Final day of WOC 2010

Today is the final day of the World Orienteering Championships - 2010 Norway.

It is the relay event, but as mentioned, South Africa won't be participating as it only has 2 men at the champs. Instead, it's time to get out there and join the crowds of spectators. There are no clear favourites, other than maybe Norway who will have a strong home ground advantage as well as the popular support.

You can follow the full action which is about to start on the WOC live feed at http://live.woc2010.com/

It's been nice and peaceful here in the last few days since the last qualification race (no South African made a final - not a big surprise). It's given us time to be tourists, both recreationally as well as sportingly.

Apart from participating in the public 'WOC Tour' races, the SA Team also managed to round up some of its travelling supporters brigade and head out for a bit of sight seeing on one of the rest days. The destination was Røros, a quaint historical mining village about 1 hour away in the Norweigian highlands that is now a World Heritage Site.

Pic: The town of Røros from the nearby slag dump.

Pic: Jenny Bradshaw, Richard Lange, Jeremy and Kirsty Green. Four orienteers with 1 map between them.

Røros is a beautiful town, with plenty of historical building and some interesting mining works. It was formerly a copper mining town, with the mine dumps, smelter and associated workings still dominating the town. The SA team had great fun. Jeremy almost took a memento back home to South Africa (don't know where the air hostesses would have put it on the flight).

Pic: Jeremy - begging his wife for some money...

Great day out. Norway is a beautiful country. Pity is so bloody expensive!

Pic: The copper works in Røros.

Well, that's is from WOC 2010. The South African national squad will be in action later this year, when 3 orienteers travel to a Training camp in France in October as preparation for WOC 2011, which will be in the Alpine east of the country (the Savoie Grand Revard region). We'll try to get some reports from them of their experiences, which will include World Cup races in Geneva, Switzerland as well.

Long Qualifiers (aka long distance bog trotting)

Tuesday evening saw the qualification races for the Long Distance take place. Once again, the weather was superb with clear skies and mild temperatures. The races were held in the late afternoon, with some participants only starting just after 5pm with the sun low on the horizon (adding an extra dimension of complexity as the first 3 controls were facing west on the men's course).

The South African team of Nicholas Mulder and Jeremy Green had good runs with few mistakes. However, the final results still show the two runners well down the rankings.

Long Distance Qualification Results

Jeremy had a fairly stable run after a few short mess-ups around the first few controls. He settled down nicely after this, particularly on the longer legs where he managed to find a good rhythm and keep up a decent pace, navigating with more confidence than in the last few days. He finished in under 2 hours (1:54:34), his intended goal. However, it still left him 34th and last on his heat, which was a disappointment.

Pic: Nicholas at the penultimate control of the Long Qualifier (photo by Jan Kocbach - World of O)

For Nicholas, some long technically easy, but physical route choices meant that he struggled to finish higher up the rankings. A good start saw him rise as high as 24th position, but two wrong route choices at the end of the course saw him loose 3 minutes of mistakes. In the end, it was 28th position in 1:16:55 on his heat.

Pic: Nicholas' route from the Long Distance Qualifier.

For both runners, the constant running in squishy marshes took its toll. The phrase 'bog-trotting' is particularly appropriate, as it is difficult to accelerate to any high speed on the up and level marshes. For the top elite competitors, it was a tough day, with the winning times extremely fast. Reaching the final 15th qualification place in each heat also proved tough, with most heats requiring a sub-65 minute time to do so.

This brings to an end the South African campaign at WOC 2010. With only 2 runners, the team cannot partake in the 3-man relay on Sunday. Instead, Jeremy and Nicholas will do a few runs in the WOC Tour races, where the majority of the spectators at WOC are participating. More posts to come however as the team will be watching the finals as well as making general comments on their WOC performances.

Tough & techincal terrain for Middle Qualifier

Team South Africa came away with mixed results in the Middle Distance qualification race at WOC today.Once again, the race was held in perfect running conditions under a blue sky. The repetitive weather warnings for rain in the last few days have been for nought.

Nicholas Mulder came off best of the South Africans, finishing in 26th place in Heat B in a time of 32:11. In so doing, he improved on his best Middle performance of 27th, which he posted in WOC 2007 Ukraine. Although he avoided any big mistakes on the course, Nicholas was initially unhappy with his run, which was described as 'scrappy' and without confidence. The results placing was thus a bit of a surprise and highlighted the importance of avoiding big mistakes in this low visibility terrain.

Pic: Nicholas' map and route of the Middle Distance Qualification

Jeremy Green's race got off to a nightmare start, when he immediately lost 25 minutes on the first control. In the end, his GPS logger shows that he passed within a short distance of the control on numerous occassions to no avail, logging 2.5km on a leg of just 350m. (Ed: I'll try to get Jeremy to hand over his GPS map data. Emphasis on 'try').  He had a further mistake on the course of approximately 5 minutes, but thereafter settled down in a good pace, finishing well off the field in 1:05:58. However, he did manage to put 2 runners behind him who were disqualified. As mentioned yesterday, this still allowed him to improve on his overall best placing in the middle from 38th to 32nd!


Middle Distance Results and Splits

There were numerous upsets on both the B (Nicholas') and C (Jeremy's) Heats, with some big names not making the 15 place cut for the final. It seems like the early part of the course, which took runners through light green forest took its toll, with big mistakes recorded throughout the field.

Pic: Jeremy Green (photo by Jan Kocbach - World of O')

The Middle Final will take place on Friday. In the meantime however, the focus moves on to tomorrow afternoon's Long Distance qualifier, which will be held on an adjoining map. Jeremy is off at 16h24 and Nicholas at 17h00. The terrain is expected to be slightly faster in running speed, with larger marshes and better visibility. Some light rain is also forecast in the early afternoon (again).

You can follow the proceedings LIVE as it happens at the WOC Live website. The interesting part is that all the men will be wearing tracking devices that will allow everyone too see their location and route on the map LIVE. This should add an extra dimension of pressure for the South African runners (Jeremy has already started thinking that his ankle feels a bit sore).


Footnote: In other news, the first stage of the WOC Tour took place today. Kirsty Green had her first taste of the Norwegian marshes right at the start, with the start control sited right in the centre of one! However, she had it easy compared to one Ladies elite runner (obviously not a Norwegian) who had one of the first start times with her. The elite runner set off at pace through the marsh, running straight onto a circular brown patch that looked like dried mud. Kirsty was kind enough to stop and lend assistance when she promptly went up to her waist in thick muddy marsh. I'm sure she was also kind enough not to smile too much.

SA Runner gets 1st place (in the sprint finish split)

Trondheim has had another wonderful, sunny day during which it hosted the Sprint Qualification and Final races. The team had a mediocre performance today at the Sprint Qualification race, that unsurprisingly didn't see any South Africans qualify.

Pic: The official 2010 team photo in front of our hotel.

Jeremy Green was the first South African runner off, but made mistakes at 1 and 12 saw him fall well down the results board. In the end, he finished 31st (out of 33) in a time of 23:12 (+8:11). Only the top 15 runners qualified for the final. He says that he would have been happy with a sub-20 time without this two big mistakes, placing him around 28th in his heat. The good news is that he kept his spirits up by once again taking the fastest split on the run-in from the last control to the finish on his heat.

Pic: Jeremy Green on his way to the fastest finish split time (Photo by WOC 2010 Organisation)

Nicholas Mulder started a little while later and had a fair race. He was moderately happy, given this is his worst discipline. However, he rued two major route choice mistakes on the course, each costing him 20 seconds when he didn't see the gaps in some impassable fences. He went on to finish in 32nd position (out of 34) in a time of 19:23 (+4:26).

Pic: Nicholas' map of the Sprint Qualification (Heat 1).

Pic: Nicholas Mulder in the run-in at the finish (Photo by WOC 2010 Organisation)

The results put South Africa towards the bottom of the list of countries, something the team is keen to improve on in the forthcoming Middle distance (Monday) and Long distance (Tuesday) qualification races. The team has started keeping score however. Present standings for SA are:

RSA 2 - USA 0 (big smiles here for South Africa!)
RSA 1 - BRA 1
RSA 1 - CHN 1

There are however, numerous scores which read 0 - 2, and which won't be listed here due to possible development of inferiority complexes.

Full results and split times can be seen at the official WOC website here.

In the afternoon, the team spectated at the Sprint Finals. Surprisingly, the final area was technically earlier than the qualification race. Times were thus extremely tight at the top of the leaderboard. The Swiss men dominated, taking 1st and 2nd place (only their first ever Sprint Gold!) with a young Frenchman a surprise 3rd. The overall time difference from 1st place to 7th was only 7 seconds!!! Crazy! In the Ladies, Simone Niggli took yet another gold, this time by the narrowest of margins (0.7 seconds), with only another 5 seconds to 3rd place.

Pic: The river Nidelva where it runs through town, part of the Sprint Final map.

Tomorrow afternoon will be the Middle Distance qualification race. Jeremy starts at 14h30 and Nicholas at 14h56 (CET). Both runners will be aiming to improve on their perfomances of today, with Nicholas hoping to better his historical best position of 27th place (Ukraine 2007). Given that Jeremy's best performance is 38th (Denmark 2006), he will automatically improve just by finishing! The courses are only 3.5km in length (i.e. very slow terrain), with 170m of climb and only 11 controls!

You can follow all the action live at the WOC Live website.

SA Team ready for WOC in Trondheim

Team South Africa is ready for the 2010 WOC in Trondheim. This morning, the team finished their final training run on the Model area for the Middle and Long distance Qualification.

The last week has been tough for the two South Africans, Jeremy Green and Nicholas Mulder. There is very little terrain that can replicate the tough marshy and bushy conditions that exist in the forest around Trondheim. Despite some good training over the last few months, both competitors were left feeling worn out after just a few training sessions during the pre-WOC training week.

Pic: View over the Trondheim Fjord coastline just east of the city.

The predominant note about Trondheim forest is how wet it is underfoot. Every footstep sees you sinking into the loose ground at least a few centimetres, whilst at least 1/2 of any course sees a competitor running on either damp or full marshy ground. Indeed, many route choice options will actually see competitors purposefully running in the marshes as tree density is significantly less in these places. Add in some mountainous terrain, a thick layer of 15 - 30cm high blue berry bushes as ground cover and the stage is all set for some extremely physical terrain. The average speed of the course winners will be some of the slowest in many, many years. As a result, the two team members took a well-needed rest day on Friday before completing a short model event on Saturday morning.

Pic: The map for the Model event for the Middle Qualification

The last week has also allowed the team to see some on the natural beauty of the region. The weather has been incredibly favourable in the last week, with hardly a drop of rain during the day (this has actually made the marshes relatively dry - at least by Trondheim standards). This has resulted in some beautiful sunsets and idyllic scenery. Apparently the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) has been going wild for the last few nights, alas the team has not been lucky enough to see them due to cloud cover, excessive light or the need for sleep!

The WOC Week gets off underway on Sunday morning at 9am with the Sprint Qualification. Jeremy starts at 10h10 (same time in Norway as in S.A.), with Nicholas off at 10h27. It should all be over in about 15 - 20 minutes. If either make the final (unlikely, but this is Jeremy's favourite event), this will take place later at 14h40.

In the meantime, there should also be some good Team SA support, with a small contingent of South Africans in Trondheim at the moment as spectators and to compete in the WOC Tour events. These include Kirsty Green (AR Club), Richard Lange and Jenny Bradshaw (PENOC) as well as Richard Gathercole (formerly PENOC, now resident in Austria).

 Pic: Jeremy and Kirsty Green crossing a bridge in Trondheim city over the Nidelva River