Team USA

Our fearless leaders

2011-08-21T16:58:00.000-04:00

WOC 2011 is over. We cheered, we laughed, we gasped in horror at the mistakes shown on the big screen. There were some very fine moments from Team USA, and there were some moments that won't illicit any smiles for a while. But it all went quite smoothly in large part because of the team's two fantastic team leaders, Beatrice and Sandra!

Directing a team of nine athletes at the World Champs is not a vacation - it's exhausting! (Especially with this bunch!) Team USA appreciates all of the work that Beatrice and Sandra did to prepare for leading the time, and all of their tireless efforts throughout the competition. Thank you!

Men's relay - and they're off!

2011-08-20T09:17:00.001-04:00

Ross is off on the first leg of the men's relay!

Added: Ross is in and has handed off to Jordan!

Added: Jordan is in but Canada has taken a small lead. Sergei is chasing down Will Smith on the last leg.

Added: Sergei is in, just ahead of Will from Canada!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sam hands over to Ali in 11th

2011-08-20T07:54:00.001-04:00

Great run for Sam on the first leg of the relay! Here she is, running over the bridge to hand off to Ali.

Added: Ali has handed off to Alex for the last leg!

Added 2: Alex is in!

Sam says, "It was really technical but exhilarating to run with with all the other women!"

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

WOC Relay Tomorrow

2011-08-19T17:08:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow, August 20, is the final day of WOC 2011 in France. The competitions will conclude with the most exciting race of them all - the relay. The men and women each run three legs, about 3.9-4.2km each for the women and 5.4-5.8km for the men.

The US Teams are as follows:

Women
1. Samantha Saeger
2. Alison Crocker
3. Alex Jospe

Men
1. Ross Smith
2. Jordan Laughlin
3. Sergei Zhyk

Last year, the US women finished 19th and the men 28th.

Go Team USA!!

Middle Final Recap

2011-08-19T16:46:00.000-04:00

Today was the long-awaited middle distance race. We wondered what the final would be like after the surprisingly less technical qualification course and most were not disappointed - this was tricky orienteering! In fact, all of the women in today's race made mistakes, including the winner, Helena Jansson of Sweden. Helena ran the course in 33:10, while our own Ali Crocker finished 42nd, in 51:15, with a couple of good names behind her. Ali says she had a mistake in the beginning and one near the end, but it's also clear that she had a great middle of the course. Luckily her hamstring is doing fine after the long and we're all confident that she'll be ready for leg two of the relay tomorrow!

Here's today's map:

For a good look at the terrain you can follow along with the women's course with this headcam + map 3D Rerun from WorldOfO.

Middle Distance Final tomorrow

2011-08-18T16:09:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow (Friday) is the Middle Final and once again Ali will be running for Team USA, having qualified earlier in the week. Her start time is 14:19 local time, which is 8:19am on the East coast. You can follow along online at live.woc2011.fr, which includes streaming radio, live videos, splits times, and GPS.

Photo by Eddie Bergeron

Long final - tough stuff!

2011-08-17T18:29:00.000-04:00

Today was the Long Final, and as expected the course was long and tough and, well, long. Ali was our one runner today and she was doing it on tired legs from the sprints yesterday. Unfortunately, though she visited all of the controls, in order, and without any navigational disasters, she forgot to punch at one of the water controls and was disqualified. A tough day, but now she's already looking forward to the Middle Final and the Relay, as are the rest of Team USA!

Here's a panoramic from the arena today:

You can see the map for the women's course or follow along with the GPS tracking online.

Video: Excitement in the arena!

2011-08-16T17:14:00.000-04:00

Spectating at an orienteering event is often an activity lacking in excitement. You can't tell what's going on out on the course and you just get a brief glimpse of the runners as they come through. It often looks a bit like this:

Photo: Orienteering fans "spectating" at a control. No runners actually punched this control.

Enter the arena. With a good arena and modern production technology event organizers can make it really exciting to be on scene. At today's Sprint Final fans in the arena could see runners start, finish, and punch two spectator controls, PLUS there was a jumbo screen for more action caught on camera throughout the course. There were live announcers giving updates continuously, noisy fans from all over the world, and constant activity, with runners starting every 1 minute. With two radio controls and a fastest-last start order we were all able to see the race unfold and feel like we were in the middle of it. For a quick taste, here's a video of Ali at the start:

Ali at the start WOC 2011 Sprint Final from Cristina Luis on Vimeo.

It's an exciting place to be!

We've had a great WOC week so far, but there's still a lot left - two more finals and the relay!

The team really appreciates all of the support from fans at home and here in France. Keep posting those comments!

Video: Sam and Ali after the Sprint Final

2011-08-16T16:01:00.000-04:00

Sam and Ali (and all of the other best sprinters in the world) were in the quarantine area for hours and hours today, both before and after their race. Luckily we were able to catch up with them right after they exited the quarantine area to ask them how they felt about their runs. Check it out!

I should point out also that Ali is one of only four runners at WOC this year to qualify for all three finals! Go Ali!

Ali 27th & Sam 38th in Sprint!

2011-08-16T10:04:00.004-04:00

A best ever American finish for Ali today, 27th! And also an awesome result for Sam, the 38th best sprinter in the world!

Great day for Team USA!

Photos by Dave Yee.

Here's the map of the women's course, part 1 and part 2.

Location:Place du Château,Chambéry,Frankrike

Panoramic photo of the arena

2011-08-16T09:16:00.002-04:00

From the arena you can see start, finish, two controls and a big screen. The atmosphere is exciting, especially when a home favorite comes up! Here's a panoramic:

Live from the arena

2011-08-16T09:02:00.001-04:00

The sprint final is in Chambery, and it looks tricky! Can't wait to see the map and how the runners handle it. Here's a photo from the start/finish arena showing a neat control location.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Video: Ali after sprint qual

2011-08-16T07:50:00.000-04:00

And another vid, this one of a quick chat with Ali after her qualifying run.

There are a lot more pictures and videos to come, but they'll have to wait until after the Final!

Video: Sam after sprint qual

2011-08-16T07:35:00.000-04:00

Here's a video from a quick conversation with Sam after her qualifying 7th place finish in the sprint qual.

Sam's running in the final this afternoon, which you should be able to watch here.

Sam and Ali qualify in sprint!

2011-08-16T04:57:00.003-04:00

Samantha Saeger running hard on the way to a spot in the sprint finals! Photo by Greg Walker

Tough races today in downtown Aix-les-Bains, but both Sam and Ali safely qualified for the finals! So hot right now!

The Canadians also had two qualifiers, Louise Oram and Will Critchley.

Location:Chemin des Bateliers,Aix-les-Bains,Frankrike

Interesting stuff on the interwebs

2011-08-15T10:26:00.001-04:00

There are lots of interesting maps and videos concerning WOC floating around the internet. You can find most of them at WorldOfO, but here's a sampling:

See what the terrain looks like "in real life" with this headcam video with map from Long Qual. There's also one for the Middle Q.

See the maps and the winners' routes for all of the races so far.

WorldOfO also has some a page for each country with photos of runners. See the USA page here.

Finish Chute videos from Middle Q

2011-08-15T10:18:00.001-04:00

Get a taste for the excitement in the arena as North American orienteers finish their courses! Barb Bryant has some great finish chute videos so you live vicariously through the fans on scene.

Ali:

WOC 2011 08 14 Ali Crocker in the finish chute from Barb Bryant on Vimeo.

Also see Hannah, Alex and Canadians Louise Oram (who also qualified for the final) and Carol Ross.

Middle Distance Qualification Results

2011-08-14T16:46:00.005-04:00

Alex Jospe finishing strong in the middle qualification race. Photo by Eddie Bergeron.

Today was the middle distance qualification at WOC, and Team USA had another great day. The highlight was, once again, Alison Crocker, who qualified for her second straight final in impressive fashion, finishing 7th in her heat. Alex and Hannah had good runs as well, and the men's team had solid races across the board, with Ross finishing just over two minutes from qualification after and excellent run.

The competitors described the terrain as very green and junky, and the consensus was that route choices on trails were almost always a good idea.

Check out the video interviews with all the US finishers in the previous post!

Here are the complete Team USA results from today's middle distance qualification:

Women A
1. Minna Kauppi FIN 26:40
2. Annika Billstam SWE 26:44
3. Amelie Chataing FRA 28:29
7. Alison Crocker USA 30:00
15. Carlotta Scalet ITA 33:44
17. Emily Kemp CAN 34:52

Women B
1. Lena Eliasson SWE 27:59
2. Natalia Vinogradova RUS 30:48
3. Annika Rihma EST 30:49
15. Aislinn Austin IRL 35:43
19. Carol Ross CAN 40:27
26. Hannah Burgess USA 47:55

Women C
1. Merja Rantanen FIN 26:03
2. Helena Jansson SWE 27:24
3. Sandra Pauzaite LTU 28:40
14. Louise Oram CAN 31:14
15. Liis Johansson EST 31:27
24. Alex Jospe USA 39:53

Men A
1. Valentin Novikov RUS 25:02
2. Mattias Muller SUI 26:59
3. Tue Lassen DEN 27:01
15. Chris Forne NZL 31:11
27. Wil Smith CAN 37:30
32. Sergei Zhyk USA 39:44

Men B
1.Anders Nordberg NOR 26:31
2.Oleksandr Kratov UKR 26:57
3.Philippe Adamski FRA 27:13
15. Sören Schwartz Sörensen DEN 32:19
20. Ross Smith USA 34:07
25. Robbie Anderson CAN 36:52

Men C
1. Peter Öberg SWE 24:30
2. Thierry Gueorgiou FRA 25:26
3. Baptiste Rollier SUI 26:04
15. Klaus Schgaguler ITA 30:50
24. Patrick Goeres CAN 33:38
29. Ken Walker USA 35:39

Some short interviews from Middle Qual!

2011-08-14T16:39:00.000-04:00

Middle Distance Qualification

2011-08-13T16:27:00.010-04:00

The long distance qualifying races have barely finished, but it's already time to look forward to tomorrow, when Team USA takes on the physical and technical challenges of the middle distance qualification races. The men's courses are 3.6-3.7km with 190-205m of climb and 11 controls. The women's courses are 2.9-3.0km with 140-150m of climb and 9 controls. As usual, the 15 best runners from each heat go through to the final.

Check out this video of the terrain taken during training by Ken Walker.

Here are the start times of Team USA competitors in the middle distance qualification:

Hannah Burgess 2:18pm CET (8:18am EDT)

Alex Jospe 2:30pm CET (8:30am EDT)

Alison Crocker 2:44pm CET (8:44am EDT)

Ken Walker 3:32pm CET (9:32am EDT)

Ross Smith 3:52om CET (9:52am EDT)

Sergei Zhyk 4:16pm CET (10:16am EDT)

All photos by Eddie Bergeron

Go Team USA!!!

Long Qualification Results

2011-08-13T16:06:00.006-04:00

Ross Smith punching the last control en route to 24th place in the Men's C Heat, the best result by any North American man today. Photo by Greg Walker.

Here are the complete Team USA results from today's long distance qualification:

Women A
1. Dana Brozkova CZE 46:33
2. Merja Rantanen FIN 48:42
3. Helena Jansson SWE 49:05
10. Alison Crocker USA 56:00
15. Helen Palmer GBR 58:24
16. Louise Oram CAN 58:40

Women B
1. Signe Söes DEN 49:51
2. Annika Billstam SWE 52:08
3. Sara Luscher SUI 52:58
14. Carol Ross CAN 67:44
15. Laura Vike LAT 70:51
20. Alex Jospe USA 84:14

Women C
1. Minna Kauppi FIN 50:41
2. Tone Wigemyr NOR 51:58
3. Eva Jurenikova CZE 52:51
15. Andra Anghel ROM 65:47
23. Samantha Saeger USA 76:16

Men A
1.Francois Gonon FRA 67:43
2.Olav Lundanes NOR 68:38
3. Pasi Ikonen FIN 70:38
15. Daniel Hajek CZE 85:09
27. Will Critchley CAN 103:43
29. Wyatt Riley USA 106:26

Men B
1. Thierry Gueorgiou FRA 63:14
2. Alexey Bortnik RUS 69:22
3. Tue Lassen DEN 69:56
15. Chris Forne NZL 78:39
30. Damian Konotopetz CAN 97:57
32. Jordan Laughlin USA 103:42

Men C
1. Philippe Adamski FRA 68:57
2. Anders Holmberg SWE 72:09
3. Tero Föhr FIN 72:47
15. Wojciech Kowalski POL 81:34
24. Ross Smith USA 94:13
29. Wil Smith CAN 112:31

Ali makes the long final!

2011-08-13T11:45:00.001-04:00

Ali Crocker finished 10th in her heat, safely into the finals!

The long final is on Wednesday.

Ali says she's happy with her race - and "ran the meadows really well and the woods tolerably well".

Congrats Ali, great run!

Long Qualification

2011-08-12T17:50:00.008-04:00

WOC 2011 kicks off tomorrow morning with the long distance qualification race.
The men are racing 9.0-9.2km with 20-21 controls and expected winning times of 59-62 minutes. The women are racing 5.6-5.8km with 10-11 controls and expected winning times of 42-44 minutes. There are three qualifying heats for men and three for women, with 15 runners from each heat qualifying for Wednesday's final.

Here are the start times of Team USA competitors:

Alex Jospe, 11:33am CET (5:33am EDT)

Alison Crocker, 12:06pm CET (6:06am EDT)

Samantha Saeger, 12:42pm CET (6:42am EDT)

Wyatt Riley, 13:46pm CET (7:46am EDT)

Jordan Laughlin, 13:55pm CET (7:55am EDT)

Ross Smith, 14:49pm CET (8:49am EDT)

All photos by Eddie Bergeron.

Go Team USA!!!!

WOC 2011 - Getting Ready

2011-08-12T03:09:00.005-04:00

Team USA is in its final stages of preparation for WOC 2011, which opens on Saturday, August 13 in France with the long distance qualification race on St François de Sales, in the mountains above Aix-les-Bains and Chambery. Racing the long distance for the US will be Samantha Saeger, Ali Crocker, Alex Jospe, Ross Smith, Jordan Laughlin, and Wyatt Riley.

Yesterday, the team went training on the long distance model event map, which you can see below:

And here are the impressions of some of the US ladies, captured on video by team videographer Ross Smith:

We will try to update the blog daily with the most recent adventures of Team USA. Meanwhile, you can see complete information about WOC 2011 here.

Rest Day

2011-07-05T17:34:00.002-04:00

Tuesday was a much welcomed rest day after two days of racing. After a late breakfast, five of us- Giacomo, Nate, Carl, Zach, and I - decided to go into Gdansk. The train ride was hot and the seats were less than comfortable, but after an hour we were pulling into the city center. Not quite sure what to do, we walked around for a while and saw some historic buildings- even more impressive because most of them had been rebuilt after the city had been bombed 70 years before. Lunch was at a outdoor restaurant in one of the main squares - I had Polish dumplings with chicken and mushrooms, which was absolutely delicious. After eating, we walked around a bit more and saw Neptune's fountain. After our feet were hurting we took the train back to the hotel. The Canadians were there when we got back so talked to them, went on a easy run, then took a much needed nap.
- Meg Parson

JWOC Long

2011-07-05T17:06:00.000-04:00

On the 4th of July the Long Final took place here in Wejherowo. What awaited all of us competitors were 11.1 kilometers for the boys (+410m climb), and 7.7 kilometers for the girls (+285m climb). The day starts, as usual, very early in the morning, especially for those of us with an early or middle start time. Coming from our hotel on the 7:00 am bus makes us the first team along with Team Turkey to conquer the gym mattresses in the quarantine area. As the other teams, little by little, start populating the gym, there is still plenty of time to look around and examine the newly put up team posters and hopefully grasp helpful insight concerning the challenging task of determining what girls deserve a spot in the very competitive and sought-after USA Top Ten list (which is still work in progress as of today).

The quarantine naptime zone.

After various cycles of hydration and dehydration we make it to the pre-start area. My legs are still somewhat tight after running the sprint on the hard pavements of the streets of Lebork yesterday, but nothing a very slow jog with the warm-up map can’t take care of. A little unexpectedly, the woods all around the area look quite a lot more dirty (i.e. with plenty of difficult-to-run-through-undergrowth) than the clean rolling hills behind our hotel. The race will then confirm these first impressions and leave opportunities for a lot of fighting in the dark greens. After a real warm-up, stretching and last minute preparations it is already time for me to start.

Warmup area terrain. Not everything was like this, but more than expected.

The race presents itself already from the start (and as expected) very physical and fast-pace. 10 minutes in the race I am past the first 4 short controls placed along some pretty clean Polish hills. No mistakes untill there and a pretty good pace and contact with the map. After that the first long leg caught me pretty unprepared: I was trying to read it earlier on the early uphills, but it was hard to find a smooth way to reach the next control. I decided to go pretty much straight and just follow the reentrances up and down as they came at me. I had some trouble memorizing the succession of reentrances and had to keep slowing down to read the same thing again and again. Post race analysis made it pretty clear that going pretty straight on the right of the red line was actually the best route, and more confidence in my decision would have made my split better. After the long leg four more controls got you ready for another long leg, only after a cool more-uphill-in-the-white vs. trail-and-then-green short route choice. Two long legs and an easy butterfly take me to the last controls, all on the faster hilly terrain. I close my race in 1h 38 min, just about 30 minutes after the gold medal winner, the Norwegian Yngve Skogstad (01:08:49). The top runners, both men and women, are really flying out there and I am sure it would be a beautiful experience seeing them soar on those hillsides.

Overall, my greatest problems occurred during the long legs, and dealt with the ability to keep focus for long periods of running time. I also found myself slowing down excessively when alone in the woods and pick up the pace only when encountering another runner. Overall the whole team lacked the endurance in the run and experience in the navigation to perform at the top level. Nevertheless, we had today a great opportunity to savor this sport at its height and learn toward what direction our training needs to go. Here in Wejherowo Independence Day was definitely very challenging and yet fulfilling.

- Giacomo Barbone

Andrew in the finish chute.

Zach at the last control.

Sprint

2011-07-04T12:39:00.000-04:00

Our sprint course of JWOC was held in Lebork, Poland. The course overall was quick. It was 2.9km long with 35m of climb. My initial three legs were slightly confusing but after crossing the bridge the change in terrain greatly increased the speed. Almost the entirety of the course's climb was found between the third and fourth controls. The most commonly chosen route was directly up a stairway that composed the majority of the climb. The short section in the woods was fairly easy but the underbrush seemed to be much thicker than the map suggested. After the woods controls the course moved into the city proper and became very fast. The most difficult control in the city was 14, which was tricky because it appeared as though you could go around the north side of the building but in actuality the route involved going south to reach a small alley.

Men's Sprint in Lebork

I thought that over all the sprint map was a lot of fun. The organizers handled everything efficiently and smoothly. The winners times were very competitive and fast. Although a Frenchmen may have won the day, our US junior times had good showings from all our runners, who will continue to improve with each race.

- Zach Schroeder

Sprint Model Event

2011-07-03T05:07:00.002-04:00

Saturday morning was low key with breakfast and hanging out at the hotel. We then had lunch - well part of lunch... Most people left the salad untouched as they did not want to be ill again. It was then on to the bus ( for an hour drive after picking up the other A accommodation people) to be driven to the sprint model.

The sprint model was on a slice of map just next to where the actual sprint will be held. It was so close, actually, that Ukraine disqualified themselves from the sprint because they ran into the embargoed area. (Lesson number 1: never run off the map! ) We had a few guys forget their model maps but other than that it was a very useful trip out.

Everyone was running around this small sprint map and in all directions! I ran the controls on the map in numerical order and a bit faster than a jog since I hadn't been on a sprint map here yet at speed. Found the model controls quite easy and the map not too difficult. Paid special attention to crossable and uncrossable features. Went over a crossable fence just to see if it would be worth it - being short probably not, for a guy maybe. Having everyone running around was also nice to work on blocking everything else out and just focus on the task at hand. This sprint should be fun... Once I figure out what to wear! Socks no socks is the debate at the moment. Ready to give this sprint hell!

- Alison Campbell

For me, it was nice just to get out running feeling 100% better after being sick. The biggest issue on my mind was not having any running shoes - one thing that didn't quite make it during my frenzied, last minute packing at home. Luckily, there was an Adidas vendor at the model, so thanks to a loan from Greg, I now have a pair of bright pink shoes to run the sprint in. As for the model map itself, everything seemed clear enough to me. Paying attention to what is crossable vs. uncrossable will definitely be the biggest thing on my mind during the sprint. Pretty excited/nervous for my first JWOC race - not quite sure what to expect, so we'll see how it goes!

- Meg Parson

JWOC Opening Ceremony

2011-07-02T17:09:00.003-04:00

Team USA 2011: Carl, Giacomo, Meg, Andrew, Alison, Ethan, Nate, Zach.

First race: sprint tomorrow afternoon!

Training

2011-07-02T16:00:00.006-04:00

(Here we finish our training week by going back in time and talking about the first couple days, since we never got around to writing about those.)

Training began Saturday when Andrew had to leave Arlanda airport, travel to the Stockholm airport, grab our lost bags, and get back to Arlanda, all before 12:30 in the afternoon. The remaining training for the day was just an easy hour long run through the park behind our hotel.

The next day, we practiced map simplification where we drew our own maps with only the features we needed. This was not because we needed practice --although it's always helpful -- but rather because we only had two maps, and one was black and white. Then we ran the course again, but using the "other route choice." Most of us liked our original routes better.

Creating maps.

And the result, one of Ethan's hand drawn maps.

The third day we were blessed with training maps. However, the semi-permanent control locations were not on the maps. Because of this, Greg planned a line-o with a couple of controls where we could run any way we wanted to. The woods were about as close to perfect that I've ever run. On both of the free controls, the best route was just to run straight. The terrain was almost completely flat, and many contours were simply form lines. There was one issue, where we discovered that the maps were not up to date. This knowledge came in the form of an uncrossable fence that some of the lines had to cross (There were several slight variations on the line-o). All-in-all, a very good first three days.

- Ethan Childs

Sick day

2011-06-30T15:47:00.001-04:00

It was sadly a long puke filled night for the junior team. We woke up to find all but three juniors sick and out for the count. Needless to say breakfast was quiet and caution was taken with what we ate. Later we found out that seven of the swedes were also affected. So the morning was spent talking to the hotel and moving to clean rooms.

Around 10:30 the three survivors and the giant decided to leave the sick to sleep and get in a bit of training. We went out to the map behind our hotel for some fun in the woods. We ran a course and stopped at each control to talk about what the possible route we saw to take were, which might be the best, and what features/techniques are good to use. Most of the forest was open and fast. However that being said it was easy enough to pick up a parallel feature or drift off track if you're contouring around. I found this type of training really useful. Getting to talk when actually seeing the terrain. Getting to run with other people around and trying to ignore them and then getting to have the giant around to help us figure out what we had done and to provide safety tips on how to plan a good route. We were out for around an hour.

By lunch there were still only four fully well. But chicken noodle soup and rice was dished out and people seemed to be a bit on the up.

By the time we headed over to visit with the Canadians we were up to five of us. So we went out and were told to walk around the sprint course the Canadians had just done. It would have been nice to get some speed and see how easily one could read things on the run, but even walking around to get a feel for things was better than nothing. The key in the sprint I think is going to be how well you're able to read ahead and how well you can switch from town to woods and maybe back.

We socialized with a few teams after walking the sprint. And then five of us were at dinner. Hopefully we will have a full table for breakfast again tomorrow!

- Alison Campbell

Wednesday JWOC training

2011-06-29T14:15:00.007-04:00

For our Wednesday training in the spacious woods of Poland we did an easy training focusing in on following our route choices. So even though we were running much slower than race pace we were still supposed to run the routes that we would run in a race and not take the easy way out. As it being my first day of training here I found that the woods are quite open, even the green areas are not that thick or difficult to run through. Also you should not rely on rocks as an attack point; even though there are not very many of them they are very small and would be easy to just run by.

- Carl Underwood

Relay training

2011-06-28T17:37:00.001-04:00

Today we did a 2 man relay in middle terrain. Andrew and I were on a team, and we both ran somewhat smoothly. I was trying to do these a little faster than race pace to try and get an interval like workout in during the training week. I made one mistake on each of my legs--the last control on the first and third legs and the first control on the second leg. The one on the first leg was just because the streamer was on the back of a tree and I ran right by it. The second leg one was a parallel error in the wrong reentrant, which would have been obvious had I been going slightly slower and reading he map. On the third leg the control was at the end of a clearing, but in the actual terrain the clearing went far further than it did on the map, so I ran to the end and had to come back to find the streamer. We also beat the Canadians. Just thought I'd throw that in here. The fact that they were taking it easy today is irrelevant.

As for the rest of our team, Giacomo ran with Zach and Ethan ran with a Canadian girl. It went pretty well for them too. Ethan ran the last leg faster than me and Andrew, but that made sense since I got lost. I think Giacomo and Zach did well enough too. But it was a good workout for all of us and it was nice to run fast. These woods were very open and you could run quite quickly almost everywhere. It was a little hilly, but not enough to really slow us down.

Later on we went with the Canadians to the beach where we played some ultimate frisbee and went swimming in the Baltic Sea. The water was quite nice and it was a good day all around.

-Nate Lyons

JWOC 2011: Poland!

2011-06-28T12:20:00.000-04:00

The whole team has arrived in Wejherowo, Poland for a week of training and general timezone adjustment. Many of us have already been here training since the weekend, but we're finally getting organized enough to tell you about it. Team USA for 2011:

Men:

Nate Lyons (ROC)
Andrew Childs (GMOC)
Carl Underwood (NEOC)
Ethan Childs (GMOC)
Giacomo Barbone (CSU)
Zach Schroeder (USMAOC)

Women:

Alison Campbell (DVOA)
Meg Parson (NEOC)

You can read all sorts of interesting things about the team on their OUSA profile page. JWOC info can be found over on the JWOC site.

Over the next two weeks we'll have training reports and race reports from what's going on over here on this side of the world, so stay tuned!

2011 Northeastern Junior Training Camp

2011-04-16T11:36:00.002-04:00

Last weekend was the annual Junior Training Camp and NEOC Junior Meg Parsons wrote all about it:

Although with about 25 other juniors, I attended the 2011 Northeastern Junior Training Camp, held on April 8-10 at Blue Mountain Lodge in Peekskill, NY. My dad and I arrived around 7:00pm on Friday night, grabbed a quick bite of dinner and settled into the dorm. Soon I was playing cards, which seems a staple every year at the camp. At the table was a mix of people I know and people I didn’t know; the game, President, I didn’t know either but figured out pretty quickly. The minutes ticked by and we played a few more hands of cards than I would have expected- I knew from previous years that we should have been doing a Night-O once it was dark. It was then that I learned Samantha Saeger and Ross Smith, our two coaches, were stranded in Worcester, MA because Sam’s “new” Volvo had broken down.

Fortunately, several people stepped in to fill the gap while plans were made to rescue Sam and Ross. Guy Olsen led an icebreaker activity of Two Truths and a Lie. Among the interesting facts that came to light was that Jeff Saeger had worked in the pit crew as part of Paul Newman’s racing team. Perhaps the most entertaining lie involved John Osborn describing the details of his life as a commercial airline pilot.
Then Jeff Saeger took over, explaining the details of the annual Trivia Night-O. We were broken up into teams of three, given a map and 30 minutes to find ten controls around the area. Each control had a trivia question at it; the person at the control either needed to write down the question (or the answer, if they knew it) and bring it back their team. Letters from the answers spelled out a word- Jellybeans. The evening ended with word that Boris Granovskiy was rescuing Sam and Ross and that they’d arrive in the morning.

The next day, after a delicious Janet Porter breakfast, our coaches did arrive. The first training exercise practiced map simplification: ribbons along the way marked key features on the map that we should see on the way to the control. This went pretty well for me, except for one control that involved quite a bit of wandering around a steep, rocky hillside. After lunch, our advanced group did a contour reading exercise. Ross had taken out all the details on the map except for the contours- which was somewhat disorienting, because there are many cliffs and trails at Blue Mountain. I started first, and was running along to number 1 when suddenly my ankle rolled sideways and I heard a crack- probably not a good sign. I roll my ankle somewhat frequently but this time was different; I tried to walk it off for a couple of minutes and the pain didn’t go away… definitely not good. Concerned and upset, I turned around and spent the rest of the afternoon with ice on my ankle, getting medical advice from a variety of people.
The final activity for the day was the Uphill Map Memory relay. Teams of mixed ability must copy a course, leg by leg, onto a blank map. The twist is that the master maps are at the top of the hill. It’s definitely a different experience watching the relay rather than running it!

Two highlights of the after-dinner activities were a large game of sardines and Kestrel Owens giving a presentation about his experience at ski-JWOC a few months before.

Sunday was slightly different from past years. After packing up the lodge, the entire group traveled to Lake Welch in Harriman State Park for a local meet put on by HVO. Ross and Sam encouraged us to pre-plan our routes, putting the skills we had practiced Saturday into action. I carefully walked the Brown course with a taped ankle- it’s amazing how many more details you notice when you’re not running.

While the weekend had a few more mishaps than usual, it still came together as a resounding success. Thanks to all cooks, coaches and others that made it happen- it would not be possible without you!

Flying Pig XV

2011-04-12T09:34:00.012-04:00

The US spring orienteering season got kick-started the first weekend in April with the classic three-day event Flying Pig, organized by Orienteering Cincinnati. Below follows a report by guest columnist Nikolay Nachev of Cascade Orienteering, member of both the US Summer Orienteering and the US Ski-O Teams.

Nikolay is all smiles after winning Sunday's race

The past weekend I flew east to Cincinnati for the 15th annual Flying Pig orienteering event. This year the program included Middle distance race on Friday, the US Ultra Long National Championships on Saturday and another Middle distance race on Sunday.

The Cincinnati Orienteering club ( OCIN ) event is one of my favorite locations, and I have been using it to start up my summer orienteering season for several years now.

As for this year's event I just came back from Sweden competing for US in the Ski WOC, and was short on time to adjust to foot orienteering techniques as well as fight jet lag and heavy skiing legs. Surprisingly my running form was really good. I did not feel any sluggishness or heaviness in my legs as in prior Flying Pig years.

On Friday I did run strong throughout the course but made several navigational errors I am not proud of. As a first woods orienteering race for the season, my navigation was a bit sloppy and even though I tried to stay ahead in the orienteering, I was not precise with my compass, and did not slowed enough to look at details on the map. I end up 5 mins back from the winners with a 3 min mistake and multiple smaller mistakes.

Friday's blue course

Saturday was the Ultra Long US Championships race at Hueston Woods park and we had 19 km in store. I was excited as I was feeling in a good form and felt rested even after the hard race on Friday. Focus was not 100%. Started off the course a bit cautiously, but my goal was to push hard hoping the legs will last through the course. Made one big 3 min mistake on a short leg that I did not read the map correctly, and multiple sloppy small bubbles. But being behind or sloppy on my navigation did not stop me from being in control of my running, and there was a lot of it. In the middle of the course I felt that I am doing 10 K road race with pit stops every 4 – 5 mins to get in the forest pick a control or two and go back on the road. I think a more interesting course could have been created given the map and terrain.

The challenge with this course though was that the last 3 – 4 km we finally left the road and were doing all forest navigation. That comes to you as a huge surprise after running for almost 2 hours mostly on road more or less at orange level course with some compass bearings for spice here and there…

So some people made mistakes there, for me I lost steam and slowed down considerably after the 2 hour 10 min mark. Which is interesting as this is usually the length of my regular long runs in training.

Ultimately, Norwegian Anders Tiltnes on a college exchange program here in Texas was fastest with 2 hours and 1 min. Some 28 mins ahead of second place. Embarrassing? Not really… Anders is ranked 59 in the world, incidentally sharing the place with past world champion and multiple WOC medalist Mikhail Mamleev. On top of that looks like Anders is a Ultra long distance specialist as he finished 2^nd at the Norwegian Ultralong Championships ahead of most of the Norway’s orienteering elite. Hope to see and race Anders again here in US in the coming months.

First for the US championships eligible and second overall was Maricel Olaru from Chicago.

I finished 2^nd in the US Championships eligible runners and 4^th overall.

Sunday was the second middle distance race at a more technical and a bit dense part of Hueston Woods park. This ended up one of my best orienteering races in recent years. In the morning I was really surprised that I was not stiff and I was able to get out of my bed just fine. This does not happen to me usually even after 1 hour 40 min classic distance races let alone after 2:40 mins ultra long. It was another confirmation that the long running miles and skiing sessions in December and January were paying off, as much as this sounds like a cliché.

My mind felt fresh and rested as well, as I was able to get two good nights of sleep not waking up from the jet lag at 3 AM feeling fresh as a pickle.

From navigation and focus point of view, I can not say I had a good orienteering flow or I was “in the zone” before or during the race. On the contrary, as I was in my start minute and about to punch the SI box the start guy was about to hand me the map and I realized I did not have my compass….. ooops… Ran back to the clothing bag to fish for my jacket where I had left my compass. So I waited and started at the next available empty spot. Also during the run I was slowing down ( coming out of controls to look at my map and decide or reconfirm on a route choices) more than I usually do and this was annoying me actually. I caught myself several times slowing down to confirm what I need to do next, or check whether my route is good, and kicking myself mentally in the butt at the same time why am I slowing….

At the last 10 mins of the course my legs finally began to complain from the 3 days of running, and it was a struggle to keep pumping. The last kilometer of the course did not gave any room for rest to navigate, it was all compass bearing running in the flat open woods…

As I came back I realized that I have came in first: edged the Norwegian guy by a smudge, and put more than two minutes on the next North American.

Sunday's blue course

Later I was thinking about my Sunday run and trying to recapture the essence and feeling of it. What was going right, what did I do differently:

Short term /day of race factors:

I was mentally rested.

Physically the ultra long have taken the nervousness, the edge and the over-excitement and I was calm

Following my compass religiously

Slowing to read ahead and plan more than I usually do.

Wearing my Cascade OC Jersey (see picture)

Long term factors:

Solid base through the winter (good endurance and race recovery for the third day of racing)

Ski O training (strength training done on the ski and in the gym)

Experimenting with running technique (heel vs mid foot strike)

All in all I can't pinpoint one single thing and say because of that I had a good race. As usual nothing is black and white, but looks like there is no substitute for hard work. And some luck may be :)

You can see all courses from the weekend, along with route choices at OCIN's Route Gadget site.

Results and splits from the weekend are available at the Flying Pig webpage.

Already the best: IOF on Ali

2011-04-06T16:13:00.000-04:00

Someone at the IOF has noticed the great results by Ali Crocker in the past year and wrote about it here. Check it out!

More photos from Ski WOC

2011-03-30T17:11:00.007-04:00

Just a couple more photos of the cold snowy winter that we experienced in Sweden - now that everybody is back in our regular springtime abodes. These photos are all from the organizers.

Nikolay a bit boxed in at the start.
Nikolay again.
Greg in the mass start.

Adrian at the start of the Long distance.

Scott on the bridge.
Chaos at the back of the pack - taking the time to just chill out and read the map.
Greg after the long.

Start of the long distance - women.

Ali after finishing - she held off that Russian girl.
Alex coming in to the finish of the Long.

Alex done.

Robbie in the relay
Adrian

Ali in the relay.

Headcam guy.

Alex punching a control in the relay.

WCOC Training Camp Kicks off the Spring Season

2011-03-28T21:51:00.003-04:00

By guest writer and US Team member Jordan Laughlin:

Photo by Greg Balter

This past weekend, while the United States Ski-O team was competing in
Sweden, Western Connecticut Orienteering Club hosted a foot-O training
camp to shake off the rust of the long hard winter in the Northeast
and kick off the orienteering season on a great note. Becky Carlyle
and Boris Granovskiy designed the great courses. This week was the
first that I have been injury free in the last month as I suffered
from an injury in my foot from too much road running in January. It
was nice to get into the woods and run.

Saturday’s events at Osbornedale State Park had a ‘back to the basics
focus.’ The weather was sunny, a little windy, and cool. Most
trainees were wearing many layers during their events and even more
between them. The events, distance estimation and compass, line-O,
and control-picking courses each did a great job on breaking the rust
off our skills. The week prior to this training camp was the first
week I began to do any real orienteering training in the woods this
year due to the immense amount of snow in the woods prior so some of
my rust had already began to come off but the training event expedited
the process. I began with the compass course, which was my weakest
skill this week. I messed up the first few controls and redid them
for extra practice, both backward and forward. By the end of the
event, my compass skill was more proficient but still in a little need
for some assistance. Next up was the line-O, this started in a nice
green patch but moved to open woods characteristic of most of
Osbornedale. This was great practice reading contour features and
certain point features, no problems for me on this one. My last
morning course was the control-pick. I started immediately after I
returned from the line-o in fear of losing my body heat. I arrived at
the start just prior to Ian Smith starting. I approached this as a
good thing so that I could practice my focus while running around
other runners. Running the control-pick was entirely fun even with a
period of time where I was failing to run in the woods and just
tripping over everything and hitting trees left and right. After
finishing the control-pick, I began to rest, relax, and refuel for our
evening training event, sprint training on Yale’s campus on a very
good map-in-progress. Socializing with the different groups in the
cold prior to collecting controls for the morning was enjoyable as
always, especially since I have not seen anyone since early November.

Prior to beginning the sprint course at Yale we met up piece-meal at
Becky’s Apartment, a whole 200 meters away from the start and finish.
We received our map, clue sheet, and control description (A small bit
of pink tape) and instructions to the start. While waiting to cross
the street to the start, a passing couple initiated conversation
asking me what I was doing. Immediately after they asked the
question, they recognized the map and informed me that they
participated in orienteering events but only in the woods. Sweet,
orienteers. I finished the conversation and shuffled off to the
start. This race was immensely fun due to the extreme urban nature
and irregular building shape and size characteristic of European
sprints. Initially, I had some problems finding the pink tape but it
became much easier with time. One control was improperly clued and a
few map errors were found but nothing that degraded from the
extraordinary training value. Immediately following the sprint, my
clan of West Pointers that decided to come quickly departed, as we
greatly desired to get back to allow homework to be started and sleep
to be had. Unfortunately, we missed the dinner hosted by Marie
Arnesson, surely a great bonding event.

Sunday’s courses culminated the weekend in a mass start event with 42
unique courses. Peter Gagarin’s comments immediately prior to the
start did absolutely nothing to quell the competition in the air,
“This is the event we have been striving for the entire time, a race
that everyone can win.” The race began quickly as with all relay
races. I started bumbling around to a few different controls but
finding each in relatively quick fashion but it was rather unnerving
since I was completely alone. Yep, I still have some rust to break
off. After my first long leg, I caught up to Ross Smith and we ran
near each other going in and out until about 2/3 of the way into our
courses where I promptly made a terrible parallel error which resulted
in a 10+ min error, again all alone. I finished the remaining portion
of the course decently. Ross chalked up a win in our friendly
rivalry. I guess it was good that I did not agree to the bet for a
box of cheerios. Thanks again to Becky, Boris, WCOC, and the rest of
the people who assisted and showed up for a great training event to
kick off the season.

Jordan's QuickRoute from Sunday is here.

Only 9 weeks until team trials and 20 weeks until WOC!

Women 8th, Men 15th in Relay

2011-03-27T07:52:00.000-04:00

The competition week at SkiWOC finished with, of course, the relay, where each country battles it out for team glory. Racing for the US:

Men: Scott, Greg, Adrian
Women: Ali, Alex, Cristina

The men finished in 15th and the women in 8th. We'll get more details about the races up soon, but here are some pictures to keep you occupied in the meantime.

Adrian, just after finishing:

Cristina finishing:

Post-relay food consumption:

Getting warm in the garage by the finish:

Women's relay team:

Photos from the middle

2011-03-26T15:53:00.006-04:00

These are taken from the organizers, who say that we can publish the photos freely. Mostly of the guys:

Adrian, during a spell of good weather.
Greg.
Scott.

Sprint:
Ali finishing.
Greg somewhere on the course.

Some photos from the Long...

2011-03-26T15:00:00.003-04:00

We were all out racing, so not too many photos from during the race, but I did snap one of Scott powering to the finish, top American for the day! Ali may be our headline, but we should also give a shout out to Robbie Anderson, who barely squeaked into the top 40 for the guys, yea Canada!

Ali getting interviewed after the best US finish at Ski WOC ever!

Ali 8th in the Long!

2011-03-26T11:37:00.002-04:00

Here's a quick post-race interview with Ali after she finished 8th in the Long:

12th In Mixed Relay!

2011-03-25T05:53:00.001-04:00

Just a reminder that Greg and Ali finished 12th in the Mixed Relay. We hope to have the maps soon so that we can share those, too!

(Photo: Nick Barrable)

Video: Team USA at the Mixed Relay

2011-03-25T05:49:00.002-04:00

Team Sprint

2011-03-24T16:59:00.007-04:00

The team sprint was today, and Team Alligins (Ali and Biggins - the other option was Biggali) did quite well. Greg went first, and they each skied three legs. We all thought Ali was superman when she caught like ten teams on lap one, but unfortunately, that had been her short map, and the forks were quite different. We still ended up doing quite well, coming in 12th! If you think about it, this is actually remarkable - each country only gets one team, but, it's the BEST skier from each country! It was really exciting to watch, although the wind certainly made spectating a chilly activity.

The snow drifts were over the path to breakfast this morning. The groomer went leaping through it, squealing. I was very amused.

Nikolay with Greg's extra pole...

Mass start.

Greg after the turn, in the start.

The Russian fans were decked out - and their team won, which was quite the upset, as Finland had had a lead over Norway, and Russia was 20 seconds back going into the last leg.

The top four come into the tag zone.

Spain, New Zealand, and USA coming into the first tag. Ali proceeded to totally drop those girls, and we didn't see those teams again. Woo!

Some photos from Sprint and Middle

2011-03-23T15:54:00.007-04:00

Every race morning starts with Ali dancing around the room in her long underwear to our Ski WOC playlist.

Start tent for the sprint.

In the stadium waiting for the rest of the guys to come in.

Snow whipping off the mountaintop - preview of what was to come the next day.

It's for real! The girl from Tucson CAN ski! (or at least, she can pretend...)

Cristina post race.

Adrian after the middle race. It was snowing a little bit.

SkiWOC Middle Distance Recap

2011-03-23T15:54:00.000-04:00

Watch US Ski-O Team members talk about the races today in Tänndalen:

Blizzard!

2011-03-23T09:39:00.000-04:00

Spring? What's that?

For the middle distance race today we were served a healthy dose of blizzard. Lots of snow and a good bit of wind to make it more interesting.

The heavy snow and moderate wind of course made the skiing more physical, but it also made the navigation very tricky. Often you could not see the tracks at all, as it only took a few minutes for new snow to cover over where someone else had skied. Even the wide, groomed XC trails (normally as clear as a two-lane road) were hard to pick up! This led to some interesting orienteering by many of the competitors.

Ali had another great result, 18th place again, while Greg Walker was best for the men. Ali was wearing a GPS tracker, so you can watch her little dot move around the map against other little dots (Part 1 and Part 2). You can see the men's map (none of our men were tracked), Part 1 and Part 2.

Our results (full results:

Women
1. Polina Matchikova, RUS 39:52
18. Alison Crocker, USA 48:45
30. Alex Jospe, USA 59:45
45. Cristina Luis, USA 1:26:00
52 starters

Men
1. Staffan Tunis, FIN 40:13
51. Greg Walker, USA 58:33
60. Scott Pleban, USA 1:02:57
62. Adrian Owens, USA 1:05:17
67. Nikolay Nachev, USA 1:09:49
78 starters

Stay tuned for some post-race interviews!

The Boys do the Sprint

2011-03-22T17:12:00.000-04:00

Get your sprint on!

2011-03-22T17:07:00.002-04:00

A great day for Team USA in the sprint, with a spectacular 18th place finish by Ali!

Summary of results:

Women
1. Tove Alexandersson, SWE 15:11
18. Alison Crocker, USA 17:09
24. Alex Jospe, USA 18:55
47. Cristina Luis, USA 37:09
53 starters

Men
1. Olli-Markus Taivainen, FIN 18:04
49. Greg Walker, USA 25:22
52. Adrian Owens, USA 26:55
53. Scott Pleban, USA 26:41
65. Nikolay Nachev, USA 35:13
76 starters

You can see results and splits on the SkiWOC 2011 website, plus GPS tracking for the women and the men. AND, there's video footage on the ski-O streaming channel.

Some photos from Tänndalen

2011-03-21T16:32:00.015-04:00

We're all settled in and ready to take ridiculous photos, and I know Ali has a couple more excellent ones that need sharing. Spirits are good around here, I think we better do some racing soon, though, to work off some of this energy.

This is in the waxing building - it has two floors, and it seems all the english-speaking countries are on the top floor (mmm, fluoro fumes!), and the big teams are below. I think we're looking down at Finland's area, there. The Americans, on the other hand, are either having way more fun or having way more technical issues with their waxing setup.

Various countries testing skis and wax, on the one tiny area of the model event that is suitable for that sort of thing.

They had the model nicely set up, with a full pre-start and download station, so you could see how it would go.

We're using touch-free EMIT, so really all you have to do is ski under the bags and sort of wave your arm. The sensor on your arm keeps flashing for five seconds or so, so you can double check to make sure you punched.

Studious. In our cozy suite.

This is the bridge that we get to ski over. Cristina was having some doubts as to whether she could make it up the steep side, but I think tomorrow we get to ski down it.

The screen at the opening ceremonies. Unfortunately, the IOF logo was all it ever displayed, unless you also count the blue screen of windows death, as they tried to get it to play a welcoming video. Whoops.

Alex skis the model...

2011-03-21T16:21:00.001-04:00

... and tests the no-touch EMIT, and tastes some snow:

Final Preparations

2011-03-21T16:03:00.002-04:00

Today we had a chance to get out on (hopefully) really relevant terrain for the competitions this week. The model event took place on terrain adjacent to the competition terrain, using the same types of trails and the no-touch EMIT punching system. Here's a 1:5000 version of the model area:

We know some of you don't ski-O and are wondering about all the green lines. The dashed green lines are narrow trails (1-1.5m) made by snowmobiles. They're generally too narrow to get in a full skate, so there's a lot of double poling. The green/white boxed lines are established snowmobile trails, which here seem to be almost as wide as the groomed trails you find at resorts. Solid green lines are wide trails. Most of the skiing takes place on the green trails, since they're but you don't have to stick to them.

Tomorrow is the first race - the Sprint! Everyone's racing, so stay tuned for results and reports!

Team USA Ski-o invades Sweden

2011-03-20T15:56:00.002-04:00

Ali, Alex, Cristina, Greg, and Nikolay have arrived at Tänndalen, Sweden, for the World Ski Orienteering Championships. The girls and Greg were just in Mora for a couple days, getting rid of the jet lag, and doing some super-secret-swedish-ski-o-training. Nikolay arrived yesterday, and Scott and Adrian arrive later tonight. We had a most delicious dinner of lasagna, and determined that Swedish butter tastes better than American butter.

Meanwhile, we're gearing up for the model:

2011 Standing Team Announced

2011-02-14T23:13:00.000-05:00

The U.S. Standing Team Selection Committee (Kris Beecroft, Vladimir Gusiatnikov and Kristin Hall) is pleased to announce the selection of the following orienteers for the 2011 U.S. Orienteering Team (Foot-O):

A - Men: Eric Bone (COC), Ross Smith (CSU)
A - Women: Alison Crocker (CSU), Samantha Saeger (NEOC), Sandra Zurcher (RMOC, OLG Bern)

B - Men: Eddie Bergeron (SVO), Boris Granovskiy (CSU), Jordan Laughlin (USMAOC), Wyatt Riley (DVOA), Matt Scott (DVOA), Sergei Zhyk (HVO)
B - Women: Pavlina Brautigam (WCOC), Erin Nielsen (UNO)

C - Men: Leif Anderson (RMOC), Nikolay Nachev (COC), Mikell Platt (LROC), Ken Walker Jr. (CSU)
C - Women: Hannah Burgess (USMAOC), Alex Jospe (CSU), Cristina Luis (DVOA), Ekaterina Orekhova (CSU), Angelica Riley (DVOA), Karen Williams Middleton (CSU)

Selection is based on A-meet M/F21 performances during the preceding year with preference given to championship events, the Team Trials, and rankings. In the case of potential members living abroad, the committee considers their known competition results and training regimens. It is from this list -- which is sub-divided into A, B, and C -- that orienteers are eligible to represent Orienteering USA in IOF-sanctioned elite events.

The criteria for placement on the A, B and C lists are:

"A" list: Those who, if we were naming a squad now for a major international competition, would almost certainly be included.
"B" list: Those from whom you could reasonably expect the rest of the major international squad to come.
"C" list: Those who lack fitness due to injury, experience, or consistency to regularly challenge those on the "A" or "B" lists, although they can and do on any given day.

Congratulations to all who have been named to the team, especially those who are on the team for the first time! Train hard and win!

Team USA Orienteers of the Year!

2011-01-29T14:06:00.003-05:00

Orienteering USA have announced the competitive award winners for 2010. Samantha Saeger, pictured above, was named the Orienteer of the Year based on her awesome results at national and international events. The other winners:

Junior Orienteer of the Year: Hannah Burgess

Comet of the Year: Alison Crocker
Honorable Mention: Jordan Laughlin

Orienteering Team of the Year: Team USA at the North American Orienteer

Read the full announcement on the Orienteering USA page.

Call for nominations for top US orienteer!

2010-12-14T22:48:00.002-05:00

Orienteering USA Competitive Awards

The newly-established Orienteering USA Annual Competitive Awards Program is looking for nominations! The Program’s goals are to recognize and reward outstanding competitive accomplishments by US orienteers at the end of every year.

The Program has created a subcommittee that will solicit nominations from Orienteering USA membership for several different awards, listed below and will select a deserving winner of each award by the end of the year. The winners will be announced and receive prizes. Commemorative plaques will be awarded to the winners at a public ceremony at a major US orienteering event.

The awards are:

(a) Orienteer of the Year is awarded to the best USA orienteer in 2010, based on results at national and international events.

(b) Junior Orienteer of the Year is awarded to the best USA orienteer no older than 20 in 2010, based on results at national and international events.

(c) Comet of the Year is awarded to the most improved USA orienteer in 2010, based on results at national and international events.

(d) Orienteering Team of the Year is awarded to the best USA national or club orienteering team in 2010, based on results at national and international events.

Eligibility rules:

To be awarded any of the individual awards a nominee has to be a USA citizen and must be a member of Orienteering USA in good standing during the current calendar year. Additionally, for the Junior Orienteer of the Year award, the nominee must be no older than 20 at the end of 2010. To be selected to the Orienteering Team of the Year award, all team members have to be Orienteering USA members and represent the US or an Orienteering USA member club in competition.
Competitors in any forms of orienteering are eligible, including Foot-O, Ski-O, Mt.Bike-O, Trail-O, and ROGAINE.

The subcommittee making final selections from among those who were nominated consists of:
Michael Eglinski (former US Team member, widely-read orienteering blogger),
Peter Gagarin (former US Team member, coach, ESC chairman),
Boris Granovskiy (US team member, frequent US JWOC team leader),
Linda Kohn (ESC chairwoman, former US Team member),

Peter Goodwin (Orienteering USA VP Competition), committee chair.

Please send nominations (due December 22^nd) for any or all of the awards, along with a brief discussion of why the nominee deserves to win, to the subcommittee chair, presently Peter Goodwin at pgwolfe66 at gmail.com.

Samantha Saeger and Ross Smith win Classic Champs!

2010-10-19T10:36:00.002-04:00

Samantha Saeger and Ross Smith dominated the Classic Champs this weekend, both winning decisively on Saturday and Sunday. Final two-day results are here, top three men and women:

Women:

Samantha Saeger

Alison Crocker

Pavlina Brautigam

Men:

Ross Smith

Sergei Zhyk

William Hawkins

Congratulations to all the medalists!

Classic Champs Day 1: Sam and Ross in the lead

2010-10-16T19:04:00.003-04:00

This weekend is the US Classic Champs at Moreau Lake State Park, New York. The terrain is glacial and fantastic and the weather has held up, despite early predictions of rain.

The Classic Champs is a two-day combined time event, so the winner will not be determined until tomorrow. Leading the women after the first day is Samantha Saeger, who ran the 6.8km in about 62 minutes, with Ali Crocker just 2.5 minutes back. The men's course was dominated by Ross Smith, who ran the 9.6km course in just under 69 minutes. Sergei Zhyk was just over 3 minutes behind.

WOC Sprint Qualifiers

2010-08-08T07:01:00.003-04:00

WOC 2010 got off to a great start for the US women, with Samantha Saeger and Alison Crocker taking places in this afternoon's sprint final after great races in the morning's qualifier. Samantha was 14th in her heat and had to push hard in the end to qualify - she had the fastest time in her heat from the pre-warning to the finish and made the final with just 4 seconds to spare! Alison made the final in her first WOC race ever, coming 13th in her heat. Sandra Zurcher also had a solid race and finished just three places outside the final.

The maps from the sprint qualifying races are available here.

Interview with Keith after the Long

2010-07-07T15:37:00.002-04:00

Wicked tough long at JWOC...

2010-07-07T14:39:00.003-04:00

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

2010-07-05T11:02:00.003-04:00

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

2010-07-03T09:12:00.019-04:00

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!

JWOC team training in Aalborg!

2010-06-30T16:11:00.001-04:00

Okay USA orienteering fans, here's your first update from Aalborg, site of the 2010 Junior World Orienteering Championships. It'll be quick because we're all tired from a long day of training today at Vester Torup.

The entire team of 6 men and 3 women has been here in Aalborg since Sunday evening, moving into our accommodations in the Aalborg barracks on Monday. It's a bit tight with all 12 of us (runners + 3 coaches) in one room, but it's a great bonding experience. We had our first training on Monday afternoon on a map of terrain that is adjacent to the barracks and quite convenient, though not the most relevant for JWOC this year. On Tuesday we headed out to a relay relevant area, and of course today on a middle/long area. The terrain is interesting and unlike what most of us have experience with back home, which makes for a great training experience and hopefully some interesting racing!

That's it for today, short update. Tomorrow is a rest day for the training week and the opening ceremony is on Sunday afternoon, but stay tuned for more updates before then!

Team for WOC 2010!

2010-05-17T16:42:00.003-04:00

The Team Trials were held this past weekend at Harriman State Park in New York, and as a result the following were named to represent the USA at the World Championships in Trondheim, Norway, in August:

Women
Samantha Saeger, New England OC
Alison Crocker, Cambridge Sports Union
Erin Nielsen, Up North Orienteers
Pavlina Brautigam, Western Connecticut OC
Sandra Zürcher, Up North Orienteers

Cristina Luis, Tucson OC, 1st alternate
Kat Orekhova, Cambridge Sports Union, 2nd alternate

Men
Ross Smith, Cambridge Sports Union
Eric Bone, Cascade OC
Boris Granovskiy, Cambridge Sports Union (declined)
Ken Walker, Cambridge Sports Union (declined)
Eddie Bergeron, Susquahanna Valley Orienteering
Wyatt Riley, Delaware Valley OA (declined)
Nikolay Nachev, Cascade OC
Matt Scott, Delaware Valley OA

Jordan Laughlin, US Military Academy OC, 1st alternate
Clem McGrath, Delaware Valley OA, 2nd alternate

Cristina Luis will serve as Team Leader.

This will be the first World Championships for Alison, Nikolay, and Matt.

Many thanks are due to the small but highly skilled group of organizers of the Trials, especially event director Vadim Masalkov, course setters Greg Balter and Sergei Zhyk, and e-punch guru Sandy Fillebrown. The event was sponsored by the Delaware Valley Orienteering Association and Amino Vital.

US Team to WUOC Announced!

2010-02-24T23:56:00.002-05:00

From Linda Kohn:

I am very proud to announce the selection of the World University Orienteering Championships Team to go to Borlänge, Sweden in July:

Men
Leif Anderson, RMOC
Nick Lewis-Walls, USMAOC (declined)
John Hensley-Williams, GAOC
Brendan Shields, CSU
Keith Andersen, USMAOC
Jordan Laughlin, USMAOC
Kevin Culberg (alt.) USMAOC

Women
Hannah Burgess, USMAOC
Holly Kuestner, BOK
Tori Borish, COC
Alison Campbell, DVOA
Lori Huberman (1st alt.) BOK
Siobhan Fleming (2nd alt.) NEOC

I hope that you will support the WUOC team as they prepare for the Championships. We have a start in raising the $7000 needed to pay entry/room/board expenses (athletes pay their own airfare) thanks to the generousity of BOK who donated the procedes from the Sycamore Scramble to the team. We still have a ways to go!

Moral support is as important as financial so please be encouraging to our athletes as they continue to prepare to represent the US at WUOC.

Chase The Sun Trail Run

2010-01-24T18:38:00.011-05:00

On January 23, the small contingent of US Team members currently in Tucson, AZ for a winter training camp organized a trail run to benefit the Team. The run took place just before sunset at Ironwood, the site of a Tucson Orienteering Club event earlier in the day, and was called the Chase The Sun Trail Run.

Eric Bone designed and marked the course for the small, but enthusiastic group of 13 runners who showed up at the start line. The race went well, and the competitors appeared to enjoy the race, as well as the snacks and hot chocolate available at the finish.

We are hoping to make this race an annual fundraiser for the US Team, and hope that the positive reports from the race (here and here) help draw a bigger crowd next year!

Eric Bone giving the pre-race instructions

Just before the finish

Paul, the race winner

Kristen, the first woman

Chia-Chi is clearly enjoying the race

Everyone is having a good time!

The best part of a trail race: the snacks and chatting afterwards!

Saguaro at sunset

Western Regional Ultimate String-O Champs

2010-01-18T20:36:00.007-05:00

This past weekend, US Team members organized a creative fundraiser at the event at Anza-Borrego State Park near San Diego, CA. We would like to present to you the Western Regional Ultimate String-O Championships:

Approximately 40 gutsy orienteering runners came out to challenge Marc Lauenstein and Daniel Hubmann in the Sonoran Desert Ultimate String-O Championships. The demanding .176km, 20 control course had a grueling 4m of climb and an exciting variety of terrain. Top runs of the day:

Daniel Hubmann (SUI): 49s (5th attempt)
Jonas Kjall (SWE): 54s (2nd attempt)
Marc Lauenstein (SUI): 55s (3rd attempt)
Raffael Huber (SUI): 55s (1st attempt)
Eric Bone (USA): 58s (2nd attempt)
Mark Everett (USA): 59s (1st attempt)
Greg Walker (USA): 59s (2nd attempt)
Highlights from the Ultimate String-O event at Anza-Borrego.

A promising Junior-Junior by the name of Beau wowed spectators with his determination and punching ability on all four of his sub-2:00 runs. Fans were also impressed by the smooth punching and speed of multiple World Champion Daniel "Punchmaster" Hubmann. But the style points go to Marc "Flashpants" Lauenstein, whose triple muntz jump over a particularly large creosote bush drew gasps from the crowd.

Competitors and spectators alike all agree that Ultimate String-O is here to stay.

Jonas Kjäll

Greg "Biggins" Walker

Eric Bone - fastest North American

"Flashpants"

Beau!

Course Analysis: Wyatt Riley at Camp Horseshoe

2010-01-12T13:28:00.005-05:00

It's time for our weekly (sort-of) course analysis, and this week we have a write-up by Wyatt Riley from Delaware Valley Orienteering Association (DVOA)'s local race on December 6, 2009 at Horseshoe Camp. Follow along as Wyatt does his best to try to capture DVOA's annual rankings crown at the final race of the season.

Here is Wyatt:

The race map is available on RouteGadget: http://www.dvoa.org/cgi/gadget/reitti.cgi?act=map&id=102&kieli=en
Select the Red course to see the course without any routes, and then choose "Wyatt Riley" and click "View routes" to see what Wyatt did.
The splits from this race are available here.

S-1: Before the race: - I was well behind Clem in the DVOA rankings, but not impossibly out of reach - theoretically a 115 point run - 16% faster than my average run relative to the rest of the field - could have gotten me past Clem, to take the 2009 DVOA Ranking Championships. This was also my first orienteering race since a foot injury at the US Champs - I had been running road races on the foot, and had tried some terrain, so I was hoping it would handle the run. An Active Ankle was added protection. And with an attitude that I needed a perfect run, I set off. See http://www.dvoa.org/cgi/gadget/reitti.cgi?act=map&id=102&kieli=en Upon flipping the map over, I saw that the control was through the 'maze' of trails and briar that I had seen on the map before, and talked to Vadim & Angelica about - I had never been there though. I aimed in the general direction and followed the paths of least resistance - keeping track of where I was going, and how far off the compass bearing I was leaning, and I eventually corrected back to the left, through a bit too much briar, whereupon I read the map enough to see I could get to a trail, then take that basically the rest of the way. Looked for the reentrant with respect to a small building or two, and knew I had the end of the hill and pool behind it as solid catching and relocation features so didn't slow down. Angelica found a better route out of the start going first left, then basically straight down a trail and won this split - ahead of both Clem & I.

1-2: A whole bunch of green on the line, and left around was the only real option, so I did that, with a bit of trail up front, the roughly following the edge of the green and the base of the hill, and looking for the relatively large reentrant to cross then look for the bag. Clem really flew on this - perhaps I was slowish along the edge of the green?

2-3: Decided that around left looked reasonable, and a lot easier than finding a way through the trails and briar on any straighter route. Exit climbed a bit to cut the corner - too far to try to avoid the climb. Read ahead on the flat along the water to note the various ditches, and the unique north pointing one to use as references on the way into the control, intentionally going in a bit high along the indistinct trail, partly to be sure, and partly because of unmapped veg. thickness. Clem again was quite fast - perhaps I could have run more aggressive, esp. in the flats - it was bumpy and perhaps I was being cautious due to the foot?

3-4: Followed the obvious exit route through the green to the large trail, then contoured in from there, intentionally doing the needed climb earlier to be closer to the building reference points.

4-5: Could have contoured, but didn't want to risk more green than necessary, so the hard bail up to the road, then fast road run was the way to go. Used tower on right to just distance on road, saw reentrant, and went in a bit late as the veg looked a bit better.

5-6: Bailed to the road, then pushed hard up the road. Decided to attack from the road as it began to curve, hard across spur, then contour in. Looking now, I probably could have used the power pole on the other side of the road as a more specific attack point, for a straighter attack in, while would've saved 5+ seconds.

6-7: Bailing to the road works, as the road is fast vs. the forest here. Trail crossing made for easy attack.

7-8: After some road running - where I knew I wasn't going to beat people by enough to get 115 points, I tried to push this one hard too on a bearing, but was too vague on the bearing, missing the large trail somehow and then turning left because I was getting too far. Suspected (correctly) that I was in the forest 'spur' - the veg being vague enough that the suspicious wasn't totally confident. Green near the end was bad to had to drop south, and wasn't super confident as I kept going east and eventually saw the bag as I turned the corner.

8-9: West to aim for the slot, which didn't exist, but fortunately I'd come in quite near there so backed out w/o too much loss.

9-10: Diagonal down - not super fast as it wasn't smooth enough, then a hard push across and up the hill, aiming for 'near the top of the spur' from where I'd contour in.

10-11: Considered going left to avoid the potentially green forest, but the attack from there was terrible, so straight in it was. Mostly rough compass and then contouring to the sharper spur, then rough direction down in and nailed it. Clem appparenetly nailed it too with exactly the same plan. Odd, as it would seem that plan might more easily miss by 10's of meters...

11-12: Running in medium green didn't seem like a fun option, and the L option seems like neutral on climb/distance vs. curving R, but with much more certainty, so L it was. Attack was easy past the pile of rocks.

12-13: Straight, using hill-slope and fence.

13-14: Contouring straight, climbing when needed to get around thick stuff in order to ascend the needed contour. Adjusted elevation of contouring based on wall bend.

14-15: Strongly considering diagonaling down the hill to the ruin and running back up the road, but the green near 11 hadn't been that bad, and the terrain was bumpy enough that I wouldn't get that much value out of the somewhat steep drop down to the ruin, vs. a more gentle contour/slight-drop toward the green. Keep my eyes scouting ahead, and managed to find a way through the clumpy green that wasn't too bad, only costing a bit of climb at the end to get around some thick stuff.

15-16: Decided to climb on the dirt road for better footing. Road was badly gouged and rocky, but I could still place my feet on solid rocks with almost every step, ensuring little loss of effort. Looked out toward the spur, and realized I'd need to contour in early to avoid the deeper part of the ditch, so did so then climbed.

16-17: Even the non-rocky slopes weren't esp. great downhill, so the left option was looking bad. Right wasn't good either, due to the 4 contours of climb you weren't going to get back, but that seemed the lesser of two evils, so right it was. Keeping in the relative flats away from the steep slope was useful for better footing, and the descent was reasonably fast. I had just passed Angelica (and apparently Alison too) at 16, so was pushing up the hill. Angelica was quick though, and a little hesitation checking my elevation as I went around the spur toward 17 was all it took for her to reel me back in a bit.

17-18: Pretty straight. Seemed to go over a slightly broader spur than the map suggest, but the compass was good, and eventually the hill pointed down. Note that some e-punch units between 13 and 18 probably weren't perfectly synced, as the splits in here don't make that much sense.

18-19: Hard as I could diagonal down to the road - bumpy but running aggressively as I knew I was near the end. Really hammered the road once I got there. And yet I was third on this split, behind Clem in 2nd, and Angelica (chasing me) in 1st...

19-20: Hammered down the road knowing there was nothing but physical effort needed here to get me a few more points, and to possible break 50... Eventually noticed that the end of the leg would require some eyes-open as the drop from the road to the field started quite steep, was much thornier than mapped.

20-21: Used the white & yellow - pretty pattern here... Ran straight to the pole, and was about to be alarmed at no bag on it when I was surprised to see the bag in the ditch to the side - oh.

21-22: One final hard climb as the possibility of sub 50 was hearilty destroyed by a bit of thick at the beginning, but mostly by the 35m of climb in this 'finish chute'. Navigated first perpendicular to contours, then along the paved road, which was good, because some buildings had changed, which threw off Clem. Overall, I was actually surprised to learn after I finished that Clem had shown up, and pleasantly surprised that I had nipped him by 2 minutes on the day. It wasn't quite enough however, so the DVOA rankings cup http://www.dvoa.org/rank/show_champs.php will go to Clem for 2009. For 2010, we'll both have our hands full, as Angelica & Karen have imported an apparently fast Swedish couple into our neighborhood...

Course Analysis: Boris Granovskiy at Tiomila

2010-01-06T20:11:00.011-05:00

Happy New Year to all US Team fans!
This week's course review brings us back to spring 2008 and Tiomila, the legendary Swedish 10-person relay, which was held next to the Rosersberg Castle north of Stockholm. Boris ran the 4th leg, the famous "Long Night" leg, for Team CSU (Cambridge Sports Union), the first ever North American team to race Tiomila.

Boris:
The weather this week-end was very un-Tiomila-like: 15-20C during the day and well above freezing even at night. We watched the women's relay in the afternoon, getting to cheer for Sandra Zurcher as she ran away from Simone Niggli on her leg.
After Ross Smith's start on leg 1 I went back to the military tent and crawled into my sleeping bag outside under the stars, relaxing and listening to the reports from the forest. I dozed off for about the half-hour it took the leaders to get from the spectator control to the finish, and that was all the sleep I got.
After Ross and Matthias Mahr ran the first two legs, Brendan Shields did a solid job in his first-ever Swedish orienteering experience and exchanged to me in 293rd place and 88 minutes behind the lead, just a couple of minutes behind Jesus Orienteering Klubb from England's Oxford University, catching which became my first goal.
Somehow, right from the start of my Long Night, I felt great. My legs felt light, and it took very little effort to focus on the orienteering. The constant pain in my glute was the only reminder of my less-than-impressive orienteering season 2008. The brand-new lamp battery I bought two weeks ago gave me confidence that I wouldn't run out of light, but I turned it to low power on all the trail and road sections anyway.

Here is the map with just the course:

And here it is with the routes:
[On this map, Boris' routes are marked in red, and the alternatives he considered in magenta.]

S-1: Leaving the start triangle, I saw a bunch of lamps heading left across the field, taking the around route choice on trails. I went right instead, running by myself, and stuck closer to the line, taking the small trail north from the first aid station. There was a moment of self-doubt when I cut into the green forest heading to the northwest and towards he control, but that was replaced with a boost of confidence when I saw the reflector and JOK's Ian Cumpstey punching just ahead of me. In retrospect, this was a pretty risky approach, with no clear attackpoint in the night, but I had done a lot of night training that winter, and this was practically home terrain for me, so I was confident.

1-2: On the looong leg to 2, I didn't really see any route choice and went pretty straight. I felt like I needed to break this leg up into shorter pieces, and my first goal was to hit the road near the aid station, which I did almost perfectly. The next aim was to hit the second road at the bend, where the trail comes off to the NE. I just missed it, but checked the direction of the road and knew I was off to the right. I then drifted off line trying to catch the road to the southwest of 2, but recovered fairly quickly, knowing that I just needed to run hard to the road and not attempt to relocate in the vague flat woods.

2-3: Careful here, still all alone. Over the top of the hill to be safe, past the obvious cairn, and down.

3-4: Aimed a bit left to hit the top of the small ridge and then followed it down to the control.

4-5: Saw the two route choices to 5 and went left, on the roads and trails, rather than risking going through the fields to the north that could, for all I knew, contain waist-high grass. [From talking to other runners later and looking at splits, it turned out that the field route would have been at least a minute faster!] Passed one more guy shortly after getting on the road, but was then alone in complete darkness, just running along and enjoying the feeling. As I was contouring along from the trail towards 5, I suddenly looked right and saw a sea of lamps (10-15 of them) coming in from my right. Wasn't sure if I caught them or they me (probably the former), but it didn't matter.

5-6: I decided to shake them. Saw that they went more-or-less straight to 6, contouring along the steep slope, and so I took off on the trail route around, through the small field on top of the hill. I liked the road approach to the control and did not want to contour. A couple of guys went with me. Spiked 6 and saw the group of lamps coming in as we were on the way out. Excellent. Very happy with this leg.

6-7: Another route choice to 7: northern road past the shooting ranges or southern one with the indistinct trail as an attack. The guys I was with tried to convince me (in Norwegian!) to go south. I went north, not wanting to risk the indistinct trail not being there, and never saw them again. All alone the whole way to 7, through the empty spooky shooting ranges and along the hillside. Hit the long nose north of the circle, then climbed up to the top of the ridge to be sure of dropping down at the right spot.

7-8: Careful again on the short legs to 8-11, not losing any time, but hitting my knee hard on a rock on the way to 8 and having to walk for a bit. Annoying. Climbed the hill, which loomed gigantic out of the darkness, and aimed a bit left to make sure to hit the ridge leading me right to the control. (My thinking this whole night was to make my targets bigger - instead of aiming for a single feature with the control on it, I tried finding bigger or longer features that would lead me right to the flag, like the ridge here.)

8-9: Back up again, then down, keep the smaller hill to my left, then climb up, over the top again to be sure, and drop down.

9-10: Again wanted to stay high here, so left the control aiming a bit left to make sure I hit the hill. Up and down over the first three hilltops, then to the top of the third one.

10-11: Flying down the ridge. Almost got distracted by a control on a rock to my right, but checked the map and saw the clear spur I should be following. No problem.

11-12: Feeling great running through the meadow down to 12, trampling the occasional flower and spiking another control.

12-13-14-15: Just running, listening to the announcers and admiring the masses of lamps running in and out of the exchange area.

15-16: Finally, climbing the hill on the way to 16, I realized I was very tired. Lost focus twice on this leg and drifted north of the line for a total of nearly 2 minutes lost. I definitely did not have a plan for this leg and paid for it. Stopped when I found the control and regrouped, forcing myself to concentrate harder in this tricky area - would be a shame to ruin a good race towards the end!

16-17: Orienteered well to 17, but moving slowly, and staying with a small pack of a couple of guys I caught. A pretty easy leg: run down the indistinct trail, cut SW toward the steep hill, run around the hill, and attack into the group of small knolls on the other side.

17-18: Skirting the top of the big reentrant and trying not to drop down too low. Spotted the reflector from above.

18-19: Slow climb back up the hill, cursing the course setters for the unnecessary leg.

19-20: Picked a route that avoided climb, but did not have a safe attack - another sign that I was rapidly fading. Managed to contour ok, but was definitely relieved to find the flag.

20-21: Screwed up 21, going too far right and not being sure of myself. Relocated on the trail. About 50 seconds gone.

21-22: Went past the building and was momentarily confused by the steep earth bank / reentrant in front of me, which I had not seen on the map.

22-23: From there, all that was left was to slog along through the mud down to 23 and then leave it all on the run-in. As I was finishing, I realized that it was starting to get light.

I had been out for 114 minutes and exchanged to Greg Walker in 254th place. I was very happy with my run, even though my time was not particularly impressive (177th on my leg is nothing to write home about.) Still, I survived, orienteered well and ran mostly by myself. More importantly, I had a blast - long night at Tiomila truly is something special, and I am really thankful to CSU for giving me the opportunity to run it!

Course Analysis: Sandra Zurcher in Trondheim

2009-12-14T23:14:00.002-05:00

This week's US Team course analysis comes from a training camp for WOC 2010 in Trondheim that Sandra attended this fall together with the Swiss O-Team.

September 1st, 2009

In this training we had the objective to use the swamps as much as possible as navigational help. As this was only the 2nd day in the training camp and the first 2 trainings didn’t go very well for me, I was pleasantly surprised and also relieved to find some flow and confidence during this training. For the most part, I ran well and I felt like I understood how the terrain was mapped. I made a pretty big route choice error (control 6) and a parallel error (control 7), which were due to not being familiar with the terrain yet.

Here is a control-to-control analysis:

Start -1: The start was pretty tricky, because the terrain is really quiet vague. I basically ran on a compass and saw the change in the contours as I headed uphill. I felt pretty relieved to find the control right there where I thought it should be. I would not have had a good concept for relocating, since I wouldn’t have know if I was too far to the left or right. This can be a problem on the hillsides in Trondheim, they are vague and it’s hard to relocate.

1-2: With this initial wake-up call, I decided to run the next leg using the swamps (like we were told to) and therefore having a more precise plan. It was the safer way to run this control, but that turned out to be a good thing. Others had trouble with this one. I potentially could have used the lower swamp and the stream running in the direction of my control.

2-3: The yellow swamps light up in the forest really well and are great objects to use for navigation. I used the small swamp up the hill, out of the control, to the bigger yellow swamp. Afterwards, I used the stream down to the big yellow swamp. Saw the hunting stand at one edge and went along the hillside to the stream. Ran along the stream for a moment and then up the hill on the other side to the bigger swamp and then ran the swamp all the way to the control.

3-5: Straight shot to both controls

5-6: I took a bad route choice. My problem is that I didn’t see the bridge across the big stream just south of the line. I also thought it would be fast to get out to the road, but this actually felt like it took a long time. I guess it was way too distance, especially in this type of terrain, which is really quiet runnable and fast. The 2nd half of my route choice was good, using the swamps.

6-7: Left the control using my compass and seeing the small white patch in the swamp first and than the two green patches later. I must have drifted up a little after the green patches and did a parallel error, mixing up the forest patches, thinking I was running in the lower swamp. This doesn’t make sense in retrospect, because the swamp would have been open to the north, and I ran between two forest patches. I relocated on the two rocks. Nice to have a feature like that, it would have been trickier without them.

7-8: Surfing the swamps. This is when a good phase kicked in and I really “saw” everything I wanted to see.

8-9: Used the swamp to head down the hill and then saw the rock at the end of the swamp.

9-10: Contoured around the small hill and through the yellow swamp. Then went a little further on my compass and hit the small stream, kept going on my compass and the control appeared.

10-11: Used the small swamp running downhill and then used my compass in the forest until the hillside got steeper. Saw the cliff just below me and went around to the left of it and down to my control. The nose was not clear here and the terrain was pretty deep and tough, but everything had been correct up until then, so I just went down a little further and there it was.

11-12: Popped over into the yellow swamp, than contoured in the forest until the next swamp and followed it until I saw the swamp coming up from below and the control.

12-13: Ran the swamp down hill and kept on my compass. Simone Niggli passed me here and I tried to keep up with her running downhill. She is really very skilled at downhill running. I had trouble being as agile and limber. Landed in the big yellow swamp below and ran on the road for a few steps before running in the swamp around the hill. Ran through the big swamp into the woods and to the control.

13-14: Decided to climb a little and run the swamp on top (because they are SO great for navigating!!) and saw the small knoll at the end of the long flat hilltop and well as the vegetation boundary.

14-15: Ran on a compass down the hill, but it was pretty junky, so I got off my compass bearing. Ended up too far to the right and ran along the river back to the control.

Overall it was a good training, and it is really easy to learn from the two larger mistakes as well. I really enjoyed the accuracy and flow I had from 7 to 14. I think (or better said, I hope) that there will be orienteering like this in the middle distance at WOC. I also think that the long distance will have orienteering like the beginning 8 controls.

Course Analysis: Nikolay Nachev at Salmon La Sac

2009-12-09T15:55:00.002-05:00

This week's course review is by Nikolay Nachev from a race he ran at the Pacific Northwest Orienteering Festival in June 2009.

Long Sunday June 28

I had a steady and consistent training building up to the Northwest O festival, and felt good during the event. Had a good run on the middle distance on Saturday, and in spite of being a bit sore, felt good Sunday morning on the day of the long distance. Here are the results from the day for reference:

http://www.obasen. nu/winsplits/ online/en/ default.asp? page=table&databaseId=12075&categoryId=0

While warming up I thought about starting with a safe route and not too fast, not to blow up from the start. I did not have any specific tactics how to approach the race or what to focus on, and was just repeating myself to slow down and look at my map as much as possible…Ah, and Oysten was starting 16 mins behind me, and given the many results from the whole spring and summer, it was a stretch goal not to catch me up. The GPS track is somewhat zigzagging too much because (later I noticed ) my Garmin was set to Least Smoothing option that introduces some noise to the GPS track.

Here is my run:

Start – 1. While running on the road to 1 I looked for my route for 2 and did not see the indistinct trail. In the green the black indistinct trail looked to me as a form line and I did not consider this as a route choice at all. Punched and turn back through the start.

1 - 2. Ran on the road as fast as I can, and just before the left bend on the road climbed up through CP15. From there to 2 it was a slow going and I was making sure I follow my compass, then I noticed the big cliff/hill that is on the right of my control and ran to it through the green. The splits show 40” - 60” lost here. What I take from this error is that I still need to slow a bit more while looking at my map. Running full speed on a road does not necessarily count as a quality navigation time.

2 - 3. Took a bearing and followed it as even though short it was “very diffuse” as Tero would say.

3 - 4. Here I looked for some interesting or hidden route choice but did not see anything other than cross to the road and follow the open ridge up directly to the control. Now the execution is another thing… I began running west on the small path until the intersection with the indistinct path going along the semi open. My plan was to follow it NW and pop out in the open woods to the road. I lost the trail and was fighting almost all the way to the road. Not wanting to lose elevation or go on the road 90 degrees to my direction I immediately crossed and started climbing, and from then on it was just that climbing and contouring to the control.

Having looked later for the route choice I again haven’t seen the indistinct path. Going through CP1 and then left on the open ridge looks like a faster route choice. Same take out as for CP2 take some more time looking for a route choice

4 - 5. Here I took a bearing and followed the knolls till the small reentrant with the green and to the control

5 - 6. Control picking leg. Made sure I am going the right direction.

6 - 7. Took a bearing and simplified the leg as having to cross 2 big ridges and then look for a high knoll on the right of my control that’s on the flat.

7 - 8. Took a bearing to the bend of the trail and the fun began. Running downhill past one’s control is what I call living dangerously… hit the bend right on and while running on it decided to go around all the way to the road and go off the road from the saddle. Did that, contoured on the left of the 3 hills and ran down to the control.

8 - 9. Took a bearing and hit 9 directly.

9 - 10. Planned to go through the saddle left of the dark green through the undergrowth, contour around the hill and through the second saddle look for the control. No problems here.

10 - 11. Lost 1 + mins here: Plan was to go through the saddle of the hills in the semi open, then follow in the foot of the elongated hill, and then jump across the control. I did not see the elongated hill and I noticed that I am already in the flat area with all the knolls. Noticed on the right of me the reentrant bottom, and as I was already in the vicinity of the control (not pacing just feeling of distance traveled passed the saddle and the semiopen) I turned left and spotted the control. I guess I got lucky here. Not sure what I could have done better still don’t understand how I missed to see a 3 contours hill right infront of me. And in the semi open as well…..

11 - 12. Decided to go in the right side of the mountain. Took a bearing to the road bend . Followed he roads to the oval marsh and then climbed to the cliff just before the control.

12 - 13. Compass work again. Looked for the big stone on the left before the control and saw it.

13 - 14. Compass to the bend of the road through the saddles, then spaced out running on the road and missed by 20 – 30 m the control.

14 - 15 - 16 - 17. down the ridge and to the road and then on the road

17 - 18. While planning it I thought that this might be trouble with all the cliffs on the steep slope, and sure enough I felt uneasy and approached slow until I make sense of the cliffs. I am really proud of that leg. I slowed so much but because of that I figured out the terrain and directly went to the right cliff.

18 -19. Painful, the split shows it.

19 - 20. Direction to the road, across the open and direction from the end of the marsh. The green was very noticeable.

20 - 21. Did not took the right direction exiting 20 and end up too much to the left. Corrected immediately though. Not much time lost.

21 - 22. Plan was along the marsh on the open and then gradually climb to the control. The bunch of knolls and cliffs should stop me. As it did. Too tired to climb even gradually and apparently did not climbed enough. Did not noticed the small reentrant when planning my route, but As I ended up in it I did use it.

22 - 23. Down to the trail and then pass the junction took bearing to the control.

23 - 24. Here I did not took good direction and missed the path. End up fighting all the way to the road. 90+ seconds lost here. Take out from this do not let go until you cross the finish. It’s as easy to make a mistake for the last control as for any other.

To summarize. I consider this a good and smooth run. Had 2 not optimal route choices costing 1+ min each (didn’t noticing the same trail twiceJ), and 2 execution mistakes costing me another 1 and 1:30 each.

As a take away

1. I already know that my weakest technique is route choice selection and execution (trying to stay focus for the long legs). Need to spend more time when looking for the route choice on long legs

2. Don’t reduce my focus even for a minute.

Course Analysis: Sam Saeger at Bear Hill

2009-11-23T22:38:00.005-05:00

Our most recent course analysis is by Samantha Saeger, who analyzes a recent Blue course at Bear Hill. Follow along on the map:

Bear Hill November 8, 2009

Start-1: Ran up the hill on the trail and, actually, got too high and had to come down to the control.

1-2: Down the hill instead of contouring the rocky hillside. Cut in off the trail and could see the control in front of me.

2-3: Around on the trail as I knew the green on this map was thick. I did take a look off the trail as I was running down, but it looked thick enough that going around would be faster. Cut in off the trail and around the bottom of the first cliff to the second cliff and my control.

3-4: I purposefully left the control to the east to avoid extra climb, but I never came back south. Meant to run through the dark green, but as one can see from the track I was slowed down quite a bit by the green. At some point I looked at my compass and the slope down to the swamp and finally turned south. I was then moving nicely along the hillside, but then convinced myself that the control was at the top of a reentrant. So as I came into the reentrant I ran to the bare rock at the top and started looking around. Finally collected my wits and realized that I really needed to be on the nose and ran down to the control. It wasn’t a case of inverting the contours. I think I originally thought to run by the reentrant, but then got the idea of a reentrant stuck in my head.

4-5: Saw Dad coming in as I was leaving. Ran on my compass for most of the leg. Was running up the reentrant at the end of the leg before the last trail crossing. Right at the end I was about to run into the wrong reentrant but saw the control off to my left.

5-6: Ran straight. Saw the reentrant, the fence and then the cliff.

6-7: Made a plan to follow the reentrant up to the large trail, which worked just fine. Looking at it now I should have stayed on the main trail and come in from the back. Instead I thought it was a good idea to go to the top. Misread the rock on top and got on the main top right above the control, even though I meant to cut down sooner. No trouble from there.

7-8: Ran back to the top, thinking then I could run down the nose. Got too far to the right. In retrospect the control is sitting on the side of a small reentrant and that information would have ben helpful. Got too low and checked out a cliff before noticing I was too close to the trail. Had to climb back again.

8-9-10-11-12-13: Dad was again running in as I was leaving 8. These controls were fairly straightforward for me. Run along trails and cut into the control. A little bit of confusion about halfway to 11 with the parking lots, but corrected by looking at my compass to get back on track.

13-14: Disaster strikes. Another similar leg with trail running and then attacking through the woods. I was doing ok, and when I hit the trail north of 18 I turned the correct direction. Unfortunately, at the next intersection I did a 180. The trail stopped making sense, but I figured I would just keep running the correct direction on my compass. I ran all the way around back to where I first started on the small trail between the ponds. The whole time I thought I was running the correct direction on my compass. I knew the trails didn’t make sense so I was just following my compass in the “correct” direction. I was desperately looking for a trail that ran east-west along a pond/swamp, but I was looking too far south for me to see where I was. Frankly, the only thing that saved me was Dad coming out of the woods from 13. I knew he must be on the way to 14, so I turned around and ran behind him as we ran back the way I just came. As soon as we ran around the first corner I realized I was thinking backwards and turned everything around in my head. Ran the trails and cut into the green before the control. Noticed I had to climb 2 contours which led me too far to the right and I climbed the larger hill. Got part of the way along the swamp before realizing there shouldn’t be a big swamp to my left. Turned around and ran back.

14-15: Possibly still shaky from my last control and hesitated a lot going into this control even though I knew I was in the reentrant.

15-16-17-18: Running along trails and relying on contours features as I attack each control. Stopped one hill too early on 17, but immediately figured it out.

18-19: Disaster #2. Again starts off fine, running along trails. When I cut down off the hill to the east-west trail south of the control I somehow thought that I hit it to the west of the junction I was looking for. In retrospect, this doesn’t make much sense, as I would have had to climb down the big cliff. But, I don’t remember crossing the small trail and that contributed to me thinking I was really turning up the trail to the west of the control. I should have also kept my head up and seen the next intersection right in front of me, or noticed the trail was going up a nose instead of a reentrant. Cut off the trail and ran right into 12, but didn’t realize it was 12. Knew it was too soon so kept going, but nothing really made sense. Decided I had gone too far north and I could see the next trail so cut south and came to a large, flat, low area. Couldn’t for the life of me figure out what this was, and so bailed out to the trail and ran it to the intersection. Of course, thinking the whole time I am on the north-south trail to the east of the control. Run back up the trail, pace counting. Then the trail forks and I am momentarily baffled before I mentally kick myself, hard, and go run to, finally, find my control.

19-20: Trail and then good running on my compass down the nose.

20-21-22: Cut off the trail later than I thought which caused me to cut at the wrong angle into 21. Had to pause to relocate. Trail and field to 22.

22-23: Out through the swamp and then very careful to make sure I was cutting off the trail in the correct place. Possibly unnecessarily cautious, but I was done with being lost.

23-24: Trails around the whole way.

24-25: Lots of trouble really figuring out what cliff it was one in the center of the circle. Every time I thought I had it I would go there and then realize I was still one cliff off. Took awhile to get myself to the right spot.

25-26-27-finish: Up the reentrant and following trails into 26. Around the water tower and looked for the nose to find 27. More green at the bottom of the hill and slightly wrong angle led me to take a bad route to the finish.

Strengths:
Planning my exit from the control and my routes.

To work on:

Concentration. I often made mistakes when I saw dad and did something silly. Also I got lazy when running on long trail runs and then made mistakes when I went to attack my control.

Planning the end - Having a firm plan for the entire route and visualizing what it will look like might help me avoid the kinds of mistakes on 12, 19 and 25. I sometimes oversimplified and relied on only one feature for navigation.

Course Analysis: Ross Smith at the US Champs

2009-10-29T14:29:00.010-04:00

Here is an excellent and very informative course analysis by Ross Smith, CSU, silver medalist in M21 at this year's US Championships in Greenbush, Wisconsin.

Conditions
-11:03 start time. Patrick Nuss 11:05, Boris Granovskiy 11:07
-4 poptarts (easy to eat) and a mug of tea (superstition) before the race, singing and positive mood.
-Chilly and damp, wore a buff, mesh USA top, trimtex ¾ length pants, underarmour ankle socks, lucky reindeer boxer briefs and inov8 x-talon 212s while running. Bit of a sore back from sleeping funny so took some Ibuprofen 30 mins before start.
-Warm up of running around, up to the start and back a bunch, to the bathroom and back, etc. -Nothing structured or special. Thinking about how I should be thinking about something, and about having a clean 1st control.
-Had felt great at the model the day before, very excited to race. Anticipating that a good race would be a win.

Start - 1
When I saw the first leg I was worried by the green forests. I saw the trail and latched onto the relative security of following a path for a bit and then running through white woods. I quickly cut out to the parking lot and then along the trail… the footing wasn’t great on the trail and I was having a hard time reading the terrain around me as I ran along. I cut into the woods only vaguely knowing where I left the trail because I was feeling rushed and I got lucky to pass over #17. Once again assured of where I was, it was easy to go over the hill, skirt the three pointed depression, and go up over the ridge. Hesitated a little bit coming down to the knoll, as visibility was low.

1-2,2-3,3-4
- 2 first mistake. Left without a clear enough plan, only vaguely aware that I wanted to avoid the darker green. Big problem in viewing the contours to the north of the control as a hill, not a depression. Off by 15 degrees on my compass leaving 1. worried too much about running fast, not enough about keeping contact with the map. Very quickly along the way knew that I was out of contact with the map and then pushed on in hopes of hitting the powerlines and rebounding. Which is what I did.
- 3 just go straight, visualize down, up, down into the control
- 4 just go straight, saw the black ‘x’ then it was down into the big depression, up the other side into the depression on the far rim

4-5, 5-6
- 5 a long leg, and I depended too much on seeing the indistinct path 2/3 of the way along. I didn’t see the path, but did recognize the reentrant just before the path from having come that way before. I once again was fortunate to see control 18, as I was able to quickly adjust my route which had started to drift (unconscious desire to hit the path maybe?). Was supposed to hit trail and follow along until cutting past the hill along the smaller trail. Instead dropped down out of 18 into the round depression, and followed the hillside for a bit and then realized that it was tucked into the green, so cut back over.
- 6 straight, visualized going up steep hill, long reentrant with control at the far end. Don’t remember the ‘X’ here.

6-7, 7-8
- 7 saw the large hill 2/3 of the way as my target, just get there and then follow along into the flag. Knew that it was a big hill and so I aimed a bit off to the left (more than I wanted to) to be sure to hit it. When I saw that I was coming up the little saddle in the hill, I altered my plan and ran along the left side of the hill instead of the right. Then, I went down and up in the last reentrant, because it looked faster than going around. As I climbed the last saddle before the control I had a lot of confidence that the flag would be right on the other side.
- 8 follow along the hill, around the round depression and along the long depression, up and into the green.

8-9
- 9 another long leg and this time I again saw the hill I had used for 7 as being a good waypoint. Once I got to the tip of that hill, I just aimed rough compass for 9, aware that there wasn’t much of a backstop if I missed the flag. Saw the black ‘X’ and was relieved again. Down into the green reentrant and up the hill on the other side. Judged the slope of the hill and knew that I needed to go farther north when I got to the top.

9-10, 10-11
- 10 saw the large shallow depression 1/2 way through and wanted to skirt either left or right. Woods were better to the right, so I did that. Saw the large green hill, and contoured around, came down the spur on the other side and saw Ken [Walker] going in to punch the control. Score!
- 11 wanted to get ahead of Ken, and left the control on a rough compass with the idea of skirting below the first peanut shaped depressions. Lost focus a little bit and saw the green hill just before the control before I recovered my place exactly.

11-12, 12-13, 13-14, 14-15
- 12 out to the road, and then I had decided to follow along the ridge and over the saddle into the control. I cut into the forest after the first big depression, but got bogged down a bit in the next little depression. Saw the pair of boulders, then kept to the plan.
- 13 meant to go right of the hill, but the vegetation pushed me left. I had my eyes up, scanning the forest and so when I saw the hill a bit to my right I knew that I just needed to get to the saddle.
- 14 reminded me of a control on the model the day before. Follow along the string of depressions, used the last hill to aim for the pit.
- 15 wind out to the road, came past the triangle hill to the road, so knew where I was. Then I cut around the north at the base of the ridge and into the control.

15-16
- 16 the long leg. Scary at first and then I realized that I could use the same big hill as a pole star at the end of the leg. Then there was a ridge that brought me most of the way there, and finally I could take the trail until that ridge. So I cut out to the trail, not really caring which way I went, followed along to the ridge, kept contact as I went down into the depression and up over the little green hill, followed up north to the base of the big hill and here I decided to change my plan a little bit and instead of following the hillside around, tried to cut across the hypotenuse. This might have worked had I not then lost focus and I tried to read a small hill in the flat area as the large hill my control was behind. I checked behind that hill and didn’t see a reentrant, then I charged across to another hill that I saw… still nothing making sense. Feeling very panicked so I started heading back towards the hill to relocate (though my garmin shows me running more south than west) here I saw Clem [McGrath] and that helped me realize that I hadn’t gone far enough, turned around and chased back up to Clem, and finally up over the hill and into the flag.

16-17, 17-18, 18-19, 19-20, 20-F
-17 a bit angry, a bit relieved, I just wanted to be done. Had seen this control before and could recall a bit what the terrain around it looked like. Came down the hill, saw the depression to my right and then knew to turn left and into the flag.
-18 aimed straight at the flag, saw Ken again from when I hit the trail and was able to chase him into the flag. Also had been to this one before too.
-19 around the first depression, then along the side of the big green hill, out the spur and down into the pit on the other side.
-20 out to the road, scanned along the side to see if there was an opening in the green, saw the cairn and then saw a gap. Cut through the field.
-F still had some left for the final sprint.

Strengths
- Ran very fast. Physically the fastest guy racing that day in those woods. Even the green didn’t slow me too much.
- Able to keep my eyes up, get information and use it quickly to adjust my route
- Able to simplify really tough terrain and find the minimum necessary to navigate

Weaknesses
- Did not have a full plan before setting out on some legs. This cost me a lot on 2, but I got lucky on other controls.
- Did not mentally stay focused on the long leg, 16, long enough. Can’t “coast in” to the finish, need to stay sharp the whole way.
- Changed routes trying to save a few seconds. Better to choose the correct route then stick to it.

Miscellaneous
- Interesting to see how much my drawn track differed from my GPS. Plus the fact that I couldn’t draw the routes in at all for some of the legs. A positive sign of simplification? A negative sign of lazy map reading?
- Won splits at the beginning and at the end. A good sign that I didn’t go out too fast or run out of energy. Did not take any gu or water for the course (80 mins) but the race seemed short.

Results
- 2nd place (80:00), 2:31 out of 1st place Will Hawkins (77:29), 3rd place Leif Anderson (84:02)
7:05/k, for 11.3k and 426 meters of climb
- 11 fastest splits, 6 seconds or less from the fastest split on all but 3 controls (two big mistakes and Erin Schirm was blazing fast to 12)
- WinSplits “without errors” puts me at 73:58 (6:33/k)

Training Camp Update: Harriman State Park, NY, October 8-11

2009-10-12T12:01:00.002-04:00

This is an unedited review by Peter Gagarin of the US Team training camp at Harriman State Park that was attended by several French national team runners, including multiple world champion Thierry Gueorgiou and WOC medalist Francois Gonon.
(Note: the US Team coach resigned his position during the preparation stage of this camp, so several US Team members stepped up and made sure that this camp happened. Many thanks to Clem McGrath and Eddie Bergeron for doing a great job with last-minute organization.)

A review of the Harriman training camp. 1. Pre-camp planning. I'm not sure how long this training camp was in the works, as I'm only marginally involved in Team stuff these days. I wouldn't have had much interest in it, except that I'd heard that Tero was going to be there with a couple of friends, and I was curious to meet him and maybe see him in action. Participating in the camp wasn't appealing in my current state, nor was getting involved in organizing it, but it seemed like offering to hang controls would useful and would be a valid reason to be there. And also might make it easier to meet the French guys. So that's what I did, made my offer a couple of weeks ago. And then Mike [Waddington] decided that he couldn't come, and was stepping down as coach too. So there was a bit of a leadership gap. But Eddie and Clem stepped up and got things organized, and the camp happened. The plan was to start Thursday afternoon and run through Saturday afternoon, and then run the Highlander on Sunday. Hard training in the days leading up to the Highlander may not be the best preparation, but the thinking was, the training is more important than the Highlander and if you start the Highlander tired, so what. Some Team members were coming for the whole thing (Eddie, Clem), some just for Friday and Saturday (Nikolay and Kat, though she only stayed part of each day), some just for Saturday (Cristina, Samantha, Ross, Ali), and some not at all. In addition, there were two promising juniors (Andrew Childs and Hannah Burgess) there the whole time plus a couple of Canadian team members (Emily and JT). And then in addition to that were several others, mostly CSU members. I'm not sure how it happened that they came (it was no problem as far as I was concerned), though I know there was some discussion about which and how many non-team members could take part. I never bothered to try to find out the details. 2. Thursday. Eddie organized the training for Thursday. I met him there late morning to get enough of a head start to get the controls out in time. First was corridor training. Note that I had the whole map; participants had just corridors maybe 50-75 meters wide to use. Corridors map. Following that immediately was a control picking course -- Control picking map. My timing was just about perfect. As I was hanging the last control Tero appeared. Glad I wasn't a minute later. Folks arrived after a bit, with Eddie last, having not just run both courses but picked up all the controls in the process! Meanwhile Linda Kohn had arrived, and headed out to hang controls for the middle course for Friday morning. I went out to take care of the controls for the O' intervals for the next morning. The others went off to our two wonderful hosts for the camp, Alan and Mairead Young, and Bernie and Liisa Breton. Both families were just unbelievably hospitable, including hosting dinner for all of us Friday at the Youngs and Saturday at the Bretons. But for Thursday evening we went out for dinner, French guys included, at a local diner, and then bowling after that. Very good fun. 3. Friday Clem had organized the training for Friday, with some help from Sandy who printed the maps. This was the only wet day, raining quite a bit in the morning, not much in the afternoon though the woods were still wet, though it really didn't make much difference. First up were the O' intervals, to be run in small groups, with forked controls and breaks between each section to regroup and take a short break. Intervals map. Then there was a middle course. No route because Linda hung those. Morning middle map. Both these courses included sections with a mix of small features and patches of laurel, not at all easy. Other parts were wide open. Meanwhile Linda and I were hanging controls for a rerun of the middle course from the Team Trials in 2003. We used stands for these to make sure we could get them in the right place (there is a real lack of trees in Harriman for hanging controls). Lunch was both good and bad. Good because we all drove off to Sloatsburg to get lunch, all together, good company. Bad that it took quite a bit of time, so it was mid/late afternoon before they all started the TT course, and getting dark by the time some were finishing. Team Trials middle map. Linda hung the 6 eastern controls. Seems like everyone did all the training. The controls were left out in case anyone wanted to run any of the courses on Saturday. Wonderful dinner at the Youngs, everyone there and a ton of food. 4. Saturday The French guys had said they would organize a training for Saturday morning. Tero planned the courses at lunch on Friday and I hung the controls that afternoon, so all of them could run too. It was a 2-person, 8-leg relay, so everyone ran 4 legs, total distance for each person was 5.6 km. Tero and I went off set up the start/finish while everyone else got a hands-on participatory warm-up led by François Gognon, another of the amazing French guys of the past decade. I gather the warm-up consisted of 10 minutes of jogging, and then 10-15 of running drills (crazy walks), and then a couple of uphill intervals to the start/finish. The relay was excellent. Serious competition but also good karma. Winning team was Sam and J-B. The format was two-person teams. Four legs run by each, the first three in varying order, then the last one common. The first three legs are shown in red on the map. That's what the lead-off runner got, but both runners on the team used just that one map for the first three legs each, i.e. the tag was just hand the teammate the map, they'd do same first leg, then both the second, then both the third. Six possible combinations, broke things up nicely. And then the final loop, just 800 meters, shown here in black, was actually on a separate map, again each teammate did it. Tero's time on the last leg was 3:38, Ross next best at 4:02, trying to hang with him, did good except on the uphills. Relay map. Back to the parking lot, which several folks pitching in to retrieve all the controls. A short but wonderful awards ceremony orchestrated by the French. Then off to lunch again, except for Ross who ran the morning middle course from the day before and picked up the controls too. Jon Torrance ran the TT course and picked up those controls. And Brendan, suffering from a sore knee, had skipped the relay and picked up the controls from the O-intervals. Back from lunch, the serious part of the training camp, at least for Tero, was a rerun of the Short final from WOC-93. He was taking it especially seriously because his current coach is Petter Thoresen, who won the event 16 years ago. Eric Weyman had come up just to set up the course (he was the original course setter). Everyone ran it late afternoon. Tero was 23:20 for the 4.75 km, would have been 3rd back in 1993, though the vegetation has changed some and it's hard to know how much of an adjustment to make. On this day he was way ahead of any of the North Americans. WOC-93 Short final map. Then Eric set off to pick up all the controls, and take all the gear back to Sandy (we had borrowed it from DVOA). And the camp was over. Except for another great dinner,this time at the Bretons, probably 30 people there. 6. Observations -- Mostly it went well, especially considering the last-minute scrambling just to make it happen. As usual, people were willing to pitch in to help, though often not willing to commit until the last moment. There was lots of training done, despite the fact that the Highlander was looming on Sunday. No one seemed to be dogging it on Saturday. The accommodations were superb, and free. The vibes seemed to be very good. -- So what was missing? First, this was a training camp where you were given the opportunity to train, but you were mostly on your own as to what you were working on. Other than François's session on warming up, there was no coaching. So I'm not sure how much people got out of the camp. Or how much more they could have gotten. Second, it seemed a bit of a missed opportunity with the French guys. They were clearly not there to be in any leadership position, they were on vacation. Nevertheless, they offered to organize Saturday morning and that was really cool. But it seemed to me that people were hesitant to make connections. They were with us from Thursday evening on, doing the same trainings, eating and relaxing together. I just think people could have been much more assertive in connecting, and learned stuff in the process. Note that beside Tero and François, the other two French guys were also very good -- Jean-Baptiste was at two WOCs, 31st in the long-distance final in both 2003 and 2004, I think he is ranked 7th in France, and Matthieu was a little slower but not much. All were very cool, would chatter away in French, but anytime anyone engaged them, they were glad to talk about most anything, and all spoke good English. I really enjoyed having them there. I hope the others did. Third, again because of a lack of a coach and planning, there were no indoor or evening sessions. I went to a training camp in Hamilton several years ago, where the guest stars were Holger and Sandy Hott, and there were classroom sessions every evening, and very interesting sessions. This camp had none of that. My sense was that everyone was having a good time, but that much more could have been accomplished. Fourth, if there is a lesson in this it is that planning needs to be done much earlier and more thoroughly. Planning the woods training. Planning the non-woods training. Getting the equipment and the maps. Arranging for e-punching (didn't have that this time). Getting commitments from team members (senior and junior) to come. Getting helpers. Figuring out what policy to have about non-team members (and what to charge them, they got a free ride this time). All this is work, but it makes for a much better final result. Fifth, as I said, the one real coaching moment was about warming up properly. So then it was interesting to note a couple of things. During the relay Saturday morning, where you were running four times with rest intervals averaging 10-15 minutes, the French guys were continually moving during their rest intervals, staying warm and ready to go. Everyone else was standing around chatting and spectating and not moving at all. And before the WOC93 race in late afternoon, the French guys did a very thorough warm-up (Tero was breathing quite hard as he stood waiting for the start command). Ditto for Jon Torrance and Nikolay. No one else did anything. At what point do we take things seriously? And finally, I have a lot of admiration for those team members who had the attitude that they were going to train hard, and then run the Highlander on (very) tired legs, and even flew in from some distance to do it. And not much admiration for those who showed up for the Highlander but couldn't come at least a day earlier to try and learn something. Especially with a world champion there.

Relay update

2009-08-21T08:40:00.000-04:00

The men finished strong amongst quite a bit of drama in the relay - it looks like 24th and a convincing win against Canada!

Sam opened the women's race with a superb and scintillating effort, 11th place passing off to Sandra.

Sam is ready for lunch now:

Ross rocks the first leg!

2009-08-21T05:55:00.000-04:00

Ross stormed through the first leg only 3.5 minutes behind the leaders! Second leg runner Eric started off with over a five minute lead on Canada.

Sprint Finals Excitement!

2009-08-20T15:47:00.003-04:00

Sam had a whirlwind day today, qualifying for the final in the morning and then running the final in the evening. Her run was not perfect (a goof on the second control, losing about 45 seconds) but we are all excited for her 37th place finish.

This is a great time to note that this year marks an historic first - it's the first time Team USA has had finalists in each of the three individual disciplines. Sandra and Sam and rock stars!

Post race chatter

2009-08-20T15:40:00.003-04:00

We've got some catching up to do in the results reporting front, but in the meantime enjoy this entertaining chatter from a few of this morning's sprinters:

Sam Does It Again!

2009-08-20T05:52:00.001-04:00

Sam had another great run, finishing 14th in her heat and qualifying for the Sprint final later today. All you North American fans Have no excuse for missing out on the online coverage for an afternoon race. ;-)

Her she is, beaming after qualifying for the second time this WOC:

Sam's Routes

2009-08-17T17:02:00.003-04:00

Click on the map to see Sam's course and routes from today's Long Qual race:

You can also check out the winsplits for the course.

Two Happy Ladies

2009-08-17T05:53:00.000-04:00

Sam does it!

2009-08-17T05:35:00.000-04:00

Sam had a great run today and qualified for the long final! Awesome!

So hot right now!

2009-08-16T13:58:00.003-04:00

The World Championships in Hungary started today with the qualifier for the Middle distance. The top 15 in each of 3 heats qualified for the final, which will be on Wednesday. As usual, it was really hard to qualify, so lots of congratulations to Sandra Zürcher who finished 13th in her heat and will run in the final!

Summary of results --

Men A
1. Pavlo Ushkvarok UKR 26:40
2. Matthias Mueller SUI 27:01
3. Dmitry Mihalkin BLR 27:04
15. Wolfgang Siegert AUT 29:11
25. Eric Bone USA 32:27
29. Will Critchley CAN 36:41
38 starters

Men B
1. Matthias Merz SUI 25:47
2. Tero Fohr FIN 26:41
3. Ionut Zinca ROM 26:59
15. Jonas Gvildys LTU 29:45
21. Nick Duca CAN 32:01
30. Wyatt Riley USA 37:14
38 starters

Men C
1. Valentin Novikov RUS 26:12
2. Daniel Hubman SUI 27:07
3. Thierry Gueorgiou FRA 27:16
15. Yury Tambasov BLR 31:10
26. Mike Smith CAN 35:12
--- Eddie Bergeron USA mp
38 starters

Women A
1. Simone Niggli, SUI 26:46
2. Helena Jansson SWE 28:30
3. Merja Rantanen FIN 28:57
15. Ilina Shandurkova BUL 33:14
25. Viktoria Brautigam USA 41:29
29 starters

Women B
1. Anne Margrette Hausken NOR 27:02
2. Dana Brozkova CZE 28:05
3. Vroni Koenig-Salmi SUI 28:10
15. Karin Schmalfeld GER 34:37
21. Pavlina Brautigam USA 37:29
25. Louis Oram CAN 44:33
29 starters

Women C
1. Lea Mueller SUI 28:16
2. Minna Kauppi FIN 29:14
3. Radka Brozkova CZE 29:58
13. Sandra Zürcher USA 36:09
15. Irina Maiorescu ROM 37:28
21. Carol Ross CAN 42:58
28 starters

Complete results are at http://live.woc2009.hu/?p=middle
The women’s map is at http://news.worldofo.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/DSC_0853_s.jpg
The men’s map is at http://cdn.cloudfiles.mosso.com/c71692/media/image/200908/phpCU0voaDSC_0856_s.jpg

And, of course, the proof from the arena:So hot right

Middle Qual Tomorrow!

2009-08-15T17:02:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow is the Middle Qualifier, starting at 10am CET - that's 4am for those of you on the right coast, and 7am for those of you on the left coast. You can follow the online commentary at WorldofO, and get links to results, video, and (not free) gps tracking at the WOC 2009 site.

Today Cristina attempted to interview each of tomorrow's runners. She managed to catch them all, in one form or another, but a disastrous disk error has left her with just four "interviews": Sandra, Pavlina, Eddie, and Eric.

Wish the runners happy legs and skillful running!

More Good Clean Fun

2009-08-14T17:59:00.003-04:00

What did we do for training today? We'll just let Clem and Sandra tell you all about it:

We're all here, eating jambalaya

2009-08-13T16:39:00.005-04:00

With the arrival of Viktoria and Pavlina this afternoon we are now a complete team. In fact, we are complete and really just fabulous in appearance. Best looking team at WOC? Quite possibly.

Today most of the team headed out to Olasz-kapu, on the far side of the Bükk National Park where much of the orienteering takes place for WOC. It was a long drive with some pretty narrow roads. Quite sporty, really. Some parts of the terrain were really great, some not so great, but I think everyone appreciated the fact that there were real controls in the woods. For less formal training we've had to look for little brown stakes in the ground - very hard to see.

Here're Ross and Eddie enjoying a laugh over their map today:

For dinner tonight we all stayed in and Eddie cooked up some verifiably yummy jambalaya. While all of the team apartments are right next to each other, we don't have any large common areas to gather in and eat, so we made do with the hallway:

Remember to keep up with WOC goings on at the WOC 2009 website!

Which way? and Sprint training!

2009-08-12T17:41:00.004-04:00

This morning most of Team USA went out for some route choice training. Which way would you go from 1-2? How about 6-7?

In the afternoon it was time for some sprint training. The map and terrain were pretty tricky for the first two controls. Check out the second leg:
Ross, Sam, and Clem discuss the sprint training:

First arrivals in Miskolc!

2009-08-11T17:24:00.005-04:00

Yesterday the first members of Team USA arrived in Hungary. Sam, Eric, and Cristina made it to Miskolc with only the slightest setback - Cristina's luggage didn't make it until the next day. We've settled into the nice accommodations at the University of Miskolc and are making ourselves at home. The weather is pleasant enough and we haven't had any trouble getting around - so far!

Today Sam, Eric, and Cristina went out for some training on middle/long qual relevant terrain, Kisfennsík, and got themselves a bit used to the terrain. Eric has been here before for a training camp, and though Sam ran in the Miskolc area for JWOC many years ago, the terrain was essentially new for both women. It was a good opportunity to get eyes and feet on the terrain and get used to the mapping.

Eric had to do a bit of shoe surgery before he could go run:

Sam preps the maps:

Ross, Clem, and Eddie arrived later today, some more jet lagged than others:

Sandra qualifies for middle final!

2009-07-30T09:34:00.000-04:00

So good.

Sandra and Sam Training in Switzerland

2009-07-29T00:47:00.003-04:00

WOC is less than three weeks away, and Team USA is busy training hard all over the world. After successfully coaching the Junior Team at the Junior World Orienteering Championships in Italy, Sandra and Sam spent a wonderful two weeks doing some high altitude training in Switzerland. Read all about it and see photos and maps on Sandra's blog.

You can now also follow Team USA on Facebook. You don't have to belong to Facebook to check out the updates and pictures!

WOC Team - Who's Running What

2009-05-29T02:23:00.002-04:00

We had the team settled, and now we've got the details!

Team coach Mike Waddington and WOC team leader Tom Hollowell have announced "who's running what" for WOC 2009. Start memorizing and making those big signs!

Men
Middle: Eddie Bergeron, Eric Bone, Wyatt Riley
Long: Eric Bone, Ross Smith, Clem McGrath
Sprint: Ross Smith, Wyatt Riley, Clem McGrath
Relay (in running order): Ross Smith, Eric Bone, Eddie Bergeron

Women
Middle: Sandra Zurcher, Pavlina Brautigam, Viktoria Brautigam
Long: Samantha Saeger, Sandra Zurcher, Cristina Luis
Sprint: Viktoria Brautigam, Samantha Saeger, Cristina Luis
Relay (in running order): Samantha Saeger, Sandra Zurcher, Viktoria or Pavlina Brautigam

Training Camp Update: Canadian Rockies

2009-05-27T17:45:00.008-04:00

Last week, US team member Kat Orekhova flew to Calgary to join the Canadians for a week-long training camp. Here is her day-by-day account, complete with maps and links.

Monday, May 18
I arrived in Calgary airport at 2 PM on May 18th, and spent the next 10 hours hanging out in the arrivals hall so that I could get a ride to Canmore with Jon Torrance. We got in sometime after 1 AM and quickly went to sleep.

Tuesday, May 19
After a leisurely breakfast, our group (roughly 10 people) headed out to Mt.Laurie for some technical training. The rain and snow made the control-pick extra challenging.

In the afternoon, we headed out to Barrier Lake for some fast and furious orienteering intervals. This exercise was done in teams of 2 people and the rules were as follows: one person rolls a pair of dice to get a number between 2 and 12, and must then orienteer to the control with that number, punch, and run back as quickly as possible to tag his/her partner. Then the partner rolls the dice and goes through the same process while the first person gets a break. Whichever team gets all 11 controls first wins. If a team rolls a number they have already been to, they have to run to that control again, a disadvantage which adds a bit of luck to the game. However, if a team rolls the same number for a third time, they are allowed to re-roll. This was great fun and really spectator friendly because the start was at the top of a steep hill and all controls went down from there!

Wednesday, May 20
Today we drove into Calgary and spent the day doing sprint training. First a park sprint, then a series of short urban sprint intervals (made extra challenging by an enormous construction site), and finally a sprint around the university campus. This last one was part of a local orienteering event and therefore had SI timing and a nice, newly updated map. Thanks to Sarah Brandreth (the course setter) for a really fun sprint!

Thursday May 21
In the morning, we drove over to the Canmore Nordic Center to run the permanent middle distance O-course there. A lot of parks have such courses available, but this one is special because it is equipped with SI units, which makes it really easy for Canmore visitors to experience real, competitive orienteering and compare times with some of the best in Canada. Brent had a blazing fast run and set a new course record for the 4.2 km, 165m climb course. I was pleased to be only a few minutes behind most of the guys, despite not racing all-out.

In the afternoon, we drove to Banff for a sprint race. There was some construction going on in the urban section of the course, but the forest parts were just as expected - really open and fast!

Friday May 22
Easy morning training on the Bow Valley map, followed by a relaxing afternoon spent in Calgary watching a movie (Star Trek) and then going out for Ethiopian food.

Saturday May 23
First day of the Calgary Spring Cup (also the Canadian Team Trials). The sprint was held in the morning at Fish Creek Park, in perfect sunny weather. The top three results for the elite classes were:

Men
1. Goeres, Patrick 12:46
2. Sorensen, Oystein 12:57
3. Smith, Mike 13:29

Women
1. Louise Oram 13:14
2. Ekaterina Orekhova 13:47
3. Andree Powers 19:27

The middle distance was held several hours later on the southern part of the Sandy McNabb map. The forest floor was really wet due to recent snow-melt, which sometimes made the marshes difficult to distinguish, but the course-setters did a good job of avoiding bingo controls and the course was really enjoyable. The top results in the elite classes were:

Men
1. Sorensen, Oystein 32:05
2. Smith, Mike 33:41
3. Goeres, Patrick 33:53

Women
1. Louise Oram 32:50
2. Ekaterina Orekhova 39:25
3. Marie-Catherine Bruno 41:18

Sunday, May 24
Second day of the Calgary Spring Cup. There was only one race today, but it was a tough long distance. The first part went through some steep hilly sections, and the second went through the same type of flat, marshy area as yesterday's middle distance. Another great course!

Men
1. Sorensen, Oystein 1:22:03
2. Goeres, Patrick 1:24:18
3. Smith, Mike 1:30:53

Women
1. Ekaterina Orekhova 1:09:17
2. Louise Oram 1:10:34
3. Sarah Brandreth 1:34:23

Full results and routegadget from the weekend can be found here.

And a large collection of photos from the week, taken by Adrian Zissos, can be found here.

This was an incredible week of orienteering and I am really grateful to the organizers for making this possible. Also, a huge thanks to the US Team for their support. I couldn't have done it without you!

A-Meet Update: Buffalo Orienteering Festival

2009-05-23T04:38:00.006-04:00

Nate Lyons (ROC) sprinting into 2nd place

Here comes the latest update, this one from last weekend's Buffalo Orienteering Festival. This week's guest reporter is DVOA's Greg Balter.

Last weekend provided us with some interesting competition as our busy spring season of orienteering racing is winding down. Buffalo Orienteering Club hosted us at 3 fine new venues and 3 new maps done by Bulgarian mapper Valentin Vladimirov. Valentin also served as a course designer for this meet and the course setting was done by Jackie Novkov from Buffalo.

In all 3 races presented to us this weekend courses emphasized extreme running speed and tested all in quick decision-making, working with map and terrain on a run with very little time to spare. The middle distance was set to begin in fairly steep erosion terrain with small marshes, reentrants and knolls as control features, exiting later into flatter plateau with rootstocks, trails and vegetation boundaries to deal with. As it is seldom done in US courses followed contour lines rather than crossing them and it opened possibilities for various rout choices (low, high or contouring).

Man’s middle course race was decided between Erin Shirm, Sergei Zhuk, and William Hawkins who started in that order 2 min apart from each other. Sergei’s task was to stay out of William’s sight, and he pushed the pace right out of start gate. By control # 8 Sergei caught Erin and competition between these two pushed pace even higher. William on his side attacked the course early on and by control # 10 he gained 40 sec on Sergei. At the end it proved to be the difference in this race. Will finished in blistering hot 26:57 for the 4.5 km course with 17 controls, showing one more time that his top position in North American rankings is well-earned. Sergei was second: 27:49, Erin was third in 29:43, followed by Canadian team member Nick Duca in 30:27. US Team members Clem McGrath and Ross Smith completed top 6 with 31:25 and 31:36 respectively. Ross had a good start but a 3 min mistake on control #9 pushed him out of contention in this race.

Ross gained nice amount of running speed since last season and must pull his navigational skills up to new level in order to take full advantage his legs.

Ladies and top juniors competed on 3.9 km course with 16 controls, designed very similar to Blue course. Our top juniors Andrew Childs and Nate Lyons showed that they could handle fast running and fine navigation at the same time and finished in 29:27 and 30:28 respectively. Samantha Saeger won F21+ race in 32:09 (two small mistakes on 6 and 15), followed by Pavlina Brautigam in 35:48 and Kseniya Popova was 3-rd in 38:50.

Later same day we faced a super fast sprint at Emery Park North. Buffalo Club provided loudspeaker announcement at the finish. 2.54 km course in the park was featuring somewhat limited woods running (only 2 legs), going over playgrounds fields and finishing down local ski slope.

I was predicting the tough battle between Ross and Erin, and was very anxious to see how it will play in real world. Ross started earlier and finished in super fine 11:29. Lacking orienteering racing this season, Erin lost huge 1 min on control # 1 and another 30 sec on # 2, then settled down and finished in decent 12:48, what was only good for 11-th place. After the dust settled Nate Lyons was second in 11:45, (watch out senior team members for this one in 2-3 years, he is only 17 this year), Hans Fransson finished 3-rd in 11:54. Canadian Junior Team member Robbie Anderson, Will Hawkins and Clem McGrath compiled top six times: 12:02, 12:05, and 12:08.

Canadian phenom Emily Kemp won the females’ race, while competing in M21+ category this year, with fine time of 13:10, with Samantha Saeger in second: 14:31, followed by Kseniya in 15:20.

Sunday morning met us with 27-degree temperature drop and blistering wind. Cool weather (45-50F) and plenty of sunshine allowed us to run fast and drink little. One more time the courses played very fast, may be even too fast: last 2.5 km on Blue and Red felt like a very long finish shoot.

Will Hawkins did not run the race for personal reasons. I guess, Ross had something to prove on 12.3 km course with 25 controls, and he did so well. Posting the only result with pace under 6 min/km, he was in control of this race, and won handily in 71:39. Nice exclamation point at the end of the season, and hopefully Ross will have good training in next two and a half months before the WOC in Hungary. Second place went to Erin Shirm with time of 74:22 – nice result considering that it was his 3-rd orienteering session this year. I hope we will see more of Erin in O-races starting next year. I hope he reaches his ambitious goals as college track runner too, and we will see under 4 min mile race produced by one of our own.

Erin Schirm (HVO) flying through the forest

2 Sergeis – Zhuk and Gnatiouk battled on the course, pushing each other hard - at the end Zhuk finished with 3-rd time: 75:35 and Gnatiouk with 6-th: 77:44. Nick Duca was 4-th yet one more time with 76:17 and Igor Palagnyuk was 5^th with 77:08. (On a little trivia note Gnatiouk, Palagnyuk and Balter all started to orienteers in the same town of Chernovtcy in Western Ukraine.)

Emily and Samantha battled it out on a Blue course (girls you have to spare our prideJ).

Samantha had a decent race, still made a 4 min mistake on #12, and was 13-th on Blue with 87:26; Emily was 89:41 and placed next to Sam.

Samantha Sager (NEOC) during the middle distance

One more time Red-Y course battle featured top US juniors in close race, and one more time Andrew Childs prevailed over Nate Lyons and John Goodwin. Nate was very aggressive early on mounting 3 min lead over Andrew and John, but a 8 min bomb on 12 pushed him well back, and we have to give him a credit for clawing back into race: Andrew was first in 59:58, Nate – second in 60:18 and John finished 60:44. This is as close as it gets – after 8.5 km course with 21 controls top three got separated by only 46 seconds. Good going kids.

On the ladies side Pavlina won easily over Yekaterina Dvinyaninova and Kseniya Popova: 65:42, 69:27, 69:50.

Results

Middle
M21, 4.5km, 145m, 17c
1. William Hawkins CSU 77 26:57
2. Sergei Zhyk DVOA 79 27:49
3. Erin Schirm HVO 89 29:43

F21, 3.9km, 125m, 16c
1. Samantha Saeger NEOC 82 32:09
2. Pavlina Brautigam WCOC 61 35:48
3. Kseniya Popova HVO 86 38:50

Sprint, 2.54km, 50m, 16c
Men
1. Ross Smith CSU 83 11:29
2. Nate Lyons ROC 92 11:45
3. Hans Fransson GHO 70 11:54

Women
1. Emily Kemp OOC 92 13:10
2. Samantha Saeger NEOC 82 14:31
3. Kseniya Popova HVO 86 15:20

Long
Men, 12.4km, 230m, 25c
1. Ross Smith CSU 83 71:39
2. Erin Schirm HVO 89 74:22
3. Sergei Zhyk DVOA 79 75:35

Women, 8.4km, 190m, 21c
1. Pavlina Brautigam WCOC 61 65:42
2. Yekaterina Dvinyaninova HVO 77 69:27
3. Kseniya Popova HVO 86 69:50

Full results:
Middle
Sprint
Long

Maps (Route Gadget):
Middle
Sprint
Long

A-Meet Update: Return to Boggs Mountain and US Team Trials

2009-05-07T16:08:00.004-04:00

The 2oo9 US WOC Team and alternates

This past weekend was the US team trials in Santa Rosa and Cobb, CA. There were about 24 men and 10 women signed up to compete for the 5 spots on the WOC team. Team members arrived in Spring Lake Park in Santa Rosa on Friday afternoon and were welcomed by a steady drizzle. Luckily the new Trimtex uniforms had arrived, brought over from Sweden by Kat Orekhova, and everyone was looking snazzy in the new blue warmup jackets. The sprint terrain was typical park terrain, with a network of trails and roads and point features such as picnic tables and boulders. Although it appeared to be a straight forward sprint, many competitors were tripped up by being able to run at high speed through the terrain. The last control in particular was tricky, as there was a white control further towards the finish line that was more visible than the correct last control. Many competitors, in their haste to reach that line, ran to the wrong last control. Both Viktoria Brautigam and Ross Smith (as the first starter!) crushed their competition by almost a minute in both cases. One result that stood out was from junior Holly Kuestner, who bested current team member Pavlina Brautigam by one second.

After the team trials sprints went out, the rest of the A-meet competitors got a chance to run the same courses. Some very impressive times were run by a strong foreign contingent. Below are the team trial results from Friday. For complete course results from the sprint check here:
Routes can be found at: http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi

Sprint stars Viktoria Brautigam and Samantha Saeger, after the long distance

1 Viktoria Brautigam 14:13
2 Samantha Saeger 15:08
3 Cristina Luis 15:38
4 Holly Kuestner 15:41
5 Pavlina Brautigam 15:42
6 Corinne Porter 18:11
7 Ekaterina Orekhova 18:36
8 Angelica Riley 19:21
9 Karin Gookin Didisse 22:06
10 Sharon Crawford 25:30

1 Ross Smith 14:37
2 Eric Bone 15:21
3 Thomas Carr 15:30
4 Wyatt Riley 15:33
5 Nikolay Nachev 15:45
6 Boris Granovskiy 15:47
7 Eddie Bergeron 15:54
8 James Scarborough 15:59
9 Clem McGrath 16:16
10 Leif Anderson 16:33

The rainy weather following the sprint race encouraged people to disperse quickly, and everyone made their way up to Cobb, CA an hour drive on some scenic and seriously winding roads. For those brave souls willing to venture into the rain there was the option of checking out some model terrain for the rest of the weekend at the Boggs Mountain map.

Saturday began with more rain and lower than expected temperatures. Some people that had planned on camping over the weekend gave up in disgust and found drier accommodations. There was a 2 kilometer walk to the start for the advanced courses which gave runners adequate time to get soaking wet before running. The other courses started from the parking lot and were smugly able to sit in their cars before heading out.
The middle courses for the team trials had many changes of direction and a lot of short technical legs. There were a couple of longer legs towards the middle of the advanced courses that allowed runners to stretch their legs on the trails. Both courses had a long leg with about 20 contours of climb near the end of the race where different routes led to an almost 3 minute spread among the top men and women. The terrain was very steep and rocky in some areas. There was a downhill finish in view of the parking lot for those willing to stand in the cold rain and cheer. Most competitors finished and then quickly jumped in their cars with their heaters running. After leaving the site and taking a warm shower, many found their way to the small coffee shop in Cobb center, which team member Clem McGrath described as “funky.” The local businesses might have been a little overwhelmed by all the orienteers but rumor has it that they were expecting even more of us for the weekend. Somehow they heard that 2,000 athletes would be racing!

Here are the results from the team trials. Cristina Luis again ran a solid race and finished third, showing a marked improvement from last years team trials. See her routes, and others, here. Again, many other elite runners (in particular, Canadian Patrick Goeres and Norwegian Öystein Sörensen in the men's class) also posted some impressive times on these WRE middle courses which can be read here:

1 Samantha Saeger 45:45
2 Pavlina Brautigam 51:10
3 Cristina Luis 52:40
4 Viktoria Brautigam 58:08
5 Ekaterina Orekhova 59:48
6 Holly Kuestner 1:02:04
7 Angelica Riley 1:06:26
8 Corinne Porter 1:06:49
9 Sharon Crawford 1:11:57
10 Karin Gookin Didisse 1:30:10

1 Eric Bone 42:22
2 Boris Granovskiy 42:53
3 Nikolay Nachev 44:57
4 Wyatt Riley 45:08
5 Sergei Zhyk 45:27
6 Clem McGrath 45:46
7 Ross Smith 48:04
8 Eddie Bergeron 49:38
9 Gerald Yip 50:09
10 Jordan Laughlin 50:56

Eric Bone, Team Trials winner on the men's side

On Sunday it was time for the long distance race. As many stared out their window, or their tent flap, in the morning they were dismayed to see that it was still raining. Fortunately, the rain tapered off and had almost completely stopped by the time the first team trialers began. The woman’s race started off rough for many of the team trial competitors, as many had to relocate a few times in order to find the first control. Angelica Riley took a decisive and early lead as she calmly and swiftly navigated to the first control. The men’s and women’s courses had a mixture of shorter more technical legs with longer legs where route choice was important. Eddie Bergeron won the split on the longest leg by running all the way left on the trail. See his route, and others, at http://baoc.org/gadget/cgi/reitti.cgi . As the sun began to peek through the clouds the first finishers arrived, still soaking wet and exhausted from the course that had more than the recommended 4% climb. Junior Jordan Laughlin had a stand out performance, finishing only 4 minutes behind the team trial winner, Eddie Bergeron. Yet again, many other competitors also posted speedy times on the WRE long courses and their times can be found here http://baoc.org/wiki/Results/2009/Boggs_Mountain#Results

1 Samantha Saeger 1:30:27
2 Corinne Porter 1:33:54
3 Cristina Luis 1:40:15
4 Viktoria Brautigam 1:42:15
5 Angelica Riley 1:43:23
6 Pavlina Brautigam 1:52:37
7 Holly Kuestner 2:01:53
8 Sharon Crawford 2:23:04

1 Eddie Bergeron 1:41:03
2 Clem McGrath 1:42:38
3 Eric Bone 1:43:36
4 Wyatt Riley 1:44:52
5 Jordan Laughlin 1:45:08
6 Sergei Zhyk 1:45:57
7 Leif Anderson 1:49:48
8 Nikolay Nachev 1:50:12
9 Ross Smith 1:51:06
10 Gregory Balter 1:56:13

The weekend ended with sun, watermelon, ice cream and an awards ceremony all provided by the thoughtful BAOC bloc. The US team and alternates for Hungary were announced by Peter Gagarin. The team makeup is similar to last year’s US team with the addition of first time team member Cristina Luis. Cristina surprised even herself with her racing this weekend. She wasn’t expecting to have two races that earned her 95 points and so she wasn’t sure if she would make the 270 point cut-off for sending a fifth athlete. Holly Kuestner had to catch a plane back to the east coast where she was needed to finish taking her final exams and so wasn’t present to hear that she was named the second alternate for the WOC team. Getting this recognition might have helped ease the pain of running into barb wire during the long run.

On the men’s side, Eric Bone again took top honors, showing his dominance in the arena. Boris Granovskiy has declined his spot on the team and therefore Sergei Zhyk will get a chance to represent the US this summer in Hungary. If he goes it will be his first WOC.

2009 WOC Team

2009-05-06T14:37:00.002-04:00

Team USA is proud to announce the final standings from the 2009 Team Trials (top 5 make the team for the World Champs in Hungary)

1. Samantha Saeger, NEOC
2. Sandra Zürcher, UNO
3. Pavlina Brautigam, WCOC
4. Viktoria Brautigam, WCOC
5. Cristina Luis, DVOA

6. Corinne Porter, DVOA
7. Holly Kuestner, COC
8. Angelica Riley, DVOA
9. Kat Orekhova, CSU

------------

1. Eric Bone, COC
2. Eddie Bergeron, SVO
3. Ross Smith, CSU
4. Boris Granovskiy, CSU
5. Wyatt Riley, DVOA

6. Sergei Zhyk, DVOA
7. Clem McGrath, DVOA
8. Nikolay Nachev, COC
9. Leif Anderson, Samm

Thanks to BAOC and especially to course setters Mikkel Conradi, Evan Custer, and George Minarek for a great event.

And also thanks to Greg Lennon and Quantico OC for their unexpected and wonderful donation of $2,000 to the Team Fund to help pay for WOC expenses.

Peter

PS. Let me add a few more thank-yous to folks who made the Trials a great event ‹ Meet directors Rex Winterbottom and Scott Aster and all their helpers, WRE event advisor Vladimir Gusiatnikov, BAOC mapping guru Bob Cooley, special course consultant for the Trials courses Eric Weyman, and Wyatt Riley, liaison between the Team and the organizers.

A-Meet Update: CSU

2009-04-28T13:12:00.010-04:00

Larry & Sara Mae Berman

Cambridge Sports Union is one of America's oldest orienteering clubs, founded by Larry and Sara Mae Berman in Cambridge, MA in 1962. After hosting its first A-meet in the mid-1980s, the club went through a quiet period before being resurrected with the help of college orienteers in the area in the late 1990's. Now, in 2009, it was time for CSU's second-ever A-meet, held, of course, under the leadership of the youthful Larry and Sara Mae.

The races were held at Pine Hill, part of the Middlesex Fells reservation located very close to the city limits of Boston. The terrain features intricate contour and rock detail, a lot of small and large trails, and a whole lot of green. Throw in unseasonably warm and humid weather, with temperatures reaching 30C on Sunday, and you get one challenging weekend of orienteering.

The M/F21 classes got to race three times over the course of the weekend, as Saturday featured a middle distance prologue and final format, followed by a classic race on Sunday. For the middle distance, the top 10 men and top 8 women advanced to the A final. The prologue and final format allowed for great spectating, with Greg Balter doing live commentary and reporting times from the radio controls. The women's race, both prologue and final, were dominated by Erin Nielsen, who won both races comfortably. The men's race, on the other hand, was a different story. In the prologue, CSU's own Boris Granovskiy (BG) had the fastest time, ahead of clubmate Ken Walker (KW), Jr. The third-best time was posted by DVOA's Clem McGrath (CM), with speedy Jon Torrance (JT) of OOC in 4th and wily veteran Joe Brautigam (JB) of WCOC close behind. These five would battle it out for the win in the sweltering heat in the afternoon's final.

The men's semi-final map (from Peter Gagarin's site)

CSU's Ken Walker Jr. and Boris Granovskiy

Here is a play-by-play reconstructed from the splits from the final. Keep in mind that finalists were started in the reverse order of their placements from the prologue, with two-minute intervals.

The men's final map (from Peter Gagarin's site)

Start-1: Everyone but JT misses right from the start, losing various amounts of time on the vague green hillside, and JT has a 30-second lead over his nearest competitor, though B-finalist Sergei Zhyk (SZ) actually has the fastest split. (Leader: SZ)

1-2: BG is fastest to get down the hill from 1 and then slog back up to 2, but SZ maintains his lead. JT loses about 30 seconds and drops behind BG. (Leader: SZ)

2-3: SZ loses over two minutes and disappears from the picture. JT and BG also lose time, through hesitations and uncertainty in the circle. CM and JB, on the other hand, spike the control, and are back in the mix. (Leader: BG)

3-4: JT and BG continue to lose time, perhaps overconfident from having seen this same control in the prologue. KW wins the split, with CM close behind and taking over the lead. (Leader: CM)

4-5: This tricky leg sees a lot of shuffling in the standings. BG spots KW leaving the control and spikes it, winning the split and regaining the lead. KW, in turn, sees JT and CM ahead of him, as both of them lost a lot of time here, among the cliffs. (Leader: BG)

5-6: Not much happens on this short leg, as all the front-runners are close, though, remarkably, about 15 seconds behind the fastest split, posted by Canadian junior Emily Kemp. (Leader: BG)

6-7: The next leg, coming into the radio control for the first time, involves a long run across an open field. Here, JT shows his speed and wins the split ahead of KW, who runs hard to try to close the gap to JT and CM in front of him and arrives at the radio control with the lead. Meanwhile, BG starts wilting in the heat, and loses nearly two minutes attacking the relatively simple control from below. (Leader: KW)

7-8: The leader carousel continues on this leg, as KW, tired from chasing JT and CM in front of him, gets confused by the out-of-bounds area and loses 2.5 minutes and the lead. As a result, JB, who has been solid so far in the race, takes the lead, and BG catches sight of KW and gets some new energy. (Leader: JB, 6th leader in 8 controls!)

8-9: More of the same. JT pushes hard and wins his third straight split and JB maintains his lead. (Leader: JB)

9-10: Our veteran leader JB, the only one with a relatively clean race so far, finally cracks under pressure and loses his lead. BG picks a good line through the green and wins the split, regaining the lead. He is now together with KW, and they are chasing JT and CM two minutes ahead of them. (Leader: BG)

10-11: Another short leg doesn't really bring any changes. (Leader: BG)

11-12: Back to the radio control. JT wins the split, while CM is second, only three seconds ahead of BG. These three seconds, however, are enough to pull him into a tie for the lead! (Leaders: CM and BG)

12-13: BG pushes hard on the trails, wins the split, and gets sole possession of the lead. (Leader: BG)

13-14: This leg ended up deciding the race. BG, tired from running hard the previous leg, chooses the shortest route, running on the small path that goes along the side of the lake. This path is very rocky and hard to follow, and the steep climb up to the hill the control is on at the end does not help. BG loses 1:30 to CM, who goes around on the left on the larger trails, and CM takes the lead for good. (Leader: CM)

14-15-16-17-F: CM and BG are pretty even through these last few legs, which are similar to the ending of the prologue, and CM extends his lead by 5 more seconds to the finish.

Final results of this exciting and exhausting race in the heat:

1. Clem McGrath 42:34
2. Boris Granovskiy 43:46
3. Jon Torrance 44:25
4. Joe Brautigam 45:09
5. Ken Walker, Jr. 45:34

Sunday's races on the men's side offered no such close battle, as Jon Torrance dominated from started to finish, winning the long course on an even hotter day by nearly 5 minutes over Saturday's course setter Alexei Azarov, with another 3 minutes down to third place. Among the women, Erin Nielsen was the best for the third time in a row, this time having to hold off a challenge from a much-improved Corinne Porter, who finished merely 15 seconds back.

The week-end's top women: Erin Nielsen, Pavlina Brautigam, Kseniya Popova

Overall, it was a very enjoyable weekend of racing, with the middle-middle format on Saturday a deifnite highlight. Pine Hill is not an area one would want to use for training too often, but racing hard and getting bloody once in a while is a whole different story.

Results
Middle Prologue
F21
1 Erin Nielsen 81 UNO 31:16
2 Pavlina Brautigam 61 WCOC 32:15
3 Kseniya Popova 86 HVO 33:49

M21
1 Boris Granovskiy 80 CSU 27:35
2 Ken Walker Jr 78 CSU 29:59
3 Clem McGrath 74 DVOA 30:15

Middle Final
F21
1 Erin Nielsen 81 UNO 41:51
2 Kseniya Popova 86 HVO 43:25
3 Pavlina Brautigam 61 WCOC 45:51

M21
1 Clem McGrath 74 DVOA 42:34
2 Boris Granovskiy 80 CSU 43:46
3 Jon Torrance 71 OOC 44:25

Classic
F21
1 Erin Nielsen 81 UNO 86:03
2 Corinne Porter 84 DVOA 86:18
3 Pavlina Brautigam 61 WCOC 88:48

M21
1 Jon Torrance 71 OOC 84:51
2 Alexei Azarov 73 CSU 90:43
3 Sergey Gnatiouk 67 HVO 94:07

A-Meet Update: West Point

2009-04-24T10:43:00.005-04:00

Samantha Saeger at the sprint

The most recent A-Meet on the US orienteering calendar was the West Point A-Meet, organized annually for thirty years now by the cadets of the United States Military Academy Orienteering Club in West Point, New York. Our guest reporter this week is the eminent Peter Gagarin.

This was advertised as the 30th year of A meets at West Point, and it was a most worthy celebration, though I must point out that I was at an A meet at West Point in 1975, before there were any orienteering maps there. We used the old 1:25,000 military map and I remember that at the time it seemed just fine. Orienteering was different then.

This was a noteworthy weekend for West Point, and for the USA team, for several reasons. The first was that it was the visit of our new coach, Mike Waddington from Hamilton, Ontario. He spent time training with Eddie Bergeron and Clem McGrath and spent time on Saturday afternoon talking to the JWOC team, and a lot of time over the weekend talking to individual Team members. There is an opportunity here — Mike (aka Hammer) has a wealth of experience and we’ll see if Team members can take advantage of it.

Second was the presence of USOF’s new Executive Director Glen Schorr. Glen sat in on part of the meeting of the team’s Executive Steering Committee (before hustling off to meet with the JWOC team) and it was clear that he has both a strong interest in our national teams, plus experience at USA Lacrosse in helping to make such a team a lot stronger and better funded. The vibes were very positive. Any feelings that one might have had that he would have no interest in our national teams should quickly be forgotten about.

Third was the fact that this was the Interscholastic Championships, and the weekend felt much more like you were at a European meet than one in the USA, because there were a lot more young people around, with all sorts of colorful uniforms and excitement. How do we get this to happen at every A meet?

Fourth was the use of what I think for most people were two entirely new venues, the area around Trophy Point for the sprint Saturday morning (the only time I’d been there before was for the opening ceremony for WOC-93), and then for the Middle on Saturday Afternoon the nearby area that includes the ski slopes, which I remember being used only once before at an A meet, perhaps 15 years ago. Sunday was based at Camp Buckner, using the terrain north and east of there, though it had been remapped in a much improved fashion. For each one of these venues the finish areas were out in the open, convenient, and full of excitement, not some remote area off in the forest. Each event was better for it.

Ross Smith at the sprint

And fifth was just the overall excellence of the organization. Under the leadership of Mike Hendricks and Jon and Viktoria Campbell, the cadets did a first-class job. Good courses, good logistics, good information, good karma. And they got the most important thing right too — good weather.

The results are here. I will just point out that among the Senior Team it seemed that Pavlina Brautigam had clearly been doing some training (husband Joe confirms that), that Ross Smith continues to make great progress (and will make a lot more if he can add a little mental discipline instead of just winging it from time to time), and Samantha Saeger ventured onto the M21 course on Sunday (only to find out that the distance wasn’t the problem, she too having been doing some serious training recently, but perhaps her skills at spiking controls needed a little improvement). Hammer is apparently already on the case.

Eddie Bergeron at the long distance

Results
Sprint, 2.6km, 105m, 20c
Men
1 Erik Nystrom WCOC 90 15:27
2 Nathaniel Lyons ROC 92 15:41
3 Ross Smith CSU 83 15:52

Women
1 Emily Kemp OOC 92 18:55
2 Samantha Saeger NEOC 82 18:58
3 Katarina Smith Falcons 71 20:49

Middle
Men 4.9km, 175m, 15c
1 Ross Smith CSU 83 37:23
2 Erik Nystrom WCOC 90 38:54
3 Mike Waddington GHO 67 39:51

Women 4.2km, 155m, 13c
1 Pavlina Brautigam WCOC 61 47:36
2 Kseniya Popova HVO 86 47:44
3 Hillary Saeger NEOC 84 49:45

Long
Men 10.4km, 435m, 22c
1 Hans Fransson GHO 72 81:27
2 Wil Smith Falcons 73 83:58
3 Eddie Bergeron SVO 69 86:14

Women 7.3km, 310m, 19c
1 Pavlina Brautigam WCOC 61 74:14
2 Hillary Saeger NEOC 84 81:23
3 Angelica Riley DVOA 70 82:51

Interscholastics
Varsity High School Women
1 Alison Campbell DVOA 84:13
2 Taylor Daughtry La Porte High 95:46
3 Kelsey Breseman COC 98:26

Varsity High School Men
1 Huw Stradling COC 74:19
2 Nathaniel Lyons ROC 84:07
3 Dominick Hernandez HOC 96:37

Team
1 Channelview Varsity
2 LaPorte High School
3 Inglemoor High School

Full Results are here.
RouteGadget Sprint
RouteGadget Middle
RouteGadget Long