O-Ringen Stage 1

My first race at O-Ringen for me went terribly. I had a good start catching the guy ahead of me on the first control, then catching the guy ahead of him on the next one. I lost a bit of time on three due to an imperfect plan. To 4 I did not solidify my plan enough and blew it right after the big hill by not navigating and just running towards a big marsh through a complicated section with my bearing. Then I saw a hunters stand and thought it was an X on the map, and so I changed my direction from there, and began running parrallel to the complicated section making it nearly impossible to regain contact with the map. From there I continued running making up where I was on the map until I found a really big open hill, spent a minute looking for it on the map, nad finally climbed up it and found where I was. Then I crossed through about 300m of crappy marsh to get to my control. On that leg I lost 15-20 min and therefore gave up and jogged the rest, as with such a massive mistake there wasn't any more point in racing anymore.

JWOC Relay

The JWOC relay was an intense race in a slightly different way from the others that I had run this week. This time, I was running the first leg, which meant I began in the middle of the pack with no spacing. There was 2 meters of distance between me and the best runners. This puts a little more pressure onto you when you run.

When the gun signaled our start then the group stampeded to the start triangle. I let myself be passed by people who were going faster as I tried to read the map. In the future I believe that I will try to stay with part of the group and keep my pace up so that I run among more people out on the course. To the first control I was drawn off of the optimal route by a group with a different forking, and got my control about 10-20 sec slower then I would have if I had run up the marsh.

I learned that if you run the first leg of a relay, then it is very useful to be physically comparable to your competitors. When there is someone 20m ahead of you then you can save a ton of time if you know where they are going, and that you need to go to the same place so for 30 seconds you can relentlessly chase them down at a faster speed then you could if you were navigating. Unfortunately I did not have this advantage, and ended up not being able to chase any of my competitors down physically. Up to the spectator control my race was relatively clean navigationally, and I stayed ahead of people by not making mistakes. Through the chute I tried focusing on my upcoming legs and did not run so fast, which proved to be detrimental afterwards as I was passed by two faster runners. The mistake I made was when I did not slow down enough in the last part of the leg after the chute. The terrain became very technical and my plan was inadequate and so I lost a minute correcting my mistake. I ran with a couple others at this point, unfortunately leading, as a) I didn't trust them b) I was doing my own thing.

The final controls I was able to nail perfectly, and before the pre-go control I saved myself as I came up a steep hill by walking. Then I took a good route to the second last control but lost about 5 seconds to the go control by cutting straight up a bank and some vegetation. At the go-control there were two others with me and one of them put off a fresh 400m pace off to the finish passing me. If he had kept it up then he would have beat me who was trying to keep up with him without killing myself completely. Fortunately that only lasted about 50m, and so with about 100m left I sped up. Seeing/feeling him not speed up behind me gave me more energy and so I was able to keep the pace up all of the way to the tag off.

It was a good thing to know that my main limiting factor for this year's JWOC was my physical strength, and yet I was able to improve by roughly 25 spots in the long distance, and at least 35 spots in the middle distance from last year.

JWOC Long Distance

The full map (other then one control at the bottom)

I looked forward to the Long. Last year if I hadn't mis-punched then it would have been my best result. I knew that the format was less technical but expected hard parts to appear on the course. Right from the beginning I was ready for a difficult leg and braced myself for it. Unfortunately when I flipped my map then I was met with a simple leg once again, and had no problem with it. I nailed every leg up to 4 which I ended up overshooting and loosing a minute. This was my only significant navigational mistake during the whole race. I was able to make correct plans and route choices for pretty much every other control.

Punching the spectator control

The terrain was relatively easy with one very difficult control where even the winner slowed down to a walking pace. Otherwise, some areas were more technical then others but it was all bearable. I had a fantastic run otherwise and it ended up being my best result this year, 80th place, a decent number to work off of towards the future with 4 more years of JWOC ahead of me. Next year my goal is to solidly place into the A-final and optimally come in top 30.

Routes for the technical section

Finish Sprint

JWOC 2015 Middle Quali/Final

The Middle distance qualifier had portions of orienteering that were probably the smoothest that I had ever run. Unfortunately my start and speed capped off my rate of success. The first control was my one and only mistake, I saw the leg and tried making a plan, but it was a fairly vague control and so my plan also ended up being vague. Thus instead of passing the rocky ground and continuing on to the control, I was just south of my intended path and ended up in the center of the forest with no features off of which I could navigate. I though that I saw a tip of a marsh down south and hoped that I could use it to relocate. I went quite a ways before I ran into the large marsh where I relocated and was able to hit the control. The guy behind me caught up and so I knew that I had lost over 2 minutes on that control.

 

From there The rest of the course went very smoothly. Every leg was easy to make a plan for and I was able to  execute those plans more or less perfectly. At one point a Dane caught up to me and so I tried keeping up with him for a while. I managed about two controls before I continued back on my own, it was very difficult to navigate and run at the speed that he was putting up. I had to slow down in order to know where I was. After the race, I placed 33 in my heat; 4 min behind from qualifying into the A-Final. 2 of those minutes could be attributed to my one mistake, but the rest is a result of my navigational/running speed.

Though I was slow, I still managed to qualify for the B-final which was a huge improvement from last year. From there I prepared for the final by looking back on my quali, and seeing what I could possibly make better, I therefore focused on going slow to my first control. Unfortunately, my first control was very easy and so I did it perfectly and wasted no time in slowing down. By four I had caught up to the two starters ahead of me, but managed to look and start planning 6-7 as I was running 5-6. I realized this after about 10 seconds of running but by then it was relatively too late, I had lost contact and now I needed to relocate. Being a bit further East of the control then I had anticipated lead me to take a solid 3 min to find the control. After this mistake cause by lack of focus, I engaged in what one may call "Beast mode" and I began running very aggressively for the rest of the course., both physically and navigationally.

This saved me a bunch of time overall, but sadly it led me to take one of the last controls too directly and lose about a minute. I overshot 15, found 16 and came back to my control from there. I passed a Dane who was running slower then me about 3 times. First when I caught to him (he started 2 min ahead of me) then subsequently after I made both of my mistakes.

JWOC 2015 Sprint Distance

     The JWOC Sprint Distance race was a very well designed course, with many route choices that were difficult to anticipate and to choose quickly, the race was challenging even for the best. The first leg was a trap indirectly, which I fell for badly. Starting off with a very easy control, immediately followed by a long leg, I defaulted to trying to figure out my route for the long leg. Once I had a rough idea of what that was, then I looked up to see where I was on my route to number one. Here it took me a couple of seconds to stop, relocate and run back 10 meters to the gap in the fence where I entered my control from.

     I continued to number 2 by quickly exiting back the way that I had entered and began running in the direction of my control. Here I took a right turn up towards a road that would have been more direct if it had not been for the artificial fences that had been put up to block it off. I had to then use an ally to the left to get around this. I then crossed through the field using the two gates, and came to the control to the south. Apparently 90% of the runners used a variant of this route to get the control. The fastest route though, turned out to be cutting straight up through some green to a road that was higher up. I had dissipated that option due to the large number of contours that you had to ascend through green in order to get to the road. 

 

     That summarizes the compilation of my first two mistakes. From there control three was for setting up the next route choice and in that time I tried planning that route choice out.  I was quite set with taking the upper route and almost did, but I ended up analyzing the lower one and picking it in the last couple seconds before I hit the control.  I did a slightly slower variant of the optimal route, but it worked. Along the next few control I was caught up to by an Irish guy who was running a bit faster than me. The only way that I was able to stay ahead of him all of the way into the arena was due to the fact that he kept on making mistakes as I took very sharp turns into alleys or paths that he wasn’t expecting. He lost 3-6 seconds multiple times due to this. 

     After I passed through the arena then I made a number of mistakes all in a row, first I ran to 11 from the right instead of the left, due to the out of bounds hash which I wanted to stay away from.  Next I thought that the entrance to 12 was blocked off from the right (there was a contour connecting the fence) and so I attacked it from the left side which was slower. The next control was more complicated from the right/straight and so I bailed left and came in from the left side losing 3 seconds. Finally I went straight/right to 14 missing the faster route choice from the left. From there I took the correct route to 15 (right) and continued on to finish the course.

Overall I had a fairly bad run with 6 mistakes pushing it over the edge. Moral of the story is; that I am going to have to do more sprint training practices. Fortunately I’m making some new maps in Calgary; unfortunately I am the one who is making them.

A Week in Rauland

     Previous to the arrival in Rauland, we first had to brave an entire 3 and a half hours of driving  (or in my case, passing time on my ipod) a navigate the vast roads of Norway, with a GPS that told us where to go. Eventually we arrived at the location and settled in for what would apparently be the majority of the relevant training that we were about to do in relation to JWOC which was coming around the corner in roughly 2 and a half weeks. We tackled many maps, including ones such as Juvstal, Sauraai, and Krossen, which we were able to deduce as the most relevant maps in comparison to the older versions of the JWOC terrains that we had.

Sauraai (upside down, but right-side up from the direction that were were coming at it from)

       Sauraai, the map with the most technical section just to the west side also contained one of the most relevant sections to the JWOC Middle and Long on the SE side. Here I first ran the preset JWOC training with flags, and had a slightly rough time on some of the controls. Nearly all of them I nailed yet I still had some glitches in my runs where I would lose contact due to an insufficiently detailed plan or because I took a route choice that was slower then the optimal one. One of the observational fact that I established during the time on this map, was that the marshes, especially the yellow marshes were very obvious and very fast. Someone said that "They were like highways on the map" (can't remember if that was me). Anyways they were a super obvious feature that you should usually use if it is in acceptable range of a route choice to a control that you are running to. They were very helpful for simplification of legs.

     In the complicated section I learned that I cannot even jog through something that is so complicated and it is worth to do what I had done at the World Cup on the long (which was to stop, align features with the map, jog to one, then repeat)  or just walk at a pace at which you can navigate accurately. I know that for JWOC, if I see something that complicated to slow down in that section significantly.

Juvstal

      Juvstal was a great map to see what the marshes are like on a slight slope, and how vague can they actually get? The answer is that they can get tremendously vague if you start daydreaming, don't look at your compass for 7 seconds while running at a 5min/km pace down hill, or even second guess yourself at some point on the leg. Though the marshes can be very obvious, they can also get very tricky, therefore when navigating through them you need to be fully focused on what you are doing.

Killingnuten

      This map was, I don't know, pretty boring I'd say? There were a couple route choice legs which usually involved going around certain features for long distances in order to avoid climb, but overall the navigational level that it comes down to was pretty basic. You had a nice view of the scenery around I guess. Otherwise it was not very relevant and it was also not very challenging for me.

Raulandsgrend

     This course served two purposes: 1. To simulate running downhill and spiking boulders at high speed without making big mistakes. 2. To get some very nice pictures of the mountains and lake.

The mountains to one side.

Beautiful view of the mountains and lake

The country side of Rauland and the hills where JWOC will be taking place

Training in Oslo (Again)

After the World Cup we were in Oslo for a week to recover in order to be able train hard again in Rauland in preparation for JWOC. Below are a couple of the trainings that I did during that time.

A relatively complicated course through some cliffs

A decent course on a slightly less green part of the map

 

 

A contours only map, and then a line-o