Interview with Keith after the Long

Wicked tough long at JWOC...

The US Juniors all survived a very tough Long distance race yesterday at Svinkløv. The terrain was more or less what we expected - very thick, with lots of trails and lots of small contour details. Throw in some brutal climbs and you get a tough course! Top US runners for the day were Greg Ahlswede and Alison Campbell:

Women:

1. Ida Bobach (Denmark) 1:01:55

91. Alison Campbell (USA) 1:38:21

97. Holly Kuestner (USA) 1:42:39

102. Hannah Burgess (USA) 1:46:40

Men:

1. Pavel Kubat (Czech Republic) 1:18:48

92. Greg Ahlswede (USA) 1:46:56

109. Andrew Childs (USA) 1:54:59

114. Nate Lyons (USA) 1:57:02

115. John Williams (USA) 1:57:02

128. Keith Andersen (USA) 2:04:03

132. Carl Underwood (USA) 2:08:11

Full results here, and a map of the men's course (with top-3 routes) below:

Bjorn in the USA

For the first time since 1982, the Bjorn Kjellstrom Cup is heading south to the US from the North American Championships. The Cup is a trophy that is awarded to the more successful nation at the bi-annual North American Champs, this year held in Cranbook, British Columbia. After three days of hotly contested battles, the USA came out on top by a score of 327-301.

The scoring is calculated by using the three best placings from each country in each of the three races, middle, long, and sprint. First place gets 25 points, second 22, then 19-16-13-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. The scorers for team USA were Samantha Saeger, Sandra Zurcher, Ali Crocker, Angelica Riley, Kat Orekhova, Jonas Kjall, Eric Bone, Ross Smith, and Boris Granovskiy.

Conquering the land of the Vikings

The JWOC team has been working hard to learn how to orienteer in the unique terrain of North Jutland. The middle and long take place near the coast and have many areas of intricate dune contours.

This map is from Vester Torup, about 60km from Aalborg and relevant to both the middle and long. The team trained here on Tuesday and Thursday, and the course you see here is a practice middle run by the women on Thursday - the men ran a few extra controls to the north. The terrain is quite physical, and often it is quite slow to run off the trails, though even the trails can be slow if sandy!

Here's Andrew on the way to the first control, showing us how it's done. This is what much of the open terrain looks like. The wooded terrain varies from moderately thick forest to very thick forest and to extremely thick forest with cuttings all over the ground.

Everyone has learned a lot running in the training areas and all are starting to get really excited for the sprint on Monday. Greg really wants you to know how excited he his:

Stay tuned for more updates from Aalborg!