JK2012 - Scotland

Gone are the days of Easter meaning, for me at least, 4 days in church serving the Altar. Nowadays over the long bank holiday I worship the Orienteering Gods at The Jan Kjellstrom - aka the JK, British Orienteering's most prestigious event outside of the British Championships in the 4 separate foot-O disciplines of Sprint, Middle, Long and Relay. The JK contains all 4 of these, with the middle and classic times cmbined in an overall competition. There's little recovery time between the 4 hard races and at time crucifixion seems the easy way out.

This year we were treated to typical tough Scottish terrain and almost-typical Scottish weather in northern Perthshire. Thankfully the typical Scottish Midgies weren't on hand.

Anyway, the reason for this post - somewhere to host my quickrouted maps:

Friday's Sprint Race - Livingstone.

 An enjoyable race around a fairly trick albeit NED-ish area. an OK result in 42ndish (50th last year) but there were some mistakes in there. I did 17:40, the course was taken out by Murray Strain in 14:37. Blimey.

Saturday's Middle Distance Race - Dunalastair.
I like the idea of middle distance courses but you don't get many of them about, and when I run them I'm generally crap. As this was a World Ranking Event GPS watches were not allowed, so not even I know what happened when it took me 14,5mins to find control #1, an entire 200m away from the start kite. After that some bits were OK but a lot was bad. Mainly because I was mad.

Sunday's Classic - Craig a Barns (Dunkeld).

This was meaty. 2hr 16min for 11.6km (600m climb) tells the story - I was out for a long time and flagged from about 70 minutes in (as expected due to lack of rougher training of late), losing a lot of concentration and impetus, and thus time. However, similar courses in the past have seen me out for over 150mins, so I'm moving in the right direction. I also managed to head up a group of 4 guys who clocked times within 9 seconds of each other - ridiculous over this amount of time. The Course was won by Douglas Tullie (OMM Elite 3rd place) just shy of 87mins. A class run.

Monday's Relays - Newtyle (Dunkeld).

My first relay run for my new Klub, CLOK, I ran the last leg on the big boy's course. I was out on my own for all of it as we were well adrift by the time I went out, so I didn't get the head-to-head experience I enjoy, but was just glad of the run. My cleanest of the weekend as well, although my 42ish mins was still 10mins shy of Oli Johnson on my specific course (although he was fighting for the medals so had something to run for).

The O tech is improving but still more practise needed, and I should get it over the next few months. Next up - Coledale Horseshoe, then the British Orienteering Champs, also in the lakes.

Back in the Swing

First up, a bit of a plug for Team Accelerate's Shelf and his Big Alps Run. Take a look at his blog and twitter, and donate!

The cracking weather has coincided with a return to running on a regular basis. I've had a good 8 days solid running. OK, most of the runs were short and road-based, but I've started venturing out into the moors, what with having daylight after work. The good news is that my knee is being a lot more cooperative with the residual twinges becoming more and more dispirit. Many thanks to Tim's words of wisdom for getting me back on track - just need to remember to keep doing strength exercises on a regular basis now!
Needless to say I was disappointed to miss the Edale Skyline, but next year.

Instead I took in the British Sprint Orienteering Championships. Unfortunately I got a bit excited about being able to run fast again and made some shoddy shoddy nav errors.

JOSH BEEEECH! (Putting the 'Testes' in Test Runner)

I was no way expecting to pull a run worthy of A-final qualification out of the bag, but I was some way down on where I wanted to be - and the B final was, somehow, even worse! However, it was great to catch up with ShUOC and other orienteers you seldom see due to geographical constraints. My performances have given me some focus ahead of the rest of the season. It was also great to see SPOOKer Shminty pull a stormer out of the bag and win the men's race. I'm sure his performance has given lots of encouragement (and food for thought?) to a lot of the guys out there. Maps and routes are available here (17th on H1A) and here (a distant 50-something on FB1).

'Ector Anus, Shmint Doggy Dogg and OJ 

I took a lot of photos of the finals. Some of them were even OK!

Looking forward to the JK in Scotland over the Easter Weekend. I'll be testing against the best (terrain and runners), needless to say I'll be getting my moneys worth and I'm really looking forward to it. Hope the weather stays nice (but not too nice).

Bit of O today on Hamsterley Common:

Good heathery fun under Bluebird skies, a few mistakes but getting better. Was still 10mins down on Duncan Archer (who'd supported Leg 3 on DFR's Andy Blackett's 23:30ish BG the previous day - well done Andy!). It was all very civilized, especially as I had Bach's Mass in B Minor going round my head after last night's performance with Cleveland Philharmonic Choir.
I didn't see any Hamsters though.

WOC 2011 Preview pt.2 - Sprint Contenders.

So, despite the fairly unpredictable nature of orienteering, here's some of my WOC predictions, based mainly on conjecture and rumour, but the cold hard facts of recent results, IOF runner ranking and WorldofO.com's ranking system (which also separates accoring to different disciplines) may also be taken into account! Seeing as WorldofO.com have not yet mentioned who they're tipping to do well, and the start lists are yet to be published so I'm not entirely sure who's running what, I'm sticking my neck out somewhat!

Sprint: Aix-les-Bains (Qual) and Chambery (Final), Tuesday 16th August.
Trying to predict who will win in each class is pretty ridiculous (at WOC2010 in Trondheim, the top 7 men were separated by 7.4 seconds, with the women's gold being decided by 0.7 seconds); as appraisal of the main contenders seems more sensible.

Chambery old-town (from WOC2011 website), part of the sprint final map.

Men.
The first sprint rounds of this year's World Cup (WC) were dominated by the Swiss, rounding out the top 5 in the first race (with 2 more in the top 10) and 4 of the top 8 in the 2nd round knock-out sprint. there team is unbelievably strong: defending champion Matthias Muller, 1st year senior Matthias Kyburz (winner, WC 2011#1 and 2009 JWOC sprint champion), Daniel Hubmann (4 WOC sprint medals, many podiums at WC races), Fabian Hertner (European sprint champion, silver in WOC '09 and '10 sprints) and Matthias Merz.
Outside of the land of Toblerone, the Swedish sprint specialist Jerker Lysell (Winner, WC 2011 #2) and Norwegian sprint specialist Oystein Kvaal Osterbo (4th WOC 2010) will head strong Scandinavian delegations, with the Russian Andrey Khramov (2008 & 2009 champion) always dangerous.
Potential outsiders (here comes some nepotism!) include Britain's Scott Fraser, Graham Gristwood and sprint specialist Murray Strain, France's Frederic Tranchand (surprise bronze in 2010) and Lucas Basset (JWOC 2011 Gold) or the Czech Stepan Kodeda (JWOC 2008 Gold). Then again, you can never discount anyone from having a stormer (I know it's a cop-out!)
I'm going to stick my neck out and go for a 2xSwiss and Lysell podium.

Jerker Lysell (from WorldofO.com) at WOC2010 Sprint (11th place) - now with the mockers put on his chances!

Women.
Reigning champion (and 17-times world champion in all disciplines, 5 in sprint) Simone Niggli (Sui) is not in France this year as she's expecting her second child, leaving Sweden's Helena Jansson (2nd last year by 0.7 seconds; 2009 champion) the stand-out favourite. Competition will come from the the other Swedish runners, I'm assuming 2 of  Linnea Gustafsson (WC#1 Winner), Lena Eliasson (WC#1 2nd) and Annika Billstam (WC#1 3rd), Norwegian all-rounder (and perpetual 2/3rd place runner) Marianne Andersen (WOC 2010 3rd) and Finnish all-rounder Minna Kauppi (2x sprint silvers, 7x WOC champion). Even with Kauppi and Jansson missing the early-season WC races due to injusy, I'm going for both to medal, along with Gustafsson, but, as Australia's Hanny Allston showed by winning whilst still a junior in 2006, anything can happen, and has!

Minna Kauppi (from WorldofO.com) at WOC 2010 Sprint (4th place) - mad as a box of frogs but pretty damn fine. You can find more pictures on her website ;)

As for the British girls, the experienced Sarah Rollins (5-times British Sprint champion), along with WOC second- and first-timers respectively Hollie Orr (current British Sprint champion) and Tessa Hill (11th place WC#1) all have an excellent chance of making the top 20.

I'll update with Long and Middle contenders after those respective qualifying races have taken place (Saturday and Sunday respectively)