Sprint finish - Race Day 4

We had a lovely surprise when we unexpectedly met Liz and Peter Mulder at St. Cergue and again at the Sprint in Geneva. Below we pose in the sprint arena with Simone Niggli-Luder (Women's Sprint and World Cup winner 2010) being interviewed on the big screen in the background.


The World Cup sprint made for a thrilling final spectacle before our flight back to SA. In the men's Elite race the first 18 finished within one minute of each other, there were 5 shared places with second placed Graham Gristwood and Matthias Müller missing Daniel Hubmann's top spot by only 9 seconds. In the women's race Simone had another near-invincible run ahead of Helena Jansson with JWOC 2010 star Ida Bobach in third place.

We had a rainy, slippery, slightly slower run.

The complex area around the Geneva Cathedral on the World Cup sprint all-controls map

This then ends our fantastic tour.

Over to the next orienteers!

Up and down - Race Day 3

We spent the training day in Geneva mostly looking at Geneva (particularly the Old Town sprint area).

The the following day's middle event at St. Cergue just outside Geneva went quite a bit up and down in both the terrain and the races. Cindy was suffering from a cough and runny nose, Tania had an uphill struggle with a control or two and Nico's speed went a bit downhill in the much more runable white forest.

Lots of contours, white and the nasty white bits are actually marked on the St. Cergue Middle map

What to do with the stones from stony ground

(Just for completeness here's what we did on the last few days, written from home)

Chateau de Chatillon

Lausanne's Gothic Cathedral

More stony ground - Mt. Blanc

Tania on top of Aiguille de Midi (3842m) after an arduous cable-car journey.

Cindy and Nico getting in some high altitude training with Mt. Blanc in the background.

The bottom-most part of the Mer de Glace ("Sea of Ice") glacier - France's biggest.

Today may be the final post as we're now off to Swiss-land. Depending on how the data networks receive us we'll try to write a few more posts from Geneva.

Wet - Training Day 5

We had a late start in the hope that the overnight rain would stop for us. It didn’t really. As a result we were unusually late to the training and arrived to a packed car park, with all the national teams out in full force. The area was right in the middle of the WOC 2011 terrain so it seems no teams wanted to miss out on the training opportunity. We all did the shorter of the two courses. The first half proved to be very slow terrain to move over. Rocky (and wet) together with the French’s sporadic felling practices meant there were lots of (wet) branches everywhere.

Tania's course on the training map in the middle of the WOC 2011 embargoed area

To give you some idea Tania was quite pleased with direct, faultless route from 4 to 5 even though the going was slow. Nico also had a clean run there, but felt he was a bit slow. Never the less he was still 3 minutes faster than Tania. Some teams seemed to be able to move faster through the messy forest floor, something worth practicing if you could find similar terrain in SA. Visibility was low, but the now familiar complex contour details seem to be helping ones progress over the course. It is difficult to imagine where in SA we will be able to find such complex contours to practice on.

The second part of the course gave some hope, as by comparison it was possible to run through the forests. Pits continue to be these amazing man eating crevices and are useful navigation tools (if you don’t fall into them). Clearings were again useful (although some felling caused confusion) but the difference between green and white was not so obvious. Despite their name, depressions continue to be a win.

Tania at a control in a depression in the white forest

And that wraps up team SA’s participation in this training camp. Regrettably with just one week it feels like we are have only just scratched the surface of how to master this complex, tough and unforgiving terrain.

A word of thanks to Jean Dermine and his team for organizing the training camp. It was a welcome pleasure not to have to hang out our own training controls and the hot coffee at the end of today’s session was a lovely surprise to help warm up our icy fingers.

No pressure - Training Day 4

Day 4's training was on the map from Sundays long event. The course we did in the morning was of a similar style of the previous days. Several controls in highly complex areas on one hand verses nice route choice longer legs. Again the trick was to find nice paths on the long legs and to have good safe attack points (as close as possible) into the controls. This was all possible, and relocation is becoming easier in the complex contours (regrettably the need is not necessarily becoming less frequent).

Route choice

On the leg 7-8 Tania and Cindy cut to the path south of the red line once they had crossed the tar road. Nico went north. On 8-9 Nico stayed south of the red line, Tania went north and Cindy did a combination of both. The trick is getting the hang of the speed variation. Fast on the long legs (rocks and vegetation permitting) and then to reduce speed in the complex areas in order to avoid mistakes. Accurate navigation is very possible at a slow pace.

Control picking - with a few hand drawn controls

In the afternoon Nico and Tania went in opposite directions to go do some extra control picking. Tania went cruising around the second part of the morning course. Nico played nice fast ping pong in the complex area around the first part of the morning course.

Moeg - Race Day 2

A late night and early start set the scene for our long French public event. The previous 4 days of orienteering was starting to take its toll on the legs which felt really tired. The map was just below day 3 training. Again in places the vegetation was thick, the ground rocky and contours very detailed. This meant you had to find nice paths for the long legs which joined the clustering of technical controls. The long legs were around 1.5km, with some climb and even the paths got very rocky. The climb on the long legs was often squeezed into a short space. All courses had lots of route choices which added to the challenge. As this map shows Nico's 9.8km, 440m climb course took him from one corner of the A3 map to the other.

Typical "stony ground" - it tends to slow you down

Light years ahead

Nico out of the Sprint start block

That evening Nico had a clear advantage being an early starter. He put the light to good use and put in a blistering time on the sprint event. Unfortunately he had a bad brush with a poisonous plant and nearly had to get whisked off to hospital after his race due to an allergic reaction that mad his face look like a pug dog. With the help of powerful headlamps Tania and Cindy had nice races. It was a very special place to do night orienteering around, weaving between the diners, darting through tunnels and making sure you didn’t overshot a control and fall into the canal.

Tania's Course

Middle and O-Show maps

Tania's Course on the middle map

One of the 6 qualification maps (each competitor ran 3)

Unlikely - Race Day 1

When receiving our instructions for the O show the organizers said it was unlikely we would qualify for the quarter finals so he didn’t need to give us that information. He was right! But we had fun in the maze of controls spread out on the lawns of Anncey. The lake and the mountains our beautiful backdrop. The O show took place between our middle distance event and our evening sprint.

A lack of English instructions got us to the mornings middle event way to early (as the sun was rising) with the organizers still putting controls out. In fact he gave us directions to the start area, put his headlamp on and rushed off into the dark forests. The 220 m , 1.5 km walk to the start mean much of the course was downhill. This was the first really fast runable forest we’ve been on since our training began. It felt like any other forest, with no real surprises. Although spikes were still an advantage for contouring along the steep slopes, which frustrated Nico no end. The fear of elephant also tracks failed to materialize as the forest had dried out from the previous days rain and it made for a pleasant morning for all.

Cindy after the Middle Race

Tania and Nico around the O-Show course

And now we sign out for our Sprint-race (some of us in the dark) ...

Perspective - Training Day 3

Seems a little bit of remapping can do wonders. Day 3 was back into the day 1 area, only now it was called something else and more importantly it was remapped. Everything made sense! All the humps & bumps were on, vegetation was sensible and bare rock was now stony ground (still to be avoided). Our maps had a network of some 25 controls. After our now usual map walk to get into the map we dispersed to go control hunting. Depressions proved useful again, but compared to the previous days there were handfuls of things to use. Attackpoints and catch features completely missing on day 2 were waiting for the picking today. The forest remained rough to move through, but at least with a decent map navigation around really bad parts was possible.

The Forests were rather busy with all sorts of O celebrities with all the national teams in full action. Nico was encouraged by the fact that many of them did not hit the controls spot on. The only downside was that it was vey wet underfoot and the lack of studded shoes meant the going was slow and slippery. We were all also rather cold and wet when we returned. But despite that it was our most enjoyable day orienteering.