Preview to WUOC 2014

World University Orienteering Championships 2014  - Preview                 

 It's a students favorite year in orienteering! It is a WUOC year! The World University Orienteering Championships take place every two years and is where the best student athletes from around the world come to battle it out. WUOC was first held in 1978 in Finland and is a FISU event. This year I get the chance to represent the USA and Heriot-Watt University at WUOC. The event is being held in Olomouc, Czech Republic from August 12th to the 16th. This is WUOCs return to the Czech Republic as it was previously held in Plzeň in 2004.

http://www.mundocity.com/europa/praga/datos.html

WUOC has changed format a bit this year compared to the last two I have gotten the chance to race at. This year a sprint relay made up of two men and two women has been added to the program to match the races at the World Champs. This means that there are now 5 days of racing in a row instead of 4. The USA are sending a small female team this year so I am getting the privilege to run every event. Seems like a big task, but I'm up for the challenge! I'm most looking forward to the Middle and Relay events. So how does that match up with order of events and recovery time? Sadly back to back at the end of the week. But surely that just means I should be at the prime having had more time in the woods by then!

I'm missing the Long Distance training on the friday as traveling to Olomouc that day, so model events will start with the Middle/Relay Distance training anyway :) This is where hopefully when I get on the map and start pulling "tools out of the toolbox" things click. It sounds as if it is going to be extremely important to pick the right tool (compass bearing, aiming off, pace counting, ect...) for each leg. Unlike in Scotland (where I have done most of my training) where there are copious contours to help guide you around the maps of around Olomouc looks to be a lot more typical bland continental Europe.  More vegetation change, trail networks and blank hillsides. I have had a look back at JWOC 2012 in Poland to get an idea of how I tackled things there and how well they worked. This time around I think I'll be looking at using my compass a bit better! 

Helpful Information

• USA Team: 
• Women - ME! (DVOA/EUOC), Tori Borish (COC), McKenzie Hudgins (USMAOC)
• Men - Giacomo Barbone (CSU), Jacob Grant (USMAOC), James O'Keefe (USMAOC), Hans Sitarz (USMAOC), Charles Whitaker (USMAOC)
• Team Leader: Ian Jones 

• WUOC Website
• Czech Republic time zone is GMT + 2hrs
• 1hr ahead of UK/Ireland
• 6hrs ahead of East Coast USA

Now best be off asleep so I get up to finish packing and catch my plane!

The Adventure that was 3rd year

Well my blog has gone in hibernation a bit since POM. Guess it is time to update and reflect on my 3rd year at Heriot-Watt. The first thing that comes to mind is "WHOA what a year!" in the most positive way possible! So what made it such a great year? lets start at the beginning maybe... or an attempt of some organized version of my thoughts for the year

Heriot-Watt Athletics Presidency
I had the privilege of being voted into the President position in the Athletics club this year. I knew this was going to be a tough job as I wanted to give so much back to the club. I had had two very welcoming, hard working and fun presidents my first two years, I knew it was going to be a tough act to follow. But I was up for the challenge and I think it went quite well :)

The year started with a lot of hours spent trying to put together sponsors, a social calendar and promotional material for the freshers fair. Also with the amazing work of the committee time on a track was eventually acquired as well! All this time set us up for having more club members than ever before! growing to just over 40 people and way more people at training which was great! With more people at training and committing time to training lead to us having more people actually wanting to race as well. BUCS cross country in Stirling was my first time in a mini bus with heriot-watt and I'm looking forward to many more mini bus trips with them in the coming years! We got a mini bus as had 12 people racing this year as oppose to just 3 guys like past years. It was my first BUCS XC as well - really enjoyed racing cross country again :) (despite taking the first part too fast and dying at the end, but live and learn haha)
The club was also a tighter group this year with us having more socials to really get to know each other better. So really hoping we keep a lot of the new faces we gained this year, although some of them are on our committee next year so guess we did do a good job! 

Round the Grounds pulled back up on the radar this year as well. We got the word out early, right weekend picked, and better weather! (well apart from the freak hail storm just as the gun went off- oh Scotland!) James also put together a great online entry system for this year which made us even that bit more organized and feel like a real race. I know he put hours of hard work into and late nights and the club is really grateful for it! We got many many compliments from people who ran it this year which made me feel really proud of the club and all the work we did for it!

 
AND...
Because of all this and the time and effort the committee has put into the club this year, we believed we had shown great improvement and so did our sports union AS...

WE WON MOST IMPROVED CLUB OF THE YEAR!!!! 

Present and Past Presidents receiving award from Professor Steve Chapman, Principal & Vice-Chancellor

Whole club enjoying the award

So happy with everything I accomplished this year as president and looking forward to continuing with the club as secretary this coming year.

Orienteering

This year has had many personal breakthroughs for my orienteering and training in general. In November it started with me having a great race at the Scottish University Championships held in Edinburgh. The individual race was an urban race held on the Oxgangs map. I raced the Women's A course, 6.1km 50m, 28controls. 
From my Attackpoint log:  
"Really fairly happy with this race!
Well confused out of the start though and there was no start triangle on the map, or well there was just ... on the other side! :/ (the course was printed on both sides of the map)
Only really had problems then with #7 as was expecting it to be on a tree from the descriptions and so ran past the bush thing it was on to the first tree, it wasn't there so turned around and was well confused! Got it eventually after doing a few circles around things. Then wasn't very well prepared for the long leg to 11 so had to stop at 10 and just take the time to fine the right route. Eventually did. Again had to stop at 15 as didn't realise that was where the map flip was. Really wish that had been clearer! Hit 20 fine but picked a bad route to 21 so Kirsten caught me there. We then just put the foot down for the rest of the course and I gave it almost my all to stay with her. We almost caught Jo on 26 and just push push push to the end.
Really enjoyed this course and was feeling good :)"
 
And I should be happy with this race as it landed me in 2nd place behind Kirsten and JUST in front of Charlotte, and earning my first medal in the UK! I also managed to tie 3rd place with Rona in the Scottish Urban League so came home with a medal and a mug :) 

Then came the winter months where I normally lose the motivation to train as it stays dark longer and gets cold. But this year I managed a fairly decent amount of base training, and managing to orienteer every month in 2013! All this set me up to have a much stronger spring than I probably would have and made me start to feel like a real athlete. 


The start of spring lead me to racing at BUCS with almost a full Heriot-Watt team! and I was rather pleased with reaching my goal of top ten this year to come 8th. (More about BUCS see my previous post) Then it was fairly quickly on to POM in Portugal. This was my first time racing in Portugal and all the crazy rocks they have and it was only made possible by Martin Wilson agreeing to take me. So I would like to thank him again for letting me tag along and for all the support he has given me over the years. He has believed in me ever since we first met at the scottish 6-days in 2007. I really appreciate everything he has done for me to grow as an elite orienteer. 

After the POM long distance race

POM was really the races I was focusing on this spring as it was the last event I could use to petition for the USA World Championships team. I was happy with how the week turned out and was feeling confident that my petition would be strong. And it was it was much stronger than 2013, Sadly with the new format of WOC and only getting 2 female start spots this year I had the massive disappointment of not making the team. I won't lie and say there were no tears (there were many!), there was confusion on how things were decided, there was frustration for the system and lake of feedback, and then acceptance and motivation to train even harder for next year so there are no questions about me making the team. Every Athlete has their set backs and the best are the ones that take it as motivation to improve. So now Andy Kitchen and I are working hard on my goals for WOC 2015 which take place in early august next year in the highlands of Scotland. We have a plan and for the first time I really feel like a true athlete! I like having weekly goals and feeling accomplished when I meet them. And I'm slowly starting to see strength coming through. The first test will be the North American's in October which I'm very excited for! 

Although hold on I'm getting ahead of myself - I was disappointed to not make the WOC team, but I still am getting the chance to represent the USA and Heriot-Watt at the World University Championships later this month (12th to the 18th of August) in the Czech Republic. I have been selected to race all of the distances and so it will be a real test of my orienteering skills and when to pick the right tools out of my tool box. Hopefully I'll have more time to write a few posts purely for WUOC.

Then to finish off the last 12 months of training I got a lovely surprise at the end of the year at the Blues and Volunteer Awards dinner at uni. I had put in to be considered for a blues award for my orienteering results. A blues award for those who do not know is

"A Blue is an award earned by sportsmen and women at a university and some schools for competition at the highest level. The awarding of Blues began at Oxford and Cambridge universities in England. It is awarded at British, Australian and New Zealand universities." (From Wikipedia)


I was not sure if I qualified at first for one but rather an outstanding sporting achievement award possibly instead. When my friend Lorraine and I went to go and collect our name badges for the volunteering awards we were receiving I instead saw on mine "Blues award winner".  Very honored indeed! 




 

Pims to Celebrate!

Study

So although my actual degree is FAR from the bottom of my list of important things going on in my life it is probably the most boring to write and read about. So I'll keep it as something short and sweet to end with. I spent many hours in the crush area at uni this year. Had pretty much every 9am possible. There were lab reports that had to be written -6 of them actually, and one marked by "Dragon Lady" where if you had the same amount of red pen than black ink you were doing well. Two group projects - a Business project where my group researched the feasibility of a wood pellet plant for pellet stoves. and a design project were my group looked into the viability of a carbon capture plant getting retrofitted to Scotland's Peterhead power plant. Went through two sets of exams - Christmas which we all thought went better then they actually did. There was a bit of depression in 3rd year ChemEng after results were realised. But then May exams came around - I studied solidly for a good few weeks, got a crash course from my friend Ross on how to actually take an exam (ie write everything you possibly can down on your test book even if at first you don' think it applies directly to the question) and then we waited.... End of 3rd year results are the first big ones! first to count towards your degree and even more importantly the deciding factor of if one stays on the masters program. A 60% average grade is required and many of us were sitting on the edge. I was nervous opening my marks up to find out. But I got a wonderful message. I had past all my exams and was able to complete my MASTERS! 2 more years of University to go!!!!

 

POM Day 4: Long Distance

This was the last day of POM. Was sad to end the competition as was finally feeling like I was cracking how to race here, But then again think my legs were close to having enough haha. Again we were on the same map, Arcozelo Da Serra, with the same spectator control as the last few days. Today however was a chasing start, ie first one across the line wins the full event. So in the Elite categories our total times for the last 3 days were totaled and if we were within an hour of the leader we started in the chasing start. I was 47:28 behind Simon Niggle who was winning so I started exactly that behind her. Kirsten Maxwell was only about 30seconds in front of me so some motivation to be clean!

This was a bit tricky to start with as the map scale was 1:15,000 not the 1:10,000 we had been running on. Was a bit worried to start with I wasn't going to be able to read all the rock. Might think about training with a magnifier just for long races like this!
Had a clean but slow first control, but was needed as a confidence boost. Control 2 I ended up half way to 3 and was like this doesn't feel right! I had managed to miss the end of the trail and had just kept running went through two rocks and turned around knowing I had gone too far (opposite of what I thought I was going to do today, which was not go far enough!) Saw Kirsten leaving control 2 so knew it couldn't have been that big a mistake :/ Caught her and another girl caught me going to control 3 and there were 3 of us to control 4. Was glad to have a few people around on the first long leg just as a confidence boost and to push my pace a little bit. Went to the wrong side of the rock into 4 and had to go right around but nothing major. the next few controls were nice as fairly big features could been seen from a distance that the control was near. Almost ran past control 7 though! Was keeping up with Kirsten and another girl for ages as well which I was quite proud of didn't think I had that much speed for this distance. I could tell though that Kirsten was trying hard to get ride of me! At control 11 we had a nice surprise though! It was a water control on our descriptions but wasn't expecting to also get a chest deep river crossing along with it!

Photo by Miguel Barradas

Legs weren't too happy just after that with it being fairly chilly. Was close to cramping as we went into the short Urban bit of the course, so glad the navigation was a bit easier. bobbled going to control 14 which was the first one after the urban back in the rock. Just didn't hit the small trail before it like I was wanting to but almost nailed the control about 5m to the right of the control. Then it was the sprint up the hill to stay with Kirsten into the spectator control. (I was really starting to hate that hill!) After the spectator control we had a trail run to where the "butterfly" loop was. Because kirsten was the girl starting ahead of me I knew we were going to have a different way around the loop. I went counter clock wise and then straight through and I found out at the end that the others went straight through at first and then around. I was fairly clean through the loop but both me and another girl had difficulties on the through bit. I think I just didn't go far enough and then had a hard time relocating. Kirsten got a much bigger gap there. Then control 22 which was the first out of the loop I went into it too late and bumbed around the control circle a bit too long before finding it. Felt like the control wasn't actually on bare rock :/ I was getting a bit tired by this point. Picked a poor route to 24 as well. I should have gone back up the hill and along the fields to drop back down to it. But I legged it down the hill and along the trial just to slog my way back up through the forest. Silly Alison! Then it was basically home :)

I ended up running close to 14km for the 10.5km course. I feel like that wasn't too bad though. Also I was only 128% of Simon Niggle's time who won the course and POM overall and is the Queen of Orienteering. That was a big motivator to the fact that I'm improving. So just need to work on a few smaller things and get my longer distance fitness up I think.

Overall POM was great! The experience in this rocky terrain was amazing. I have never run in anything like this before. Also getting another multi-day event under my belt. And getting to race against the best in the world was amazing, so much to learn! So time to reflect at home and train train train!

POM Day 3: WRE Middle Distance

Well today was the important WRE day. Same area was yesterday but starting on the other side of the road and so had a marked road crossing as part of the spectator section in the arena.
Wasn't feeling super fresh this morning, but was happy enough on my jog to the start and warming up. Thought I got myself calmed down and ready to go in the start blocks and was feeling confident and in control heading off.

Well that lasted for probably 2 minutes. Think I was about half way to the control and then Poof nothing was matching up! And the panic set in pretty quickly. I was having a hard time keeping my compass work steady and felt like every time I looked at it it changed direction on me. I honestly have not a notion of what was going on and was getting annoyed that I couldn't see what I thought should have been an obvious 6m high rock!! Ended up finding control 5 and 8 before finally making it to control 1. Well pressure off, there went my clean race, now just make the rest clean! Well I did that for the rest of the tricky controls in all the rocks. Some how things clicked back in and managed a flow through controls 2-10 with only a few small bobbles. Was pushed along with a few other girls that caught and then passed me as well. Then comes leg 10-12. Was with another girl at this point and saw her just ahead of me leaving the control off to the east. Didn't see a route to the right I liked. Looked at the left route which I really didn't like. So straight it was! And this is where I'm going to point out that it would have been VERY useful to have known that in Portugal the cultivated fields (yellow with black dots) are fair game! To me that is an out of bounds symbol and therefore was going wellish to the trees pockets just before the fields and then skirted the fields and battled my way through a TON of darkish green thorns to get to the control when had i run through the fields it would have been a dead easy entry into the control. Well we live and learn I suppose, but lost quite a bit of time there for that grrr. Not to bad through to 12 and 13. Was then a bit high for 14 which was silly! I saw people running away from that control when i was running to the start. Through the spectator control in the arena and straight down the hill into the rocks again. I was fairly clean through the last little loop apart from a few places getting stuck on top of rocks I didn't realise were actually that tall on the other side.

Overall came back and wasn't happy about this race. I knew I can run much better than this! But hey we all have bad days and all we can do is look at them and take them as a learning lesson. I was supposed to learn something from this, and I think I have. That one must be focused from the start and don't just go running off thinking "its a huge rock I'll find it!". Also that part of an international competition prep I should find out if there are things that are different than at home.

Spectator control for Elites

Go control - after a long hill!

Arena for the last three days

Rocks!

POM Day 2: Middle Distance

 Today was the first of the two middle distance races at POM. It was held on a map called Arcozelo Da Serra. This is the area for the rest of the POM. The assembly was a football pitch and that is also where we finished. The terrain is described as:

 "Varied terrain composed by a forest slope, with rocky details, where there is a variation between forest and open areas. Also cultivated areas and areas with difficult progression and visibility. "

It was a little bit more open than day 1 but still fairly green in places. I jogged to the start with Kirsten which was nice to kinda just chat and relax before. Then we went off and did our own drills and pre-race thoughts. She was starting two minutes behind me, but was trying not to let that pressure me at all. The plan for today was: to be calm, Look for the big features, and use my compass! 

The first control although a bit slow getting to was alright. Then got in the control circle to two and was having to check every boulder :/ Then 3 was where I really lost time. Went and just legged it to the path, but once i got to the path was a bit confused by which path was which and the rock walls and everything. Checked my compass and decided to ignore it all and just aim for the big rock. Well I think I ended up on the wrong side of the rock and ended up running quite far past the control. Bugger! figured out where I was and was heading back into the control when I see Kirsten coming out of it. I remember thinking "well there is the pressure off she has caught me now". But really that was probably the underlying mistake was that I was feeling rushed. Anyway calmed down and got into a rhythm and ended up staying with Kirsten for most of the course. Had a few bobbles in places and wasn't using my compass well enough. But powered through! Literally in one spot where I ended up pretty much going for a surprise swim when crossing a marked trail through some cultivated land. Then it was a big slog up the hill for a few controls and into the finish.

Overall it wasn't too bad of a race at all. ended up 55 out of 107 so very close to the top half which is what I wanted. Plus this run put me only +46% of Niggle's time which I think wasn't bad going. 

Tomorrow's WRE event is on the same area so what have I learned?

5 things to work on to gain time:
1. compass out of controls
2. simplifying the map
3. picking out the BIG rock features
4. Reading my control descriptions (not just number)
5. be calm/focused at the start

5 things I did "perfectly":
1. forgetting about past controls
2. good routes towards end of course
3. slowing down when I thought I was in the circle to minimize searching
4. picking up on smaller contour detail when I slowed down
5. Physically able to hold an ok pace

POM Day 1: Night Sprint

After the classic event Martin and I stopped at lidl to stock up on food to power us through a night sprint in the evening! The sprint was held in the town of Gouveia. The womens elite had 1.9km (with the best route being almost 3km!) and 22 controls.

This race was interesting as it was SUPER misty and pretty much pissing rain the whole time. Jogging up to the start with Emily Kemp was actually a bit miserable! But Emily being her bubbly happy self, well it was just infectious! I was excited about running once I got to the start. (miss Emily wish I got to see her more!) Got to the start and all ready to go and you could just tell it was going to be interesting when your head torch almost just gives a line of dispersed light in the mist not actually allowing you to see things. But who cared this was going to be a bit of fun!

Well oh boy was I glad I did this sprint! Not because I had the best run ever, not because I was clean and just flowed. No because this was probably one of the trickest areas I've done a sprint in for a while and then to have it at night and trying hard to work out what was crossable and what wasn't! The area around 1 and 9 got me both times I was in there! totally could not understand what i could cross and what I couldn't. Think I picked the right routes up until 6 where I actually think the faster route might be to go round the bigger road that 5 is on and up at the end and not pick your way through the smaller streets like I did. Then 8 was a great stumper! well done to the planner, or maybe the person who built the city. 8 was wall inside corner. Well got to the stairs and right away knew it wasn't going to be there but couldn't figure out where it was, then i stood on the first step looked down and there was the control about 1.5m below me in a TINY walled ditch thing. So next question: how does one get down there?! Well knew it had to be along the wall but hadn't actually seen how far along the wall yet on the map. Actually ran past the small steps down and had to come back at it. Crazy! Then 9 i just couldn't figure out how to get passed the walls and what i could cross and not it was a mess! 10, 11, 12 no bother. Almost ran past the stars up to the spectator control 13, ops! Straight to 14. Then carried on along the road from 14, and up the hill on the road to 15 nailing the stairs. Probably should have continued up the stairs to 16 but came back down. Then the last few controls in the garden was tricky figuring out which hedge it was on what side of.

A lot of fun! And came 18th out of 38. And it was won by Emily Kemp which was very exciting!

POM DAY 1: Classic Distance

For the first day of POM it was what they termed an "Intermediate race" for everyone. Which really was just what I would have called a classic distance in the states. The Elite Women had 7.4km, 200m and 29 controls.
The map was Vila Nova de Tazem and we had it at 1:10,000. and the terrain was decribed as:

"Terrain with many variations between forest and open areas, with a great richness of rocky details. Medium slope and variation between fast progression areas and areas where the vegetation causes difficulty in the progression."

And I would have to agree that that was pretty darn accurate! The rock detail was MUCH greater than the model map and it was not nearly as open as the model so harder to pick out the big features from as far away. The elites also had a spectator control with a map exchange. so many things to think about!

I started at 12:17 so kind of mid pack and was feeling pretty calm at the start. Jogged up with a few of the brits and did my stretching and was ready to go! Get into the start box pull my control descriptions down and the first difference for the race was we only had control decriptions for the first 20 controls :/ so to the map change. Fine deal with that when we get there but odd. 

Map Part 1 - https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5be1b1Sze1kc3pibTF4X25yOUk&usp=sharing

Started off great nailed control 1, bit of a bobble to control two. This was when I figured out I was going to have to be a bit careful reading small trails and rock walls quickly. Was expecting a trail to connect up to another one and it was actually a rock wall! Then hit my first more technical section and knew I was going to have to be more careful than in the model. Pretty much nail 3 and 4 and Jess Tullie caught me up going to control 5. The two of us made the same mistake going to 6 which was the first control in the really rocky section of the map. We ended up hitting 7 above first and having to drop back down to 6. We then had a clean run to 13 kinda just taking very similar routes just over taking each other every so often. Then I passed Jess at 14 where she over shot and I hit pretty close to dead on the control. Hit the next few just fine and thought I got away from jess but she must have picked the better route on the long leg to 18 and caught me up again. So came through the map exchange together along with another runner who was announced as in 2nd place. All very exciting! This is where I started to find not having control descriptions for the rest of the course a bit annoying. It was basically relay practice, but wasn't expecting it.

Part 2 - https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B5be1b1Sze1kc3pibTF4X25yOUk&usp=sharing

The rest of the course was really a bit of a blur as I tried hard to hold on to this train of runners that was developing. Was clean and able to hold on for almost to control 25 and then was just having to push the pace on my own and really stay focused. Bit of issues with 27, starting with trying to cut through some of the green as loads of people where going in there. Took a few steps in and turned around to do the trail all the way around. Then was a bit hesitant going into the control as knew i was in the right area but didn't really see the reentrant, only the control once i got my head up enough to see it.

Ended up placing 42nd out of 94. So happy with top half and managed to beat all the EUOC girls and Louise Oram. Also was close to Jessica Tullie which was nice to see as she is a strong runner and navigator!

Went for a cool down run with Jess, James and Peter afterwards and the highlight was us getting excited about olive trees and trying an olive off the tree. NOT one of our better ideas! It was VERY sour and made my tong purple. It was as odd as getting handed Hot green tea when I finished.

POM 2014 : Trainings

This Year's Portugal Orienteering Meeting (POM) is based all around Gouveia, which is up in the mountains in the middle region of Portugal. I'm here traveling with a family friend Martin Wilson, who kindly let me tag along to get some big races in.

We arrived in Portugal on Wednesday (after our plane from London was turned around on the first attempt for "operational problems") so that we could have two days of training before the races started.



On Thursday we went to the POM Model  on a map Arcozelo da Serra SE. This map is supposed to be similar to days 2,3,4. It was a bit rainy and misty when we first arrived but it cleared up to be a really nice day! The sun even came out! So I just ran round all the controls first taking in the terrain. Afterwards I walked around for a bit to really understand the way the mapper was mapping the rocks. There is going to be a lot of scrambling! its almost faster to keep to the bare rock. And then afterwards I went out and did a few more controls in different orders and stuck in a longer leg that took me through the main rock bit near 42.

Map at 1:10,000

What did I learn?
* The rocks here are HUGE!!!! 
* If you are able to simplify the map down it is very fast running
* The green slash is brambles and should really be avoided as much as possible
* These controls were much easier than the ones in the race will be
* There isn't that big of a difference between the different kinds of rock, however the shapes are mapped very accurately
* A clean run but slow will be MUCH faster than trying to push the pace and getting totally turned around in the rock

Photos from the area:

Near Control 42 the big gap between the cliffs

Control 42 :)

One is marked as a thin cliff line and another a more blob :/

British Univeristy Champsionships - YOU WATT!

February 22nd and 23rd was the British University Orienteering Championships (BUCS) down near Leeds, UK. I was lucky enough to have 4 others from Heriot Watt joining me at BUCS this year!


The trip started with a long mini bus journey down to just north of Leeds with some of the guys from EUOC. We ended at Jack Woods house where his parents kindly let us sleep on their living room floor. There the buzz of BUCS started and people were starting to discuss their plans for the individual the next day. Then the Glasgow team joined us late that night bringing along our last team member for Heriot Watt. We finally got to bed and I was quite comfortable in my sleeping bag when at about 5am the alarm in the house went off. We had been warned that the burglar alarm was acting up but gosh that gave me a fright. Had a bit of a hard time getting back to sleep after that but managed to get a good enough nights sleep :)

Got up fairly early, had a champions breakfast and set off to the Individual event. The Individual event was being held on Ilkley Moor. Despite all the rain at night it was slowly clearing up which was nice. I was fearing having to navigate the moor land in the fog. By the time I got to the start though the sun was out and it was perfect running weather! This year I had a fairly late start time. Only about 4 or 5 girls starting behind me. But tried hard not to think about people who were starting near me or placing or anything. I had been worried all week about placing and was I going to mange the top ten result that I wanted or not. So the warm up to the start and everything was focused on warming my legs up, what the technical things people had told me about the map and trying hard to just visualise running smoothly through the terrain and no hesitations. I was ready to start :)

 

I had a great run! I was a bit hesitant or at least a bit slower than I maybe should have been at the start of the course but was hitting things fine. Had my first real bobble on control 5 where I had just come out of the 4th control too far to the north and hit the bottom instead of the top of the rock wall I wanted. Then it was back up into the moor land where I started to find out that I could easily navigate faster than I could run. So looks like there needs to be some more pentland runs (or at least hills) in my training. But managed fine. The next challenge though was the monster of a long leg! I really should have looked at it a bit more climbing the hill up to 8. But I think overall I picked not too bad of a route. Was able to pretty much stay on tracks the whole way. Was able to keep moving and not feel like I was totally out of contact with where I was along the leg. Wasn't able to follow the path that well through the detailed rock, lost it quite a few times. But always had my eyes on the forest ahead and was able to get through it. Then had a bobble on control 11 I think just because I thought "oh this is short I can easily do this!" and just wasn't paying as much attention as before. I'll then be honest I'm not 100% sure how i did controls 14-16. They just kinda worked and things were popping up just where I was wanting them to and the controls just were there! It was a great feeling. Came back and downloaded and found out I was 3rd on the course! So went for a cool down and waited for the other girls to come in. 

In the final results I ended up in 8th place. So very happy about that as hit my top ten goal and up from 13th place from last year. Also was nice as I'm 8th place out of the girls that are competing for the British WUOC team and not that far behind them! Heriot Watt as a team also came 8th in the overall points after day one!

taken by P.Y. Photographic

The sunday was then the relay. As I didn't have 3 girls at the event Lauren and I teamed up with our EUOC teammate Rachel and ran the Adhoc relay. We did however have 3 guys so they ran in the mens relay and gave it a great fight!

I ran the 1st leg in the Adhoc relay. was nice and battled it out with Sophie from Imperial. Had a bobble at control 4 thinking it was on the further bush clump then it was and had to come back at it. Think there were more clumps then on the map. Then was doing well and just ahead of Sophie before messing up control 7. Went too far again, never seeing the big boulder at the top of the clearing like i was wanting and ended up getting sucked into sophie's control on a boulder just past the field :/ Stupid mistake! Then another bobble on control 10 was too far west but wanted to be west anyway just not that far. Got to the control and saw there was a path basically built to it not on the map :/ Then had the longer last gaffle then sophie at the end. So ended up coming in about 30secs behind her passing off to Lauren.

So bit to relaxed in a few places but not at bad run.

Girls came 2nd in the Adhoc relay and the guys were 20th. That put us in 9th place overall! our best result so far! 

WOC Long Quali

Well I can now say I've been to a WOC race! It was fun to watch but actually not as big a thing as I was thinking it would be. However, It was only a qualification so that is probably why. The big dogs were taking it easy knowing they were going to qualify so just running to make sure that happens and the rest... running flat out trying to have clean runs hoping to make the cut off!





It was fun to be able to cheer for many countries today and have loads of friends and teammates running! The USA did quite well having strong runs and Ali making the final. Ireland were loud and cheery as normal with many of them also having strong runs, with Nick making the final and Neil just on the cut off but not quite making it. Then came the excitement of watching/hearing that Cat Taylor from GB had caught Minna Kauppi by the 3 mins that had separated them at the start. It was a nail biting and adrenaline rushing time waiting for them to finish. But Cat managed to hold on to the lead and came back to win the heat! Very exciting! Was cool to have all the GPS tracking to watch and video footage from the forest. Made me really want to get out on the long terrain it looks amazing! 
Here is a video from the car drive there which kinda gives you a taste as to what it is like: 

Sprint Prep!

Today was the sprint models! 
 I am running the sprint as my race here at WOC. It will take place on Monday July 8th at 08:00
For more information on the whole of WOC go to WorldofO: WOC 2013- all you need to know

Sprint Qualification
We were only allowed on the maps for 3hrs this morning before the embargo goes back on the area. 5 of us drove to the Qualification map first to check it out. We got there a little early so drove around to just look in on the map and see what we could of the arena.



Glad we got there early as was able to have a walk around and check things out before it really started pouring out! I walked around with Wyatt and went through how different trails where mapped (big ones were mapped more like roads), which rocks were mapped (looked like 1m+), and how hedges were mapped. Doesn't look like a terribly technical map and is going to be a very compass and run qualification. I think the biggest thing will be to make sure you know which buildings are around you and what side of hedges the controls are going to be on. That being said it doesn't look as if any of the hedges are actually out of bounds so one could crash through them (even some which are nice rose beds). The question will be is it worth it? Probably not but if you get stuck it was nice to know you could push through if you had to. Also it was nice to decide what to wear. Because of all the hedges and how easy the woods were to run through I'm going to wear fully leg cover and possibly even dobbs, as it did rain a lot today! Getting excited!

Sprint Final

We then drove about 15mins to Sotkamo where the sprint final and opening ceremony are going to take place. We managed to miss most of the heavy rain which was nice. I ran the course here in order as the officials said the out of bounds and taping they had done to demonstrate how it will be on the day were up for that direction of running (ie front not back of things as well). I didn't run it all out but was wanting to get another sense of things at a bit of speed. Think I did actually cross an out of bounds hedge going to 1 (if it is the darkest green on the map, generally used for hedges, you are not allowed to cross it in a sprint race). But then the distinct tree (green dot) next to the control was actually a play swing instead :/
No other real troubles while running the course. Was glad to have streamers up around some of the olive green though! Olive green is another out of bounds color, generally used for gardens around buildings and other flower beds. It is again illegal to go through them.
I then walked back out towards 5 to check out the difference between the yellow and olive green on the north part of the map. In places it wasn't super obvious where the line was but we believe it will be streamered if a route goes near it. Wyatt then picked a few more places for controls for me and he shadowed/met me at most of them and then we chatted about it. Very useful! Other people were saying that fences were mostly uncrossable on the map (designated by a black line with two ticks coming off it, like control 5), yet were easily cross-able in reality. I didn't really notice this but I generally plane to not cross fences anyway with being short and not the best hurdler. We then managed to hop back in the car before it really started pouring with rain again!

Technical Model
This afternoon is going to be a rest up and get ready for racing! We did the "technical" model as well. This is where a starting line procedure is set up for us to walk through and a control or two and this time they had a drinks station as well so people running the longer distances could try the sports drink. On paper it seemed very confusing as have to get control descriptions and a GPS unit (if that race is getting them) and a map all during this time and three different lanes you have to make sure to go in the right one of. But yeah on the ground no problem!

Training and Model events

Started training as soon as I could to start getting used to maps here.
The first map that I ran on was a sprint map of Kajanni which is a town down the road from the event centre. I got a map off Ali/Alex

Wyatt came with me and really set up the start bit for me, giving me control descriptions first then a minute later the map as my start and having me stand a bit away to the start like the real race. This was a really fun sprint. The plan was to take the first part just under race pace to see what things were tripping me up and then ease off towards the end. Not sure I really eased off that much as was enjoying myself :)

I didn't really notice the route kinda backwards out of 1 until most of the way to 2 but thing I managed to just pick fast enough. However still think it was better going backwards out of the control so that is something I'm not going to remember to think about. Another thing was 3 I actually didn't go to the right wall corner. So on your descriptions there are many different columns to them. Here is a great breakdown of them from IOF:

And I noticed that on this sprint I wasn't really using the "G" column enough, the "location of the control flag". I had looked at it and saw it was the wall inner corner NW. However having my map reading it going south it matched up the control code and had there been a control there it would have been a "SH*T" moment. So will be studying these a bit more with the map in different orientations I think.


Some other things I had a little trouble with was a route from 5 to 6. I went left but after talking to wyatt I do think right is better now. As you would go through less of the woods which in this area was actually quite crappy! Which I also found out going to 7 and manage to actually over run as didn't really notice the clearing very well.

Most of the other controls went well and only had small bobbles when a fence was closed that I didn't realise was the opening I wanted and then an underpass was actually a closed on driveway. But it was cool to run around and even like go out to the little island with people picnicking and no one gave you weird looks! Everyone was pretty like oh yeah this is normal.

Local Event: Wyatt and I then drove to a local event to get some terrain running in. It was on a map called matinmakj-lentokentta and I decided to run the short 3.6ish course.

I had a bit of issues with the first control as didn't think I climbed as much as I had and then must not have gone far enough as hit a white patch which i thought was the one on the edge of the controls circle and it wasn't :/ Had to reattach from the trail. I realised that many of these controls could have been found going around on trails but decided to go straight as possible to figure out how things were mapped. only really had other issues with 7 as must have come out of the control lower than i thought and got caught up in the green stuff next to the trail. But overall was a fun course! However, goodness did you NOT want to hang around for too long not moving or the killer flies would start biting you!

Middle Model (July 5th)
Brenden, Cristina and I went to the middle model to check out that terrain. I'm not actually running the middle however it is the same terrain as the Relay which I hope to make the team for.

I had Cristina plan me a course with the controls out in the woods and went out for just under an hour. The first control I ended up taking quite slow as I hit about 3 different type of vegetation on that leg. Figured out that the rough open (yellow with white dots) was very much like felled ground in scotland so slow but not bad to get over, The rides weren't always obvious and that the green wasn't too bad but had tall grass/flowers/nettles in it so slow going along with lower viability. Ended up hitting the cliff south of the one I wanted but relocated quite quickly after pottering about looking at things. Then to control 2 I again tested things. Either through the green and have to really be strong with your compass as can't really see, or cut north a bit to the green slash were one can see but slow going. I think avoiding green slash is the way to go! Many places to catch your ankles in that stuff! The rest of the controls went well and liked how things were mapped. I also got to have Thierry Gueorgiou pass me on the way to 258. It was nice to see even him kinda come back at it but he just flew through the woods just jogging and making it look super easy! I'm hoping I get to do at least a spectator race in the woods!

Orienteering my way to Finland

(Bit of an excerpt from Attackpoint with more added)

Flight from Philly!

I was meant to leave for WOC on July 2nd and well this was not how I was planning the day to go! So was supposed to fly out at 10pm Philly time (to London then Helsinki then Kuopio). I however got a lovely email that morning though saying that my flight was delayed until 0800 the next morning! Well that just wasn't going to work and I was freaking out! I wasn't done packing and had a few things left to do in Philly. Thankfully though my parents are the greatest! Dad started having a look at other flights I could ask to get transferred to, mom helped me quickly pack and get an essay finished. And then mom and I headed to the airport for 2pm to see what could be done. As the lady on the phone was useless and couldn't even figure out that I couldn't make a 1200 flight while being on the phone with her at 1100. Then she said I couldn't do anything about missing my flights to Helsinki and Kuopio because that was a different round trip booking than my London flight. It was an "OH DEAR!" moment.  Thank goodness for a lovely guy Jeff at BA as he sorted everything out and rebooked me on all new flights! So I was thankfully still on my way to WOC! 

Frankfort Airport deserted!

So I have now been on a flight to Frankfort. I however was now flying two different airlines so I couldn't get my bag checked all the way through :( So had to go through boarder control, wait for my bag, change terminals to find the finair check in desk and recheck my bag. This is when I found a pretty empty airport! And it stayed that way until about 10am (I arrived at 6am). Spent about 6hrs there. I was in line basically right as the check in desk opened, and checked bag all the way through and got tickets. Well that was fine but security was touch and go for a bit and I had gone straight there. Like seriously thought I was going to miss my flight after sitting in the airport for 5hrs already! LESSON LEARNED: just take out the kindle even when they say you don't need to as your bag will get searched but you will be stuck in a que behind newbie travelers that apparently don't know what a liquid is! like seriously people perfume, toothpaste, hand sanitizer, lip gloss, mouth wash, ALL liquids! But heyho I made it through and got to my gate in time, even managed to get a croissant for breakfast :) 

So managed to get to Helsinki and Kuopio with no problems. Met a lovely Fin in Helsinki and we had a nice chat about the Kuopio airport and flies and he even knew about WOC which was cool! I then got to Kuopio and ended up having to wait about 5.5hrs before Wyatt showed up to pick me up in a car (he had been driving up from Helsinki). So spent the time on the internet which was fine and reading my book. But the main issue was the airport was SOOOO small. It did have a cafe but it wasn't open, and the vending machines would only take coins which I didn't have yet only notes. There wasn't even really anyone around to get change from. So needless to say I was a very hungry Alison while on skype to colm worried as to where wyatt had gotten to. But it was all good I got picked up.


Wyatt and I then still had about a 2hr drive further north to Vuokatti to the cabin. This is where we found out that it REALLY doesn't get dark out. Like not even for a half an hour. You couldn't even really tell it was midnight when we were driving that we found it very funny to be saying "Happy 4th of July" to each other already. Decided that Fireworks would stink here as you wouldn't see them! Anyway after a stop to get me a burger for dinner, and then a little bit of navigating issues right at the end we finally arrived at the cabin 2am July 4th Finish time (+7hrs from philly). 


So I've basically had to orienteer my way to woc but hey great warm up right!?