Sunday, August 17, 2014

WUOC Wrap-up

The last few days have been quite busy, so I'll summarize the end of WUOC with a single post.

The sprint was the day after the long. The first few controls of the courses were in the zoo that had a lot of out-of-bounds. We weren't able to appreciate any of the animals as we ran by them, but it seems like a nice place to go back and visit at a leisurely pace. There was then one long leg with the biggest route choice of the race. It seems that the southern route that cuts out of the zoo and then runs along the road for a while instead of going through the forest to get out of the zoo was the faster choice. After that, there were some controls in the city which involved small route choice decisions (left or right around the block) plus a slog up a long hill near the end to finish off the course. Although the courses were both shorter than the sprint relay (2 km for the women, 2.5 km for the men), the climb and lack of being able to go straight put the winning times in the right range. The best American woman's result was Tori, who ended in 36th place, 3:18 behind the winner. For the men, Charlie was the fastest, coming in 89th, 5:35 behind the winner.

The following day was the middle, where Giacomo made his first appearance of the competition. Despite having to cope with his injured leg, he had the fastest time for the American men, coming in 84th, 13:04 behind the leader. He was happy to be able to get out in the woods again, but is looking forward to two years from now when he'll be able to compete uninjured. Alison was the top American woman, coming in 53rd. She was unhappy with some of her race, feeling like she was a bit out of control at times. She still managed to be only 30% behind the winner, pretty consistent with her results from the sprint and long. The middle terrain was difficult because it was almost completely flat (there was less than half the amount of climb as the sprint) so vegetation boundaries as well as a series of wet ditches systems with lots of potential for parallel errors were the main features to use to navigate. This course was a mix of open woods with dense green sections. The best routes were typically straight - take a compass bearing and head there. This also meant that most runners had very fast time/km. It was cool to see the top athletes running so fast through the woods. We enjoyed how easy it was to run through part of the forest because it was open and well-kept, even though there  parts of the race where it was quite difficult to hit the controls perfectly inside the circle.

The relay was held in the same location as the middle. For the women, Tori led off and stuck with one of the front packs until control 11 where they got away from her on a long leg. She then made a small parallel error but was able to come back with a strong finish. Alison followed with another strong run, and McKenzie anchored the team into a 20th place finish. All three runners had faster runs than the previous day for a similar distance. On the men's side, the team of Charlie followed by Giacomo followed by Hans ended in 25th. Charlie was 10 minutes faster than the previous day with a course only 0.1 km shorter.  The other two were both faster than they were in the middle as well. Jake and Ken were also able to compete running the first two legs of a second American team.  Although he made a few mistakes, Jake felt like he got into a good flow for many parts of his race.

WUOC 2014 is now over, and we're all home or on the way. We really enjoyed the atmosphere at the meet, specifically the fact that all the athletes were staying and eating in the same spot, which really helped us get to know some of the other teams better. We also enjoyed the races, and the variety of different terrain types made each race interesting and challenged us in new ways. We all gained valuable racing experience which will help us in the future. See you in 2 years!

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

WUOC Long

Day 3 of WUOC featured the long. The weather was perfect for running - cloudy and a bit cool. The terrain was mostly open woods in an area with patches of gnarly green and occasional open areas, surrounded by a large network of trails. All of this was in an area with steep hills with lots of reentrants leading to an unfortunate amount of climb on the courses. 


Control on warm-up map
The American line-up consisted of Jacob Grant, James O'Keefe, Hans Sitarz, and Charles Whitaker for the men and Tori Borish, Alison Campbell, and McKenzie Hudgins for the women.

The best performance of the day was Alison Campbell's 52nd place for the women. She was trying to not push herself too hard today so her legs would be feeling strong for later runs this week. Her goal was a solid, clean race, and that's exactly what she had! The plan of focusing on being clean instead of fast served her well today as she picked energy conserving routes, which in this steep terrain often turned out to be the best choice. 

Alison racing Canadian Tori in the finish shoot
Tori Borish was the next fastest woman, also with a goal of a clean, solid race, which she mostly managed except for a couple minutes lost while fighting through some dense vegetation that she probably should have avoided. McKenzie also had a solid run, and although she didn't quite make her goal of under 2 hours, she was only a few minutes off and reasonably happy with her run. The men ranged from feeling ok about their runs to remembering why they liked shorter distances better, especially in such physical terrain. The men's course was 12.4 km with 680 meters of climb, and the first half of their course was the same as the first 70% of the women's course, but they then had an additional long loop including two long legs. The main sentiment post race is that the race was long, but a good eye-opener to orienteering at the elite level.


Since today was a long day for everyone and the weather wasn't meant to be great, most athletes not racing the long stayed at the dorms to rest up. Among these was Giacomo, who is still resting his legs so he'll be able to run the middle on Friday. Since this is World University Champs, all of us athletes are still students, and unfortunately that sometimes doesn't stop even during the summer, as was evidenced by Giacomo spending the day writing his thesis. Thankfully, he now has a chance to take a bit of a break from that and he and the West Point students are off at the movie theater 5-10 minutes away from our accommodation. This is also the reason that I can't provide more details about each of the guys' individual races since they are not around for questioning.

Random anecdote of the day: the laundry adventure. The only washing machine in our building is in the basement, and you have to go get a key and insert that in the washing machine to use it. James went downstairs to put laundry in, and being used to the US where we actually have driers, when he found dry clothes waiting inside an unused machine, he naturally assumed the clothes had already been washed and dried. James therefore took the Japanese team's laundry out of the washing machine and put our team's laundry in. However, it turns out that the Japanese team had put laundry in the machine but not turned in on yet. They approached some of us at dinner, very apologetic that we had used their laundry machine. We therefore wrote them an apology letter using the calligraphy set James had brought with him. No wonder his suitcase was so big... but everything has gotten put to good use!

On to the sprint tomorrow in the zoo!


Summary of WUOC Long

Women:
1. Sund Goril Ronning (Norway) 68:06
2. Aebi Bettina (Switzerland) 72:29
3. Knapová Jana (Czech Republic) 72:52
18. Emily Kemp (Canada) 78:05
52. Alison Campbell (USA) 92:07
63. Tori Borish (USA) 100:10
75. Tori Owen (Canada) 110:08
83. McKenzie Hudgins (USA) 126:10

Men:
1. Frederic Tranchand (France) 79:14
2. Matthias Kyburz (Switzerland) 81:03
3. Andreas Kyburz (Switzerland) 82:30
66. Eric Kemp (Canada) 109:12
69. Graeme Rennie (Canada) 111:56
84. James O'Keefe (USA) 139:47
85. Charles Whitaker (USA) 142:17
86. Hans Sitarz (USA) 152:44
87. Jacob Grant (USA) 164:54

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

WUOC Sprint Mixed Relay

WUOC Sprint Relay:



It's Day 2 and the first WUOC 2014 medals have already been awarded here in the Czech Republic! In the Sprint Relay, staged around the town of Kromeriz, Switzerland takes the gold after leading the pack for almost the entirety of the competition. Quite an impressive team the one composed by Jenzer, Hubmann, Gross and Kyburz, with both of the men already part this year's Swiss gold at WOC 2014 - the first WOC-official Sprint orienteering relay in history. About a minute behind, Sweden takes second place, and, only after quite an intense and breathtaking battle with Norway and especially the strong relay from France, it's the home-team of the Czech Republic to secure the bronze. Team USA runs well and earns the 22nd place, +12.50 minutes behind Switzerland.




But before heading to sleep and turning our attention to tomorrow's tough Long Course, let's liger on some fun details! 




Technically quite an easy terrain today for our university athletes, and with no climb on the course the race remained really fast-paced and very physical all throughout. A large part of the map was covering the nearby city-park, a mostly open area with lakes and other water features dictating the main route-choices. In the second part of the courses, instead, the athletes faced some city running with small route-choices in the blocks around the main square. Fun and spectacular for both devoted fans and passerby's, the main technical difficulties for the runners were created by some interesting forkings, with the forked controls often quite far from each other, adding some confusion when picking which pack to follow. 




North America celebrates another great performance by Emily Kemp, able to stick around with Switzerland and Sweden for most of the race, and lose a bit of terrain only at the end, finishing just 38 seconds from the lead. But Team USA also put up a good fight, and it was fun to watch especially Tori (+1.53 min behind Switzerland) close our first leg in 16th place, beating teams like Spain and Italy (which will then close 9th and 10th after 4 legs) and remaining within sight of strong teams like Great Britain, Poland and Estonia. Congrats to Tori! 




Our other runners also performed quite well: Jake recovered from a difficult start under the pressure from all the other runner's company with an impeccable second half of the race, Alison was clean and smart, slightly tricked only by the long route-choice around the lake, and Charles finished it off with a nice run, strong of his past experience running these important types of competitions and able to keep up the focus and speed all the way to the finish line.




Also spectating was quite fun, with me, Mckenzie, Ken and Hans following our team around the square, taking some pics with the other teams, and enjoying the atmosphere in the WUOC arena. 


Only negative note today was the main-dish at dinner: looked a lot like chicken fingers and potatoes form afar (#awesome), only to reveal its true vegetable nature of fried cauliflower. Ketchup, though, did help us finish the plate.

Mixed Relay Recap:

1st Switzerland
2nd Sweden
3rd Czech Republic
17th Canada
22nd USA



Good luck to everyone running the Long tomorrow!

Results and details will follow sometimes afterwards; )

DISCLAIMER: google+ is going crazy on my pc trying to translate things from Czech and capitalizing / miss-spelling random things on our post. i guess extra capital letters never hurt nobody ...

WUOC 2014 Opening Ceremony

Here Giac reporting from Olomouc, Czech Republic:

WUOC 2014 has really begun tonight after the official Opening Ceremony in the city Center. There was no traditional parading across the streets here this time, and formalities started with all the teams seated in the internal courtyard of one of the university central buildings once a military complex. Instead all the teams paraded on and off the stage, saluting the crowd as they passed the spotlight of an otherwise dark quad. Only soft and intermittent rain-showers tonight, but the organizers were ready to provide small plastic ponchos for everyone, red, white and blue like the colors of the home team. Our Japanese friends and neighbors made mock white and red poke-balls out of the containers, amusing everyone in sight. There was a local choir singing the Czech anthem, and also the anthem (in latin) of the FISU, the international federation in charge of all university sports. Before the ceremonial and important promises of fair-play, fairness and sportsmanship by athletes and judges, the local dance company performed a small show centered on red-dressed girls dancing around macho soldiers. Our cadets on the team have very similar gear in their suitcases, ready for use. Could they have danced even smoother? The best part of it all though, was a short light show on the side of the building, using the windows and facade details as backgrounds to a orienteering-themed game of lights and colors. Home-made medals were celebrated and previewed, unique pieces made by a local Winter Olympic Medalist apparently also very talented in molding metals. The medals have contours and a compass-needle, the perfect design for honoring the winner this week. 

Things are ready here in Olomouc, and tomorrow the fight for the medals begins.

Good luck to Team USA's Sprint Relay Team competing in the afternoon!






Sunday, August 10, 2014

World University Team starts at WUOC 2014



The World University Team has arrived at WUOC in the Czech Republic. The team is made up of:

Tori Borish (COC)
Alison Campbell (DVOA/Edinburgh University OC, Heriot-Watt University)
McKenzie Hudgins (USMAOC)
Giacomo Barbone (CSU)
Jacob Grant (USMAOC)
James O'Keefe (USMAOC)
Hans Sitarz (USMAOC)
Charles Whitaker (USMAOC)
Team Leader: Ian Jones






back LtoR - Jacob, James, Giacomo, Charles, Hans, Ian. Front LtoR - Tori, McKenzie, Alison


We have been training since Saturday on the middle, long and then a sprint relay today. For a middle and relay training description please see Alison's Blog post about it (theacrace.blogspot.com). The team then went to the Long distance model map this morning which hopefully Alison will write more about in the next day or so. The main event of today though was the practice Sprint Relay event. So this format is new which involves a 4 person-mixed team running a forked sprint course. At WUOC the format is female-male-famale-male. The course today was around 2km, with an expected winning time of 8-10mins per leg. We entered one official team who ended up placing 15th (Tori Borish, Jacob Grant, Alison Campbell, Charles Whitaker), with a time of 41:23 only 5:31 off the winner. The mixed team (Rosalind Hussey of Ireland, James O'Keefe, McKenzie Hudgins, Hans Sitarz) placing 28th with a time of 45:04, 9:51 off the winner. Most teams however were using this as a learning experience as many of us have not run a sprint relay before. We learnt a lot and are excited for the real sprint relay on Tuesday.


Here are some photos from the day and some quotes from the team:

Ken: "Simple course, favored fast runners."






Charles:

"Awesome experience as a team to exemplify unity and patriotism as we took on our newest competition"






Tori:

"It was fun to finally race this new format. There were battles for punching"










Alison:

"A nice warmup to racing and feeling confident for the week ahead of us"





Jake:

"Short and sweet, the best kind of course"










Giacomo:

"This Harvard business was a mistake... next year I'm applying to West Point! #team-matelove"







Hans:

"Today built confidence and comradry amongst the team"

McKenzie @11pm:

"zzzzzzzzzzzz...."