Training Log Archive: nmulder

Bière-Ballens - 1:15'000

Men's A-Heat in the Long Distance Qualification

Was expecting a tough physical forest, but had to readjust very rapidly on the way to the 1st control. Forest was significantly more runnable than expected, so started running extremely straight between controls. Made very few mistakes, 1-2 mins total. Only 1 major route choice error.

Got passed by Lundanes (+3) at #3, no surprise there. After that a lot of running on my own as 3rd last starter. Was quite nice in a way, as I could settle down and focus on my O', but also didn't have people ahead of me going into controls.

In the end, finished 28th in a field of 38. Quite happy with that, although % against the winner is a bit down. WRE points are very down though. Lack of running speed is noticeable, especially given the forest conditions. Overall a very nice area, and a run that I quite enjoyed.

Results

From Orienteering Maps

Event: WOC 2012 - Lausanne SWITZERLAND
 

Flew to Switzerland from Slovakia.

Or rather, got to Kosice airport at 4am for my 5am flight. At boarding, was told that I had been bumped off the flight. This by the airline that I had been boycotting for 15 years and had only booked with again as there is a severe lack of airlines flying into Kosice.

At least they bribed me to be calm with lots of Euros and then hired a private driver to drive me to Budapest to catch the Swiss flight to Zurich. Only 2 hours later than planned.

Still got to see the WOC Sprint Final in Lausanne. Got the brilliant news on the train there that Michael had qualified for the A-final. First South African ever to get through the qualifiers. He had a few mistakes in the final, so didn't get off the bottom, but great performance anyway. We had a good SA support contingent around the arena.

JWOC Relay.

Both men's and ladies' teams had a good day, even if the final results don't necessarily show it.

We ran Brad-Ant-Jess in the Men and Salome-Steph-Sarah in the ladies.

Brad had a very good run, just +5 off the leaders after leg 1. Ant continued his recent run of good races and ensured a clean run that saw us mantain a good position. Unfotunately Jess was always going to be easy prey for the chasing men's teams behind us, but she did well. We finished only a few minutes behind Canada who also fielded 1 women in their team.

Salome had a problem control on the first leg and lost some time at it, but Steph had a good clean run and managed to catch up, even passing the USA team and getting clear by a few minutes. Sarah then anchored us home well. Apart from USA, also beat a few other teams which was a good result.

Ran the Team Officials race. Jahodna, 1:10'000.

Poor quality printing and 1 or 2 interesting interpretations. (e.g. control 7, mapping an extraction trace as a 'ruined earth-wall' - i.e. the middle mannetjie.)

Paced myself after yesterday, as have WOC races on Sunday and Monday. Used it as a good recovery run from yesterday's flat-out race.

Had a fair run, hit most controls almost spot on, but not necessarily as a result of my actions. Lots of other runners around me in the mass start, so lots of following and feeding off the other competitors.

From Orienteering Maps

Fairly decent runs by the Juniors in the Middle Distance Finals.

Good results for Brad and Sarah in the B-final, whilst Ant had a very good run in his C-final. Overall everyone was happy with their performances, even if some of the C-finalists didn't give 100% so as to save themselves for the Relay tomorrow.

Day 1 of the Karst Cup in Slovakia, spectators races for JWOC.

Izra. 1:7'500. 5m

M21E - placed 7th out of field of 26. +8:42 from the winner.

Had a really great race on one of the best maps for a long time. Beautiful white forest with intense contour detail. Had a good start and maintained it all around, only missing 15s on 1 control (#11), which I slightly overran on the right). Got caught by Eric Kemp (+4) at #16, but kept him in sight after that.

Am chuffed with the run, even though my nav was a bit fly-by-night to start with, only settling down later. Never had a course where I was so reliant on the compass. Had to check it every time I looked at the map, but it worked. The secret was pretty much straight line on a compass, trying to identify waypoints and catch features on the go. Contour detail too complex to use fully, so lots of simplification needed.

Stunning area for O' and incredible that this area had never been mapped before by the Slovaks before today.

Results

From Orienteering Maps

Middle distance qualfying races for JWOC.

Brad, Sarah and Jess made B-finals. Steph just missed and joined Ant and Salome in C-finals.

Most of the day was spent on the official JWOC tourist trip to a cave. Not as spectacular as we were hoping.

In the evening we went out to the Model for Middle Distance. Bit of a shambles transport and time-wise, but most of us got a quick run in to readjust to 1:10' scale.

Parked a way away, so 2km speed run into the forest to try and catch the juniors after taking separate bus / car transports to separate parking areas, then 3km around some of the controls. Found all the controls, but didn't find all the juniors. Gave up waiting for some of them at the finish after some time, and then sped 2km back to the car where I found them again.

Good example of how not to organise a team training session. If you're confused, so was I.

From Orienteering Maps

Long distance race at JWOC. Karst terrain on Brazda map, which I got to run on in 2009 in prep for WOC Hungary. I got lost on that one for about 30 minutes...

Brad had another good run, placing 80th, the best result in the Men's Long in many years and probably the best as a % of the winner ever. A 3-min mistake near the end cost him about 10 places though.

Steph was on good form again, but mispunched. :-( Rest of the team also did good results. No-one at the bottom of the results on a very technical area! Lots of DSQ's, 25 on the men and 9 on the women... ouch. Makes our performances look better however.

JWOC Sprint Final took place today in Kosice. Best runs were from Brad and Steph. Brad produced a new PB for South Africa, placing 74th. At one stage he was 52nd. He came awfully close to a top 60, just 5 secs short!

Steph came just short of a new SA personal best, finishing 73rd. Likewise, she was running in 29th spot as late as 2/3rd of the way through the course before making a 30s mistake.

Good and fair results all-round though. Courses were easy, which didn't exactly suite our runners.

Event: JWOC 2012 Kosice SLOVAKIA
 

Walked around the model areas for the Long Distance (Soroska) and the Sprint (Park Angelinum).

From Orienteering Maps

From Orienteering Maps

Last training session. Middle distance terrain / control picking.

From Orienteering Maps

And an area we didn't use for training...

From Orienteering Maps