Junior tour to Cape Town

After our 2hr flight down to Cape town we were all excited and ready for an insane weekend of orienteering.

The Lebanon forest was the area we ran. The terrain for the middle was quite similar to the Lakenvlei forest we had run in 2 weeks earlier.

Western Cape champs

Middle

The day showed great results for most of the team :)

Rich came third in the oldies with some stiff competition edging him out.
Jess had an awesome run and won the technical W21 course.
Nic won the M21.
Brad had an insane run and came 3rd in the M21 category.
Sarah had an almost perfect run.
Salome came second in the W20 but she was recovering from a stomach bug of some sort.

Here are Brad and Jess's Routes for the M21 and W21 respectively.

Long

There was some tight competition between the girls on the 6.1KM course. Salome claimed the top spot, only a few seconds ahead of Jess. Nic won the M21, beating his nearest rival by five minutes. Rich just missed out on a podium finish.

It was great fun and the orienteering was good. Thanks must go to the parents :)

Western Cape Champs

Salome, Sarah, Jess, Brad, Richard and Nicholas headed down to the Cape for Western Cape O' Champs. The Middle distance was on Saturday afternoon with the Long distance on Sunday. Both events were at Lebanon South.

On Saturday Sarah and Salome ran W20. Sarah had a smooth, mistake-free run to win by 7 minutes. Here is Sarah's route:

Tough Day at Pelindaba

The Jwoc squad had some good performances in the difficult area.

Coach Nic dominated the the Brown course, winning by over 18 minutes and team manager Richard won the blue course. Salome was the first lady on Blue with Sarah not far behind. Jess Lund and Jess Hemer also completed the tricky blue course. Here are the splits for the blue course.

Training weekend

The JWOC squad spent the weekend training at Lakenvlei. Nicholas organized various challenging and enjoyable exercises.

Everyone arrived on Friday evening and we had a quick briefing.

On Saturday morning we headed to the Ruins and Langkloof for a line course and compass exercise. Everyone found some extra speed on the compass exercise, because it was cold and pouring with rain. After lunch we did a course focusing on attack points and then a control picking exercise. We had a debriefing session before doing a night course around the lodge. Brad was the fastest junior.
After dinner Eugene spoke to us about nutrition. Jeremy shared his experiences of orienteering overseas. We then looked at photos and videos from our trip to Sweden, which bought back good memories.

On Sunday we went to Middeldam where we did some inerval training. We finished off with a star relay in teams of 2.
Jess H and Salome won convincingly.

Next was the surprise: a map memory exercise around the lodge reception area. The seniors didn't get it right so the juniors ended the weekend on a high note.

JP and Rophafadzo joined the squad for the weekend. They had their first taste of orienteering in a forest which they handled extremely well.
A big thank you to Nicholas for all the coaching and planning.

Thank you to the SAOF for making the weekend possible. Thanks to Richard and Heidi for all the food. Thank you to the seniors for joining us and putting controls out. Your input was greatly appreciated.
We all had loads of fun and left Belfast with more confidence and enthusiasm as well as lovely sore legs for our cross country races on Monday.

Looking forward to Pelindaba on Sunday.

Hennops Valley

Well done to Salome for winning her first Brown course!

Despite her encounter with a massive spider, that was heard by eveyone, Salome flew round the course. She even beat Tania and was 8th overall.
Here is her route:
Jess Hemer was second followed by Zoe in third.

Coach Nic was the first male on Brown. Here's his winning route:

Our Montrail kit has arrived. Jess looked spiffing in her new shirt and shoes.
The Jwoc squad and other promising juniors are heading to Belfast this weekend for a training camp. It's sure to be great fun

Junior Squad Training 4

We had our 4th training session on Friday the 1st of May. Nicholas organized two exercises at Mohales Gate: a short course to warm up and then a longer one on a contours and rivers only map.
Cobus ran ahead and put out all the controls. Every single flag was in the right place. Thanks Cobus!

Thank you to Cindy, Richard and Peter for collecting controls and helping out as we went along.

Thanks to Nicholas for a challenging and worthwhile session. All the practice and encouragement is really building our confidence.

Watch out for the juniors on the Brown Course at Hennops!