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