the 1.4 km trial course. We were quite pleased with our first JWOC win...we will forget the fact that this was a practise course and that vans were used during Tobys run.

NZ JWOC team

T-2days till JWOC

Our pre JWOC trainings are coming to an end and our focus shifts to the races next week.

Today we had what was suppose to be a rest day travelling to Arhus on the east coast of Denmark. We visited the local university to see Maias (Ross' girlfriend) dad who gave a talk on the maps we will be running on next week as well as a tour of the sports science building. Maias dad gave us valuable advice on specific techniques that we will be able to employ next week. The biggest piece of technical advice was the use of tracks when orienteering, basically if there is a track use it as it considerably faster than the forest and requires less navigation, hence fewer mistakes. The use of vegetation boundaries and large countour features were also mentioned. Maias dad also took us through some courses that Ross had set for us as training a few months ago. It was interesting to see how the once Danish coach approached different legs. His orienteering style did not differ too much from our own using big attack points, traffic lighting and linear features such as veg. boundaries and tracks. Checking ones compass was constantly mentioned and will be definitely something we will take into our races next week. Ross and Todd were also tested for their VO2 max and lactic threshold which led to some interesting discussions on runner physiology and the difference between the ordinary and the world class.



Following this we went to Arhus town centre where the girls shopped for their party costumes after their epic fail on wednesday. The boys chilled admiring the scenery and found the occasional bargain. Before we left Arhus we went to the most amazing shop in the world, A shop predominately dedicated to orienteering!!! We spoke to a Danish guy who reminded us what an ellite athlete our manager Carsten is; "The fastest white man on the earth at one stage". His race experience and years of knowledge will definitely be a crucial component to the teams success this year. Also we have Ross and Lizzie, so with this ellite team behind us we are all feeling pretty confident for the upcoming week.

More Trainings...

Now based near Aalborg, the team has been going for day trips to the training maps to further hone our orienteering skill in the Danish terrain.

The weekend running in the Vestjysk 2 Days has left everyone with something to work on. One huge difference to this terrain compared to NZ is the route choices which normally involve a track to the left or the right and or straight through the forest. It is almost alway quicker to take track routes to avoid the dense forest but knowing where to cut corners is a skill to be perfected. Despite a fairly cruisy approach to the races the team did extremely well with Duncan posting the fastest time on the 8km course and Angela was the fastest girl in the sprint race on Friday evening.

We were treating the 2nd race (Sundays race) as preperation for JWOC by simulating race starts and running at race pace to the 6th control and then completing the rest (or not) at an easy pace. For the boys this did not quite work out with two of the controls being swapped. However despite this mistake in the courses the boys handled it well and continued with the rest of their courses, except Matt who sprained his ankle.

We have been going out training on the official training maps Blokhus yesterday and Molleparken and Vester Torup Nordos. These maps are very similar to the JWOC maps had will provide us with very valuable terrain knowledge.

Getting ready for JWOC...trainings, rocket man Ross and some tired legs

With JWOC only a week away the team has been training very well in the glorious Danish summer. We have been primarily training in the Tisvilde Hegn Forest which was only a few kilometres from where we were staying. The map itself was very different from the maps back home. Lots of inconsistent vegetation made running difficult at times and very little contour detail meant we were using our compasses a lot more. The map had hardly any hills and was dominated by small blocks of dark green which we tried to avoid in our route choices. This is very similar to the JWOC maps that we will be running on in a weeks time so will provide us with some valuable terrain experience.

Our trainings have focused on adjusting to the terrain, so they have been quite low intensity also giving us time to recover from the long flights. To do well at JWOC we will need to be aggressive in the terrain as this can easily push you off your line or slow you down. Technically we will need to focus on the usual so map contact, control flow and route choice. The team should be very well prepared for JWOC with the coastal parts of the forest very similar to the coastal areas in Woodhill forest.

Yesterday afternoon we got to witness Carsten and Ross race a 3km time trial at the track. We could see that both Carsten and Ross were pushing very hard which was reflected in their times. Ross smashed his PB posting a time of 9 minutes 4 seconds. This was motivating for all the team and hopefully we will be able to take this into our races at JWOC.

Frikedeller - Danish Meat Balls

We are writing this post from the kitchen of the Bramming's in Odense. For those of you who don't know, Maja Bramming is Ross' girlfriend. We just had an uber sweet lunch of frikedeller and are about to leave to go to the Vestjydsk 2-dags where we will be running in the sprint at about 7pm danish time. The weather has been really warm and sunny, and at the moment its the same. Hopefully it stays this way. The team are pretty excited to race tonight with the Ross tip of the day being "when your not reading your map, read your map". The sprint race will be around a town with some parks and alleys and things. Carsten says it is quite hilly so should be a hard sprint.

Where the races are take some travelling from our early training base at the Tisvilde club house. We started at about 10am this morning travelling by train to meet the two vans. From there we drove around 2 hours on a very fast freeway crossing a massive bridge (see video) to get to Maja's house. We still have another 2 hours to go, but everyone is feeling good, and today we picked up both Jula and Scott (whose luggage is lost).

I am also meant to write about our first encounter with Danish culture. On Wednesday night we went to Mid summer party. This was at the beach where they light a big fire and burn a fake witch. There were heaps of people there as the town we were staying in is known as a holiday destination. At this party we watched the sun go down at 10.30 which everyone thought was very odd. It still didnt get dark for many hours after.

So summing up, everyone is ok and just about adjusted to the time zone, accept Scott who just arrived. We will try and put another post up later today on the race and talk a little about tomorrow.

Denmark

This is just a quick message from Denmark to the parents to say that we all died on our flights.

Na, we are actually fine and most of us seem to be over jet lag very quickly. The weather here is sunny and we have done some easy training. We don't have internet where we are staying and most cell phones arn't working so this is sent from Carsten's parents house.

But I'm very hungry now so I'm going back to have breakfast

Gene

One Last Bash

The last training bash in Woodhill before JWOC has been and gone for Gene and Matt. Today we went with Tom to white lightning for a fast technical session followed by a run out to the beach over the huge dunes. The training was going good until suddenly the trees ended... It turns out most of map has been felled and our speedy orienteering session was brought to a stop.

We completed the last part of the training and met up at the finish for the anticipated dune run! This involved conquering some unreal terrain including mighty sand banks and unique grassed dunes. We eventually got to the beach and after some photos ran back to the car.

A place sure to be visited again in future missions…

Final Weekend of Training

The Aucklanders are doing their final training sessions in NZ - mainly orienteering sessions. This last week has involved training on Telephone Track, White Line Beautiful Hills, and White Lightning is on the agenda for tomorrow. All of these a Woodhill maps so easily accessible.

The most important thing about these sessions on top of their physical benefit is the chance to tighten up all the loose connections in our orienteering without the pressure of racing. We have done a variety of exercises in different difficulty areas to work on many technical elements including control flow, long legs, map contact, and speed.

We are also making good use of the sand dunes that are so relevant to JWOC in Denmark. We have run in this terrain so much now that running over sand and pin needles feels like the road once did. And whats more doing this with a map never seemed so simple.

Great work all the ABOT squad!!!

Mission in the Maze!

This morning the Auckland JWOCers plus Angela and a few more orienteers met at the Auckland Domain to simulate some running drills with the help of Michael Adams. This included some very crazy loosening up movements, the salsa move, robot dance, jumping over ropes and learning some cross-country racing tactics! Well thats the names we gave for the exercises anyway. These drills will be very useful in future trainings.

Then at midday, after recovering, we (Gene, Matt, Toby, Jourdan, Angela, Kate and Imogene) headed out to Muriwai (Woodhill Forest) to do some technical O training. Fifteen minutes jog down the forest road and we were at the infamous 'maze' map.

Matt had set up a small loop course for us to complete. There were no controls or markers out to show the exact control site, although we all managed to do the course with extreme care to ensure we were going to the right places. Many of our tactics for this training was to take it easy and concentrate on reading the contour detail rather than running hard out. The bigger features were definitely helpful.

While the boys seemed to whiz around, the girls took their time and were very careful in finding the exact control sites.

Overall, the training was very effective and appropriate for our preparation to JWOC which is only in 8 weeks! We have heard from some inside knowledge that in Aalborg the 'green' is very 'green', so the green on this map was very close to what we could see in Denmark , also the simulation of running on sand dunes was very helpful in our training.

Another fifteen minutes run back to the cars and a quick stop at the Kumeu Hot Bread shop and we were done with training for the day.

Tomorrow we will head out to the forest for the Auckland Rogaine series ready to kick some butt!

Cheers!

Angela and Kate :)

Nationals Sprint, Roxburgh 2010

The first event at the 2010 New Zealand Orienteering Championships was the Sprint, held at Roxburgh tailings on the Clutha River, south of Alexandra.

Sprints are usually held in urban terrain and as I am usually strongest at sprint I was a bit apprehensive of the terrain change. I arrived at the event quite early as I was first start in M21E, however as I had changed grade my start time was dropped back an hour so I had a lot of time to take in the surroundings. The event centre was in open scrubland littered with bit of junk that were marked as man made on the map. There were also several areas of banks where gravel etc had been collected. The forest part of the map was quite different. Mostly white flat forest was interrupted by features left over from gold mining bringing many rocks to the surface making it hard going under foot in areas. Down by the river bank was an area of contour detail with steep wiggly depressions.

The map was at 1:5000 scale which was a bit of a shock in the forest. In my first three controls(which all exited left) I constantly found myself to the right as I wasn't solid on my exit direction. On the small scale being slightly off my exit direction caused me to travel quite far away from the line on the map before I corrected. I had collected myself and got into my rhythm on the long leg to four, gunning it all the way down the track route choice. The alternative was to bash through some green, but I had experienced the green on the map in the first 3 controls and knew it was gorse with rocks underfoot and decided to take the route through faster terrain. The next 7 controls were in the detail mentioned above and went quite smoothly for me. There were then a few longer legs to get us back to the event centre. The first of these was really good for route choice and I probably didn't take the wisest route. It was then out to the open to finish the course with some fast legs with the spectators shouting.

Over all it was a good event, some fantastic orienteering and also a great venue for spectators.

I've included some pics of the map with Course 1 and my route.

Results

M20A

1-Jourdan-15:48

2-Toby-15:59

3-Scott-16:41

4-Gene-17:02

5-Matt-18:04

8-Duncan-22:59

W20A

1-Laura-19:02

2-Kate-19:27

3-Selena-20:00

6-Jula-23:47

7-Rach-24:28

8-Angela-26:21

9-Jaimie-26:31

M21E

1-Carsten-14:53 (Manager)

2-Ross-16:03 (Coach)

W21E

1-Lizzie-16:14 (Coach)

Middle Distance Training

Yesterday Gene and I headed up to Woodhill forest for some middle distance training and a chance for Gene to test out his super fast X-Talons. We entered the forest through Bradley Road which meant a 25 minute run to the map, a run in which both of us nearly managed to injure ourselves.

My attempt came via a poor fence jumping technique where I failed to lift my back leg sufficiently high enough. The result, a tangled mess similar to my calender photo and one hysterical Gene. Gene decided to test the idea that flying is just free falling with style, bailing down a slope after getting his foot stuck. We finally managed to get to the map and do some actual orienteering.

I had set a 4.4km middle distance course focusing on control flow and smoothness through the circle. Gene had a little hiccup at control 3 but other than that we both were orienteering pretty well. The intensity wasn't that high giving us a chance to focus on our map contact. I have attached the map with both of our routes. Mine is in red, Genes route is in blue.

Upon returning to the car we found that someone had put a trespassing notice on my window screen.....Orienteers trespassing....yeah right.

Nationals 2010

The 2010 New Zealand National Orienteering Championships were held last weekend in Central Otago.

The entire JWOC team competed fiercely in order to prepare themselves for the overseas races in just under 3 months!

Results from the JWOC team were of course dominating in the W20 and M20 grades. We saw 2 wins from both Scott McDonald, and Laura Robertson in the 20s grades.

The terrain at this competition was certainly different to what we are expecting to be running on in Denmark at JWOC, so the JWOC members had to focus and let their nerves settle down in order to produce a 'clean' run.

Many of the team members had magnificent runs, whilst some were not so happy with 1 or 2 of their races. The team sure showed the rest of the grades that they deserve to be competing against the world come July.

Team members are going to post their own thoughts and stories from the National Championships. There will be one from each race, Sprint, Middle, Long and Relay.

All up it was a very successful weekend, and it was really awesome to finally get the whole team together after being selected, and discuss our plans for June/July.

The team managed to do an outstanding effort of selling the famous 'JWOC calendars', although we still have another 100 or so to sell! So if anyone is keen to purchase one, then just leave a post and we can definitely sort something out :)

After the weekend, we had a change to the team. Sadly we are losing Rachel due to the requirements requested from the selectors regarding her injury. We wish her all the best with recovering fully and getting back to training ASAP so she can kick our butts at the next nationals! It was really close, but we have a new member to the 'wolf pack', Jula McMillian. Congratulations to Jula, and welcome to the team.

Well thats all from me now, keep watching this space, as this is just the start of many more posts to come!

Cheers,

Kate

Team Announcement

In 2010 the Junior World Orienteering Championships will be held in Aalborg, Denmark from the 4th to 11th of July

The team is:

Women:

Jaime Goodwin Hawkes Bay OC

Rachel Goodwin* Hawkes Bay OC

Selena Metherell Peninsula & Plains Orienteers

Kate Morrison Hawkes Bay OC

Laura Robertson Orienteering Hutt Valley

Angela Simpson Rotorua OC

Non-travelling reserve: Jula McMillan Orienteering Hutt Valley

*Subject to demonstration of fitness

Men:

Gene Beveridge North West OC

Jourdan Harvey Counties Manukau OC

Scott McDonald Hawkes Bay OC

Duncan Morrison Hawkes Bay OC

Matthew Ogden North West OC

Toby Scott Auckland OC

Non-travelling reserve: Jamie Brigham-Watson Wellington OC

Co-Managers: Carsten Jorgensen and Jenni Adams (Peninsula & Plains)

Coach: TBA

Congratulations to all members and good luck as they continue in their preparations toward JWOC