33rd in Sprint for Brad and great Relay for SA boys

Brad continued his superb form this week, breaking another SA record at JWOC. He placed 33rd in the sprint, just 1:20 behind the winner. He had an early start and was at the top of the leaderboard for quite a while!

Tim and Roark did really well in their sprint debut on a tricky course placing 127th and 133rd respectively about 3 minutes behind the winner. 

Salome had a solid run finishing 105th out of  about 150 girls and 3:55 behind the winner from Norway.

Sprint maps and results can be found here.

The SA mens relay team performed brilliantly on Saturday. Brad ran the first leg and handed over in about 28th place. Tim had an incredible run with the 19th fastest time on the 2nd leg to bring the team up to 23rd place. Roark ran the final leg bringing the team home in 32nd place out of 58 teams!!

Salome joined 2 Irish girls for the relay. She ran the 3rd leg.

Relay maps and results can be found here.

Sprint Time!

Tomorrow is the sprint! Hopefully the team is feeling rested after a day off.

Start times:
Brad: 12:07
Roark: 13:00
Salome: 13:41
Tim: 14:37

Venue: Hradec Králové

Start interval: 1 minute
GPS: All women.
Terrain form: Mostly flat, except for a 10-15m high steep slope around the old town hill. 230–245m above sea level.
Vegetation: Partly park area – grass, flower beds, hedges, scattered trees. Partly urban area of historic city centre with no vegetation.
Runnability: Generally excellent. Grass in parks is cut.
Paths and roads: Urban and park areas with lots of fast routes. Most paths in parks have a gravel surface. City area links consist of asphalt roads, pavements and cobble-stones.

Courses:
W20 3.0 km (measured along best route), 56 m climb, 19 controls. Expected winning time: 14:45
M20 3.6 km, 60 m climb, 21controls. Expected winning time: 14:45.

Old map of sprint area

Check out the online coverage here. It's been superb so far - loads of radio controls and the GPS tracking works well so be sure to track Salome tomorrow!

Hopefully we'll see Brad improve on last years brilliant result of 74th. Salome will be looking to improve on last years 116th place. Tim and Roark will be running their first JWOC sprint and with a clean run they have potential to do really well. Hopefully the vibe will be great and it'll be a memorable day.

Full speed, no mistakes! GO TEAM SA!!
 

Making history in the Middle

Yesterday Brad became the first South African ever to qualify for an A final at JWOC! He had a really solid run and as he puts it "smashed" the last part, getting the fastest splits to controls 13 and 15 on his course! Check out his Attackpoint log for his thoughts on the race.

Brad running hard (http://kade.cz/JWOC2013/kade_middleQ/)

The rest of the team performed brilliantly too! Salome comfortably qualified for the ladies B final with what looked like a very solid race finishing 33rd in her heat.

Tim finished 35th in his heat - putting him in the B final. An incredible result on debut! Roark also did well, finishing 47th in his heat. He'll run in the C final.

So a look at the Final today:

Start times are as follows:
Timothy: 10:17
Salome:10:22
Roark: 10:35
Bradley: 13:59

There will be GPS tracking for Brad in the A final. Check out the online coverage here

Good Luck Team!

Middle Quali preview

Today's Middle Distance Qualification Race starts from 12:00

Tim 12:18
Brad 13:12

Roark 13:18

Salome 13:33

• Venue: Radvanice
• GPS: no GPs tracking.
• Terrain form: stony slopes, 550–710 m a.s.l., crowned by cliffs up to 10 m high. Boulders up to 5 m high. Uneven ground.
• Vegetation: An old coniferous forest. some areas of diffuse thickets and clearings. 
• Runnability: Generally good. In places significantly limited by stony ground, young forest and fallen branches.
• Visibility: Varies from very good to limited.
• Paths and roads: Forest with average network of paths and tracks which generally enable fast running.
• Map: scale 1:10,000

Courses:
3 heats for men and women
W20: approx 2.8km, 90m of climb, 12 controls, expected winning time 22minutes
M20: approx 3.3km, 90m climb, 15 controls, expected winning times 20 minutes

Courses are expected to be a lot more technical today with hectic rock details, cliffs and uneven ground.

Map snippet of Rock features (thanks to Nico)

Example of rock features

The relatively low amount of climb suggests that the courses will be somewhat "downhill" as the old map shows the area is situated on a steep slope. The top 20 in each heat will qualify for the A finals, with the next 20 in the heat going through to the B final and the remaining athletes going through to the C final.

There is no GPS tracking unfortunately but there is one radio control to track the athletes progress. Follow the action live here.

Long Distance

Hills pretty much sum up the long distance.

GPS tracking is really cool to look at and quite funny for some :P

Roark was the first to finish, and set a new best percentage behind the winner in Long distance, until Tim came in, who then held it until Brad came in. Salome also had a decent run and got under 170 % of the winner, which means everyone got under the incentive guidelines. So pretty good results percentage wise but far from what was possible. Roark and Tim made quite a lot of mistakes, as you can see in the GPS. I made one large mistake and then lots of smaller ones. We all took far from optimum route choices on a lot of the legs.

Middle is tomorrow, hopefully better results will come :)
 

Roark finishing the Long (http://kade.cz/JWOC2013/kade_long/)

A look at the Long

Today is the Long Distance Race!

Start times are as follows:
Roark 09:56
Salome 10:38
Tim 11:46 
Brad 14:40

Salome and Brad are both running their 5th JWOC long races, with Tim and Roark running their first. Richard, managing / coaching the team is doing so for the second time after accompanying the team to JWOC in Italy in 2009.

The area for today is Odolov. Moderately hilly to hilly. Coniferous forest. Quite large sections of young forest and felled areas. Runnability: Very good to good. Limited on steep slopes and in young forest and dense areas. Visibility: Very good to good. Limited in young forest and dense areas. Paths and roads: Developed network of forest roads and paths enables fast running.
Map: Scale 1:15,000.

Courses
W20 7.1 km 470 m 15 controls. Expected winning time of 59 min 
M20 9.9 km 620 m 21 controls. Expected winning time of 67 min 

Old map of long area

Live tracking should be at available here.The boys will have GPS tracking! 

GO TEAM SOUTH AFRICA!

Today we ran in some legit middle distance terrain, its really awesome doing downhill orienteering. We had 180 metres of climb to the start.

Salome and the youth team have arrived and settled in. The weather was pretty kak today, and with Salome arriving a bit later than expected, so our planned sprint session was binned. We all just went for a bit of a run around Hradec, close to our hotel. 

Only 6 days till the Long!

Relay race at Biricka. Raced Brad and Tim around 3 two km loops.

First loop started fast. We traded first place for the first 3 controls. Brad managed to pull ahead after tim ran to far left and i ran within a metre of the control before running on. He disappeared into the bush after I got confused by a clearing just off the map and Tim tried to re-locate. Lost Tim after the next control and pulled off a second. Felt positive about my first loop besides slowing down on my way to control four.

Second loop started off with a fast control just off the path. Gauged the distance well and hit the control well. Feeling good heading off to two. It was in the middle of a low visibility and slow running forest. Overshot the control but managed to hit it spot on after re-locating. Had a great course from there on hitting the controls spot on. Brad followed me into my number four, not noticing that the control he was meant to punch was 100m further in a similar area of forest (hopefully none of us do this in the relay and get disqualified). Finished the course in first.

Third loop wasn't great. After a solid first control I headed way to far left to two giving Tim a massive lead. Was slow for the rest of the course but maintained contact with the map. Couldn't find a stake at one off the controls and wasted about three minutes checking I was in the right
place. Was sure I was in the right place and brad confirmed, I'm so used to thinking i'm in the right place and not being that i continued looking for that long.

Pulled out of the last loop as I felt a blister starting on my heel. Tim was the only one to do it so he won it quite convincingly.

Having to sit in the passage to get wifi

Brad cutting his hair so he can run faster

Morning session was relay training at Lesni Hrbitov. We decided to start with the relay because Salome won't be running the relay in an SA team and we didn't want her to miss out any of the long or middle distance maps. She arrives on Tuesday.

Before starting the course we checked out the various terrains to see how runnable the area was. It seemed more runnable than I was expecting. The visibility through green areas was better than we are used to in South Africa.

Brad and I had courses with 16 controls while Tim got a 20 control course which had an extra loop. All the courses were slightly different. I ran the course backwards. Brad and Tim did theirs the right way round. 

I decided to run straight from 16 to 15, running along the edge of the clearing. I wanted to get a feel of the vegetation and see if it may be a viable route choice. It turns out the green was thick and hard to navigate through. Although i messed the control up quite badly I'm still glad I chose that route as I can gauge the runnability of green areas better now.

Lesni Hrbitov

Struggled to find the stakes at many of the controls so need to focus more on the finer detail in the circle. Was expecting to find the control as I ran into the area. Stopped to early from 13 to 12 and wasted minutes matching up features to the map. 12 to 11 I ran straight to the road and relocated. Was feeling a bit insecure with my navigating. 

Hit the rest of the controls pretty nicely barring 5 which i over ran and 2 which i was hesitant about. I was confused by a ditch that wasn't on the map. 

Finished the loop in 43 minutes, 5 minutes behind tim and brad. We then took turns to navigate to a control on the extra loop of Tim's course. I managed to trip twice running to one of those controls. Tim, Brad and a bunch of Australian orienteers who saw it thought it was hilarious. 

I thought the map was top quality and I really enjoyed the training. I definitely need to soak up as much knowledge and skills as possible if I'm going to have a fast run at JWOC.

Roark and our Czech guide Vojta on Charles bridge

Czech us out bru!

Manager and I are nearly in Czech, currently utilising some free interweb in the charles de gaulle airport!

Tim and Roark should hopefully be in Czech Republic by now, and will probably have explored Prague quite a bit.

Salome writes her last exam on Monday and then Flies to Czech later on. I'm sure we're all really amped to get into terrain ASAP and smash some quality trainings.

We'll hopefully keep our number one supporters (all you SAffers!) updated on this blog and also with @SAorienteers. (Roark and Tim, as newbies, are in charge of the blogging, so any hate mail should be directed to them ;)

Also check out our attackpoint logs. Sweet!