The Australian Orienteer – June 2005

JUNE 2005

Australian 3-Days Jindabyne

2004 Athlete of the Year – Adrian Jackson

w w w. o r i e n t e e r i n g . a s n . a u President: Bob McCreddin Director (Administration): Dave Lotty, PO Box 740 Glebe NSW 2037. Ph.‑(02) 9660 2067‑(w), (02) 9569 2380 (h) orienteering@sydney.net Director (Finance): Kathy Liley, 83 Kenmare St., Watsonia VIC 3087 Ph. (03) 9432 4023 Director (Development): Bob Mouatt, PO Box W49 Wanniassa ACT 2903 Ph. (02) 6231 2463 Director (Technical): Andy Hogg, 23 Aston Crescent Cook ACT 2614 Ph. (02) 6251 9777 Director (High Performance): Mike Dowling, 17 High Street Bellerive TAS 7018 Ph. (03) 6244 7173 Manager (Coaching Programs): Neville Bleakley, 30 Gledden Street Chifley ACT 2606 Ph. (02) 6207 3723 Badge Applications: John Oliver, 68 Amaroo Street Wagga‑Wagga NSW 2650

STATE ASSOCIATIONS Queensland OA: PO Box 114 Spring Hill QLD 4004 Secretary: Robin Spriggs Ph.‑(07) 3369 0880 (h) qoa@qoa.asn.au OA NSW: PO Box 740, Glebe NSW 2037 Secretary: Dave Lotty Ph.‑(02) 9660 2067 (w), 9569 2380 (h) orienteering@sydney.net Orienteering ACT: PO Box 402, Jamison Centre ACT 2614 Secretary: Bill Jones Ph.‑(02) 6251 3885 actoa@austarmetro.com.au Victorian OA: 332 Banyule Rd, Viewbank VIC 3084 Secretary: Warwick Williams Ph. (03) 9459 0853 voa@netspace.net.au OA South Australia: State Association House, 73 Wakefield Street Adelaide SA 5000. Secretary: Phil Stoeckel OA Western Australia: PO Box 234 Subiaco WA 6904 Secretary: Cath Chalmers Ph.‑(08) 9380 4049 (h) catheoin@ozemail.com.au Orienteering Tasmania Inc.: PO Box 339, Sandy Bay, TAS 7005 Secretary: Warwick Moore Ph.‑(03) 6248 6405 secretary.oti@trump.net.au Top End Orienteers (Northern Territory): PO Box 39152 Winnellie NT 0821 Secretary: Susi Bertei Ph.‑(08) 8981 5841

CONTENTS ISSN 0818-6510 Issue 2/05 (no. 138) JUNE 2005

F R O M T H E P R E S I D E N T.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

The national magazine of Orienteering Australia Inc. ABN 77 406 995 497 Published four times a year: First day of March, June, September, December Print Post Approved PP 236080/00011

LETTERS.......................................... 6

Editor: Michael Hubbert, P.O. Box 165, Warrandyte, Victoria 3113 mikehubbert@ozemail.com.au Phone/fax (03) 9844 4878 Magazine Design & Assembly: Peter Cusworth, 8 View Street, Avonsleigh, Vic. 3782 Ph. (03) 5968 5254 cusworth@netspace.net.au Magazine Treasurer: Kathy Liley Printer: Priden Printing Services, 21 Century Drive, Braeside, Vic. 3195 Next edition: Cover date: 1 September 2005 Contribution deadlines: 15 July. Time-sensitive material – 22 July.

The date shown for contributions is the last date that matter will be received. Any non-topical matter should be presented as soon as it can be ready.

The policy on publication dates is that normally the magazine is dispatched in bulk from the printer in Melbourne in time for states to be able to have it in members’ hands at the very beginning of month of cover date. This policy was established by all states in conference.

Regular Contributors: Badge Awards: John Oliver; Coaching/Training: Nev Bleakley; Competition: Blair Trewin; High Performance: Mike Dowling; MTBO: Blake Gordon; Official News: Dave Lotty; Running the Business: Bob Mouatt; Ski-O: Ian Baker; Nutrition: Gillian Woodward.

Contributions are welcome, either directly or via State editorial contacts. Prior consultation is suggested before preparing major contributions. Guidelines for Contributors are available from the editor or from state contacts.

State Editorial Contacts Qld. – Liz Bourne 07 4683 6374 (h) batmaps@halenet.com.au NSW – Ken Sinclair 02 9639 9675 sicad@ozemail.com.au ACT – Matthew Purcell 02 6231 2121 mattpurc@webone.com.au Vic. – SA – Claire Davill 08 8226 4381 (w) davill.claire@saugov.sa.gov.au WA – Cath Chalmers 08 9380 4049 catheoin@ozemail.com.au Tas. – Mary Hawthorne 03 6243 8616 (h) editor.oti@trump.net.au Subscriptions: State Association members via State Associations. Contact relevant Association Secretary for details. Other subscribers: Write to The Australian Orienteer, PO‑Box 165, Warrandyte, Vic. 3113. Within Australia: $36 inc GST. Overseas: Asia/Pacific (inc. NZ) $40, Rest of World $45. Delivery is airmail, there is no seamail option. Please send payment in Australian dollars by bank draft or international postal order, or pay direct by Visa or Mastercard. Quote full card number and expiry date.

Subscription renewals (direct subscriptions only). The number in the top right-hand corner of the address label indicates the final issue in your current subscription.

Opinions expressed in The Australian Orienteer are not necessarily those of Orienteering Australia.

DID YOU KNOW?................................. 8

2 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

NEWS............................................. 7

A W A R D S F O R E X C E L L E N C E .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 0 B J W I N S PA R K W O R L D T O U R R A C E.. . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 W O C 2 0 0 5 JA PA N.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4 G R E A T L E G S – Aust 3-Days. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 6 SKI-O WOC...................................... 20 A U S T R A L I A N 3 - D AY S . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3 S P O R T S P S Y C H O L O G Y – Distractions in O. . . . . . . . . . 2 7 HIGH PERFORMANCE REPORT.................. 29 T R A I N I N G – The Principles of Training. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 0 GOLD MEDAL ROUTE............................ 34 EAGLEMONT MAZE-O............................ 37 U R B A N - O H I S T O R Y.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 8 G R E A T L E G S – Jo Allison’s Day 3 at Easter . . . . . . . . . . 4 0 N U T R I T I O N – Protein in Sport. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2 WORLD CUP SPRINT............................ 43 TOP EVENTS..................................... 45 MTB-O TRAINING............................... 49 C O A C H I N G – Evaluating Performance with GPS.. . . . . . . . 5 2 ORIENTEERING AUSTRALIA NEWS............. 54

Front Cover – main photo: Jo Allison running down the finish chute at Buckenderra to win the Australian 3-Days W21E for the fourth year in a row. Photo: Peter Cusworth

EDITORIAL

Mike Hubbert, Editor

No-one is unbeatable

I once beat Dave Bedford, the then world record holder for 10,000 metres. It was a cross-country race. He took off like a scalded cat and, a few km into the race, he turned right where the course turned left. We never saw him again that day. No-one is infallible, or unbeatable.

We wish our WOC Team the very best in their quest for success in Japan. Remember Team – no-one is unbeatable.

It’s not often that we get the chance to look into the mind of a World Champion, so Thierry Gueorgiou’s Golden Route from WOC 2004 will be a fascinating ‘armchair coaching’ experience for elites and lesser mortals alike. A special thank you to Thierry for providing this detailed analysis.

As ever, I hope you find this edition a good read.

Good navigating, Mike Hubbert.

A

S our National Team members prepare for their assault on the World Foot-O Championships in Japan this August it’s timely to examine their chances. Japan is being viewed as ‘neutral’ terrain where our team will have one of its best opportunities to challenge the European dominance. Some people regard the Europeans as being unbeatable in any terrain, but is that necessarily so?

Soon after his 1985 World Championships win at Kooyoora, Finland’s Kari Sallinen was competing at APOC in Hong Kong. He was running along a track with an Aussie of much lesser standing. The control was just across a gully so Kari dove in. The Aussie noticed that the undergrowth was even thicker than usual in that gully, so he timidly chose the much longer route around on the track. He got to the control and assumed that Kari was long gone.

Much later he found out that both Kari Sallinen and Jörgen Mårtensson had gotten hopelessly entangled in the undergrowth.

No amount of pushing or pulling could get them out to the control and they abandoned the course. The Aussie learnt a lesson that day – no‑one is unbeatable.

Next issue

1 September 2005 Contributions deadlines Time-sensitive: 22 July. All other contributions: 15 July

VICTORINOX AWARD

The Victorinox Award goes to Ann Nolan of Tjuringa Orienteers, SA. She receives a Victorinox Voyager with 20 tools and features including a watch/alarm/timer; retail value $109.95 This is my close-up photo of a compass and a portion of the Port Elliott, SA, map from an event held early in 2005. I have just discovered the joys of close-up photography.

The Port Elliott event was a minor park event in a beautiful old seaside town south of Adelaide. I succumbed to temptation, stopping for a cappuccino at a quaint gallery/coffee shop during my course. I also lured another passing orienteer to join me.

Isn’t Orienteering all about having fun? This was my first digression in 22 years of Orienteering.

Ann Nolan, Tjuringa Orienteers, SA

1800 209 999 www.victorinox.com

for stockists call

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 3

FROM THE PRESIDENT

Bob McCreddin, President, Orienteering Australia

Supporting our elite athletes FOR decades I resisted the temptation to take up golf because it would take me away from my family for too many hours of a weekend.

So I fell captive to time-consuming Orienteering and could not persuade my family to join me. One consequence is that for some events, I do little more than arrive, compete and depart. But for most events, and certainly for the more major events, I make it a complete social activity, meeting old friends and being a spectator as well as being a competitor.

As Orienteering internationally seeks to establish itself as a major (Olympic?) sport, it accepts that it has to generate spectator appeal and is to a certain extent endeavouring to re-invent itself. Different types of events are one strategy and a feature of these is typically an appeal to spectators, albeit at present other orienteers.

There are few rewards to be obtained by our champion athletes and the acknowledgement of fellow orienteers plays a significant role. This is particularly so at the elite level, where our athletes need recognition and every encouragement to continue to strive for better performances.

National carnivals have of late being doing the spectator bit very well, giving every attention to assembly areas, legs through the surrounding area and spectator controls. Events organisers are

congratulated for this action and must not be deterred by negative feedback about ‘easy’ legs at the conclusion of events.

The arrangement for Day Three of the Australian 3-Days leads to one of the magic moments in Australian Orienteering each year.

Most competitors have finished their courses and assume the role of spectator to follow the arrivals of the late-starting elite athletes, with the best finishing towards the last.

However, the biggest difficulty for organisers to overcome in creating spectator interest at these national events seems to be the family car. It sometimes seems a pity they aren’t parked a kilometre away from the assembly area so that people remain ‘track side’. The problem seems to be even greater at State events where there is less of a culture and commitment to being a spectator and supporting the elite athletes.

All orienteers are urged to take an interest in matters relating to elite athletes, whether it be their performances in state, national or international events, and are urged to browse the high performance pages when regularly visiting the state and national Orienteering websites.

Orienteering Australia has sought to enhance the recognition that our elite athletes contribute to the well-being of our sport and instituted an Award for the “Orienteering Australia Athlete of the Year”.

Adrian Jackson was the winner of the inaugural 2004 medal following his gold medal winning ride in the Middle-distance event at the World Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships. Congratulations Adrian.

Keep spiking those controls!

IOF TODAY

Hugh Cameron – Senior Vice-President International Orienteering Federation

THE IOF has a membership of 66, with the Council recently provisionally approving applications from Mongolia and Kenya. While the IOF is still very much concerned with the conformity of rules and standards throughout the world, as reflected in the recently published International Specification for Sprint Orienteering Maps (ISSOM) and the ongoing work to develop a punching specification, its policies are also about the spread, strengthening and development of the sport throughout the world – to more people in more places. The IOF wishes to raise the profile of our sport by staging high quality, highly visible events around the world, forcefully promoting Orienteering in a global context.

As IOF membership continues to grow and more people experience the challenge and excitement of Orienteering at its best; as Orienteering “comes out of the forest” as evidenced by the arena production at the World Championships in Sweden last year; as the world’s elite compete in tight top level competition in all parts of the world, Orienteering is positioning itself for inclusion in the Olympic/ Paralympic Games. For the summer Olympic program, the immediate goal is to secure the eligibility criteria of 75 nations membership.

For the winter program, the IOF has applied for inclusion of SkiOrienteering in the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. The IOF has also expressed its desire to have Trail Orienteering included in the 2012 Paralympic Games.

There is strong determination within the IOF to strengthen all four recognised disciplines – foot, mountain-bike, ski and trail Orienteering. The highly acclaimed World Orienteering Championships in Ski-O were held in Levi, Finland, earlier this year and the 2009 Championships have been awarded to Japan - testament to the IOF’s world perspective, the growing strength of the discipline and development in the Asian region. The World Championships in Japan, this year, will showcase both Foot and Trail Orienteering, while the Mountain-Bike World Championships will return from exciting exposure

in Australia in 2004 to another highly contested competition in Slovakia in 2005.

Many await the announcement of the nature of a new elite event program to be introduced in 2007. The Foot Orienteering Commission is developing the format and the calendar will be published by the end of this year. Other current priorities of the IOF include increasing the number of professional staff with a view to providing further support for the volunteer organization, the development of the arena production concept seen at the 2004 World Championships and an emphasis on development projects throughout the world.

And Australia and the international scene today ?

Orienteering Australia has always been represented at the Presidents’ Conference. OA has a significant presence on the Commissions and Council of the IOF. Mike Dowling, OA Director High Performance, is a member of the Foot-O commission, Blake Gordon, Chair OA MTB-O Committee is a member of the IOF MTB-O Commission, David Hogg the Environment Commission, Barry McCrae the Rules Commission, John Brammall the Development and Policy Commission and Duncan Sullivan is a member of the IOF Therapeutic Use Exemption Committee. Hugh Cameron is Senior Vice President of the IOF. When the International Masters Games Association awarded the 2009 World Masters Games to Sydney the IOF asked Orienteering Australia to organise the World Masters Orienteering Championships as part of those World Masters Games. The staging of the Junior World Orienteering Championships in Dubbo, New South Wales, in 2007 and the World Masters in 2009 will contribute significantly to the realisation of IOF objectives – events attractive to the public, media and external partners, recognition in the international sports world and development in a global context.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 5

LETTERS Running in Circles Thomas Schoepf (AO Dec’04) talks about the tendency to run in circles. This makes perfect sense, but in my experience the majority of people are left footed. Footedness seems to have no relation to handedness. I am both right handed and right footed. My right footedness gains the term “goofy footed” (ie. not normal) in snowboarding/skating language. Your dominant foot is the one you save yourself with if falling forwards, or the foot you are most likely to put down when you stop your bicycle. It’s the foot you feel more ‘right’ with forwards on a snowboard or backwards on a waterski.

Bruce Paterson (ARDF-VIC)

Discrimination for Bikers Last year the Aussie MTB-O team performed exceedingly well by winning 5 medals at the World Championships, including our first ever WOC gold in any discipline. This followed on from a silver medal and 3 podium finishes in France in 2002. Austria and Germany also won their first ever golds and have been publicly lauding those achievements as milestones for Orienteering, not just MTB-O, in their respective countries. The other MTB-O gold medal winning countries, Switzerland and Finland already have many Foot and Ski-O gold medals in their keeping, but warmly welcomed the additional golds.

The board of Orienteering Australia chose to publicly belittle our MTBO achievements when they distributed the $4,000 High Performance grant in a blatantly discriminatory manner. Money was given dependent on the points gained in Foot and MTB-O on the basis of international results. However the MTB-O points were divided by a factor of 5, meaning that they were worth 20% of that of the Foot orienteers. Hypothetically this credits Adrian Jackson with only winning a fifth of a gold medal! One of our medallists remarked to me that “it was like a kick in the guts.” It wasn’t the money lost, but the philosophy behind the decision that hurt. The Australian Government gives out grants to Olympic medal winners. Imagine the outcry if the archery, speed skating or cycling medallists were given only a fifth the amount given to swimmers!

This HP money came from an Australian Sports Commission grant, not from State contributions. Team funding sees Foot-O competitors get almost totally funded, whilst MTBO team members get less than JWOC competitors, having to pay for flights, as well as the pre-event training camp. In contrast Finland fund their Foot-O, Ski-O and MTBO teams equally. The question of how to fund elite teams to yearly WOC’s is a very difficult one and I believe that we should be lobbying IOF strongly to go back to every second year. Some of the eastern European countries are also struggling on this score. Perhaps we should be funding our elite teams solely on the basis of performance, and not ask the general Orienteering public to contribute so much!

Foot Orienteering has a 50 year history in Australia (having started in SA on July 9, 1955), whilst MTB-O is less than 10 years old. In SA this year there are 108 Foot-O events and 6 for bikes. Even in Victoria there are only about 12 bike events. I can’t visualise MTB-O ever becoming bigger than Foot-O, in terms of events conducted, as: a) in many States there isn’t the available terrain, and; b) new MTB-O maps are constantly needed because they become too well known after 5 or 6 uses. So you can’t expect mountain bikers to become members of State associations under the same terms as foot orienteers, as we can’t offer them enough. However, it would be useful for our membership statistics if we can work out a separate scheme.

Even “down under” last year we had 152 MTB-O competitors at WMTB-O, compared to 105 at this year’s Ski-O WOC, which has been established a lot longer. Undoubtedly the numbers and depth of competition at the Foot-O WOC are larger, I’m not denying that.

However the MTB-O competitiveness at the top end of the field was very strong, and the riders train just as hard (and spend more money on their sport) than do foot orienteers. Australians are pretty proud when our netball and cricket teams are world champions. No mention is ever made that only about 10 nations play both sports!

6 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

The Australian Orienteer welcomes letters. Preference will be given to letters which are concise and which make positive points. The editor reserves the right to edit letters, particularly ones which are longer than 300 words.

Orienteering needs to accept MTB-O as an “equal but different” part of our sport. We should rejoice in our successes, in whatever discipline, and try to build on them, not diminish them.

Kay Haarsma (National MTB-O Coach)

OA response

OA in its High Performance budget has a program called Direct Athlete Support (DAS). The purpose of the DAS program is to reward athletes who achieve benchmark performances as defined by the High Performance Strategic Plan.

The actual circumstances of the distribution of DAS funding for WOC benchmark performances in 2004 is as follows. In the 2004 OA High Performance budget, which was publicly available through all States and their delegates well in advance, there were two separate DAS items, $3000 for Foot Orienteering and $500 for MTB-O. The funding differential acknowledged the different level of international competitiveness and depth between the two Orienteering formats. As a result of the outstanding performances by our MTB-O elite athletes at the MTB-O WOC in Ballarat OA allocated an additional amount of $1250 to distribute to the MTB-O athletes under the DAS program.

In 2005 a new policy has been developed that harmonises the distribution of DAS funding. If the new funding arrangements had been applied to 2004 performances there would have been a 50/50 split between Foot and MTB-O WOC athletes who obtained benchmark performances in that year. Total funding for MTB-O HP programs will increase each year over the next three-year period by a significant amount. To radically change funding allocations quickly would have had a detrimental effect on the existing broader HP program of OA as funding allocations are broadly determined 12 to 18 months in advance to allow for adequate planning of programs to occur.

It should be noted that under ASC guidelines the sport decides how ASC HP funding will be distributed. For Orienteering the funding supports a wide range of HP programs such as wages for the Manager - High Performance, training camps, the National League, world championship teams, regional competition with New Zealand, coaching services and support, and a range of other training services.

Mike Dowling, Director, High Performance, Orienteering Australia

Support our sponsors and support your sport

NEWS JWOC Team THE Australian team for the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) has been announced. Following the Australian 3-Days competition selectors named the team: Men: Julian Dent, Conrad Elson, Louis Elson, David Meyer, Ryan Smyth, Simon Uppill.

Reserves: Matt Parton and Chris Naunton.

Women: Hanny Allston, Ainsley Cavanagh, Zebedy Hallett, Jasmine Neve, Erin Post, Vanessa Round. Reserves: Kellie Whitfield and Heather Harding.

JWOC will be held in Switzerland, July 11-16.

Manager for WMTB-O Team

ORIENTEERING AUSTRALIA has appointed Paul Darvodelsky as manager of the Australian team for the 2005 World Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships in Slovakia, September 5-11.

AROC 24-Hour Endurance Race – March 5, Canberra ORIENTEERS did extremely well in this event, winning both the open male and female categories. Rob and Peter Preston had won all four sprint lead-up events they had contested in Sydney and Canberra, pairing up with other NSW Stingers team-mates David Meyer, Andy Hill and Richard Mountstephens at various times.

However, they wisely recruited Aussie MTBO team member David Baldwin as their third team member for this event, as David

knows every track and termite mound in the ACT. The Cockatoos trio of Grant Bluett, Dave Shepherd and Rob Walter had combined to win a recent sprint event, and female reps in Alison Jones, Cathy Talbot, Rebecca Minty and Jo Allison had also been amongst the placegetters.

The 24-Hour event required navigating to control points in the 18 various “legs” of paddling, swimming, tubing, mountain biking, running/ trekking, and even two bus journeys. The start and finish point was at the National Museum and took teams north to the Gungahlin and Mulligans Flat O map, south to Lake Tuggeranong and through every bit of bush in-between. The start was in wet, windy and cool conditions and only got colder.

There were whitecaps on Lake Burley Griffin, as 50 teams took to the water in the specially designed 3-person kayaks.

Kay Haarsma was teamed up with fellow orienteer Susanne Casanova and ACT triathlete Terri Moore, whom they first met 30 minutes before the start.

Susanne and Terri were new to paddling and got a rough initiation.

Teams were required to carry mandatory equipment at all times, including a mobile phone. Kay’s team didn’t own one between them, so it was pretty impressive of Ann Scown to lend hers knowing that it would be going for a swim or two. After the second kayak leg both Susanne and Kay got badly hypothermic and the organizers thought they wouldn’t continue, but the addition of some thermals got them moving again.

One funny incident happened on the Black Mountain footO section when Susanne commented that, “the next control will be right next to the dead kangaroo.” (She had seen the kangaroo a week before while out training.) A member from another team travelling with ours then asked, “what symbol is used for a dead kangaroo?”

The Preston/Baldwin team took the lead early on and maintained it throughout, despite stopping for drinks and

food at the various café and Sushi bar control points along the way. The Haarsma/Casanova/ Moore team was 2 hours quicker on a night mountain biking leg than their opposing women’s teams, came through to the lead at 2 am and kept it.

So victory in the inaugural 24-Hour Canberra adventure race to two teams of orienteers.

Lauren Shelley in London Marathon

Kay Haarsma

National Training Centre DANIELLE WINSLOW has been offered and has taken up the first NTC scholarship to ACTAS. The offer is subject to OTAS paying a $500 fee to ACTAS. If OTAS declines, then Danielle may opt to pay it herself. The scholarship is tenable during 2005.

Danielle is eligible to all the services that ACTAS is able to offer (i.e. in effect, she will be a full squad member), but will not receive cash assistance from ACTAS squad funds for travel etc. She is also not eligible for assistance from SRACT if she makes the WOC team. She will run for the Tassie Foresters in the National League.

Julian Dent: Orienteering Association of NSW has agreed to pay the fees for Julian Dent (NSW) to join the ACTAS Strength and Conditioning Program at ACTAS until he goes overseas to compete in the Junior World Orienteering Championships in Switzerland.

Julian has said he intends to link with ACTAS more closely when he returns from overseas in October: preferably as a NTC scholarship holder from NSW. Strength and Conditioning coach for the ACTAS squad is Cory Middleton. Cory was a noted Australian-ranked middledistance runner some years ago, who competed against the Quayle brothers in the mid 90s.

Cory is also a qualified sport psychologist, employed by the AIS, and his programs show a mix of mind/body emphasis.

They are not just strength sessions - they are designed to challenge orienteers to use muscle groups in the correct way to increase performance - and to have the right mind-set to persevere under stress.

LAUREN SHELLEY (BK-V) finished 21st in the women’s section of the 2005 London Marathon, won by Paula Radcliffe. Overall, some 35,000 people took part. Lauren’s time was a very creditable 2:41:42, just missing the Commonwealth Games “B” qualifying standard of 2:40:00.

Lauren plans to have another try in the Gold Coast marathon on 3rd July.

Lauren rugged up for the London Marathon. Photos: Steve Rowland

Vroni König-Salmi in Ski-O WOC ONE of Switzerland’s most successful Foot-O competitors, Vroni König-Salmi, competed in the Ski-O WOC events at Levi, Finland. In the Middle-distance event she was second Swiss home in 21st place and in the Relay she helped her team to 6th placing. In 2001 Vroni König-Salmi was World Sprint Champion in Foot-O.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 7

DID YOU KNOW?

Dave Lotty completes 2000 Orienteering courses

D

AVE LOTTY has been Orienteering Australia’s Director (Administration) for many years. He’s been a regular competitor and event organiser for even longer. At the SnowE2005 Australian 3-Days, held recently near Jindabyne, NSW, Dave announced that he had completed 2000 Orienteering courses.

Dave was presented with a bottle of his favourite tipple to celebrate the milestone and The Australian Orienteer spoke with him about his achievements over the years.

AO: 2000 is quite an achievement. How long has it taken you?

DL: My first event was in November 1971 - so just under 24 years.

AO: When did you pass the 2000 mark?

DL: On Day 2 (Sunday) of the recent Aus. 3-Days in Jindabyne. If you want to know how I know I have reached 2000, I have every one of my maps filed in date order in 12 lever arch files (and also listed on a spreadsheet).

AO: Your club is Uringa. Have you always belonged to that club?

DL: No, when I helped start Orienteering in NSW we formed the first Australian Club, Bennelong Occasional Orienteers (in December 1971).

I then formed a club in the south of Sydney with Ian Hassall in 1972 (Kareelah Orienteers) and then with the Wilmotts formed Uringa Orienteers in 1975.

Swedish storm AN unusually fierce storm ripped through the Småland region of southern Sweden shearing off the tops of trees and generally laying waste to large areas of forest. The 2005 O-Ringen is scheduled to be held in the Småland region in July. Fortunately the mapped areas were only lightly damaged and Swedish Orienteering’s major sponsor, Sveaskog, has been cleaning up the debris over recent months in preparation for the event.

Global Positioning Satellite technology and Orienteering WOC maps with GPS THE survey for the maps for this year’s WOC in Japan made use of GPS. The Japanese mapmakers found the official base maps lacked detail and the photogrammetry was inadequate.

Ski-O terrain contains dense and complex track networks in the snow. For JWOC Ski-O 2005 at S-chanf in the Engadin valley of Switzerland, 43 kilometres of tracks were made by skidoo in the week immediately before competition following routes which had key reference points marked by tape; snow conditions can mean the plan made beforehand cannot be followed exactly.

8 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

For route choice, a precise map of the track network is vital. The skidoo tracks were recorded by a GPS device every two seconds meaning a line could be drawn and transferred to OCAD. OL (Switzerland), edited Orienteering Australia Mapping Committee Chair Noel Schoknecht (WA) says he routinely does GPS mapping at work. He is preparing an article for The Australian Orienteer later this year.

Even Park & Street maps in Victoria are fieldworked using GPS.

Burra to Barossa 2007 THE 2007 Australian 3-Days carnival to be held in South Australia will be known as “Burra to Barossa 2007”. As well as the Aus 3-Days the carnival will also include the Aus Middledistance Championships. A postcard designed by Bob Smith will publicise the event. The carnival web site is www.oasa. asn.au/2007

Olympic Champion Peter Snell CHAMPION Kiwi Olympian from Rome and Tokyo, Peter Snell, now lives in the US and is their M65 National Champion.

AO: What do you find most enjoyable about Orienteering?

DL: Everything about it - the competition, the forests, the travel and the social side. I particularly enjoy the mental challenge. I have always been a good runner but the navigation is a real test for me as it is easy for me to go faster than I can think!

AO: Which countries have you competed in?

DL: Outside of Australia (every state except the Northern Territory - and that will be rectified in July this year) I have competed in New Zealand, Singapore (I was part of an IOF effort in 1980 to get Orienteering going there), Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, France, and Ireland.

AO: Are you going to the World Masters in Austria next year?

DL: Probably not (although I would like to). I am involved as Technical Director with the 2007 JWOC in Dubbo and this will take up all my spare time for the next couple of years.

AO: Any special memories from those 2000 events?

DL: I enjoy every event - “too much Orienteering is barely enough”.

Competing in the 1974 World Championships in Denmark would be up there (though at the time it was a real challenge as we had only just started to have colour maps in Australia). I have always sought the perfect run but haven’t really achieved it yet. The closest I have come is at an event near Wagga Wagga in 1980 (my first in M35) where I ran absolutely flat out (I was in good running form at the time and had run 31:00 for 10km on the track two months prior) and the controls just appeared in front of me - at least as far as the second last one where I lost 20 or 30 seconds.

I won by over 8:00 with my time being 62:00 for 10.4km.

OA President, Bob McCreddin congratulates Dave Lotty

You’ll fly, with a Silva Jet! “It’s not by chance that the world’s best orienteers run with a SILVA Jet compass.” says Grant Bluett who runs with a Silva 6 Jet Spectra

SILVA 6 JET SPECTRA

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Available in left and right hand models. $138 from your local O-gear shop at events.

SILVA 5 JET

Features a scratch resistant ‘comfort-fit’ curved back-end baseplate and the unique fluorescent red/white, broad Jet needle. Easy-to-grip housing with enlarged dial. Detachable map scales in 1:15,000 and 1:10,000 and silicon baseplate feet to prevent unintentional slipping on maps. $133 from your local O-gear shop at events.

SILVA 1S JET

Same high-performance Jet needle as in above model.

Large magnifying lens in baseplate for enlarging fine map detail. Other features as in 5 Jet. $145 from your local O-gear shop at events.

Buy yourself a Jet at the next event

Photo: Tore Myrberg

JET compasses have the unique super-fast “Rare Earth” broad magnetic needle for the fastest settling and stability when running over rough terrain. Guaranteed to save precious seconds every time you check your bearing.

AWA R D S F O R E X C E L L E N C E

Orienteering Australia Awards Athlete of the Year Award for 2004 THE Annual Awards evening in Jindabyne over Easter saw the inaugural awarding of the Orienteering Australia Athlete of the Year award. The purpose of the award is to publicly recognize the most outstanding performance(s) in elite Orienteering competition during the year.

The award is open to elite, male or female, Foot-O or MTBO orienteers. The actual award is a specially struck Orienteering Australia medallion. The award is seen as being long overdue in the public recognition of our outstanding elite athletes.

Adrian Jackson of Victoria was the worthy recipient of the inaugural award in recognition of his gold medal ride at the 2004 World Mountain Bike Orienteering Championships. The first gold medal won at any World Orienteering Championships by an Australian orienteer. Adrian won Gold in the Middle-distance race and Bronze in both the Long-Distance race and the Relay.

2005 Silva Award for Services to Australian Orienteering EACH year this Silva Award is presented to “an individual who has contributed in a most deserving manner to Orienteering in Australia”.

The 2005 Silva Award for Services to Orienteering goes to Blake Gordon.

The award is in particular recognition of Blake’s role in the development of Mountain Bike Orienteering in Australia, culminating in his work as Event Director of the 2004 World MTBO Championships. Blake has been a key figure in MTBO in Australia since its inception in the mid-1990’s. He was the main driver in establishing the sport in Victoria, and then played a major national role as chair of OA’s MTBO committee for most of its existence. Among other positions, he (with his wife Dale) were the managers of the first Australian WMTBO team which went to France in 2002.

Blake’s work in MTBO is the latest stage in 30 years of contributions to the sport in Victoria. He was the inaugural VicePresident of the Eureka club when it was founded in 1975, and later served as club President. He has served on the VOA committee including a term as VOA President. He has had a major involvement in the organization of many Foot-O events, including the 1981 International 6-Days and the 1984 Australian Schools Championships.

Blake has had a major involvement in the promotion of Orienteering in Ballarat and is a major contributor to the sport’s considerable profile in the Ballarat region. In particular, he has been responsible for promoting the sport in Ballarat’s two universities, building strong links with the University of Ballarat through the late 1980’s and 1990’s.

Any simple list of achievements does not really capture the essence of Blake’s contribution, as an evangelist and enthusiast for Orienteering, always prepared to try new initiatives and always wanting to focus on the positives.

2005 Silva Award for Services to Australian Orienteering Coaching EACH year this Silva Award is presented to “a coach who has contributed in a most deserving manner to Orienteering coaching in Australia”.

The 2005 Silva Award for Services to Orienteering Coaching goes to Warren Key. Warren began his Coaching career in the early 90s. His opening foray into coaching was to guide some of Victoria’s up-and-coming elites such as Georgie Macken, Natasha Rowe (now Key), Emily Viner, Clare Hawthorne, Alex Randall and Jason McCrae. His approach from the start was to impress upon his charges the importance of technique, technical training, race preparation and consistency in physical training.

At the 1997 World Champs in Norway, when Warren was still an Australian team member himself, he assumed the role of assistant coach of the team. For the next three World Championships: 1999 in Scotland, 2001 in Finland, and 2003 in Switzerland, he was National Senior Coach in his own right. During this time he transformed how Australian elite orienteers trained and competed. Sticking to his original principles, he drummed into all the need for technical preparation. He instituted annual, week-long national camps focussed on technique, drove an increased focus on supporting the athletes, created the now annual Bushrangers team, and transformed the way the Australian team prepares for World Championships.

Warren’s coaching strength probably lies in two key elements. First, his passion for Orienteering, and second his ability to assess technical weaknesses through either looking at an orienteer’s maps, or following them in the forest. He will give concise, clear and simple solutions to any technical deficiency found.

Warren stepped down from National Senior Coach to spend more time with his young family. However, people who are now steering the reins of Australian elite Orienteering: current National Senior Coach Jim Russell, OA High Performance Manager Jason McCrae and OA High Performance Director Mike Dowling have all studied extensively at the Key School of Coaching. As such, they still suffer the burning sting of a Warren-barrage when he feels elite matters are not heading in the appropriate direction. Hopefully, it will always be Warren’s way to do things with passion.

10 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Warren with his youngest, Jensen Previous award winners are: 1996 Peta Whitford (Vic) and Kay Haarsma (SA) 1997 Bob Smith (SA) 1998 Fiona Calabro (Qld) 1999 Len Minty (ACT) 2000 Clive Arthur (SA) 2001 Clive Pope (Qld) 2002 Paul Pacque (Tas) 2003 Jill Elderfield (WA) 2004 Debbie Gale (Tas)

AUSSIES OVERSEAS

Park World Tour AUSTRALIAN David Brickhill-Jones has burst onto the Sprint scene this year with wins in both the Mediterranean Orienteering Sprint Championship and Round 2 of the Park World Tour. For good measure he took out 3rd place in Round 1. All events were held in southern Italy last March.

In Round 2 at Brindisi, Lithuanian Ieva Sargautyte and BrickhillJones (or “BJ”) celebrated their first ever Park World Tour victories at an historical point in Brindisi. Via Appia, the first road built by the Romans, was centre-stage for the PWT race.

BJ’s big bang at Brindisi Among the men, 24-year old BJ scored his first main international victory, outscoring the 23 combatants including the PWT 2004 toptrio Østerbø - Näsman - Haldin. ”Things have really changed during the winter. Earlier, I could do a top race one day and screw everything up the next day. Now we’re talking confidence and results”, said BJ, who had a margin of over 16 seconds to Round 1 winner Østerbø.

The Norwegian silver medallist holds on to the lead on the Tour, but Brickhill-Jones is only two points behind. Sargautyte and Brickhill-Jones received a welcome reward in their bank accounts, being crowned Mediterranean Sprint Champions after the three races in Italy.

Absolutely perfect for BJ Earlier, BJ had taken out the prologue race in Gallipoli, Italy. Last year Brickhill-Jones focused almost entirely on the WOC Sprint race in Sweden, but failed to get things right and ended up down in the ranks. In the Mediterranean Orienteering Sprint Championships prologue, he showed that he needs to

Look at me! Look at me! BJ tops the results board. Photo: Lucie Navarová. be counted among the absolute top elite when it comes to Sprint Orienteering.

He entered the race with his typical strategy: ”I started at my maximum speed, and hoped I would still have some energy at the end of the race. Apart from that Orienteering worked perfectly for me. But I really didn’t expect that the margin separating me from the runner-up would be as much as 16 seconds”, he exclaimed. On the podium he was joined by the Norwegian Øystein Kvaal Østerbo in 2nd and Denmark’s Claus Bloch in 3rd.

Premiere PWT Victory for Østerbø

PWT 05 Brindisi map

Gallipoli, Italy 1.3.2005: The winner of the Mediterranean Open Sprint Championships Prologue David Brickhill-Jones (AUS) cheered by young and beautiful Italian fans.

Photo: Lucie Navarová.

In Round 1 at Otranto, Italy, the men’s race offered an exciting spectacle with the first three runners finishing within five seconds. Fastest of all was the 23-year old Norwegian Øystein Kvaal Østerbø who stormed through the eighteen controls of the challenging 2.5 kilometre course in an amazing 12:19.6, and took his first ever Park World Tour race victory. ”I think I was really lucky today and I can also thank BJ for the many mistakes he made. I ran to the first control with high caution in order to get onto the map and get an overview of what was coming later on the course”, were Østerbø’s telling comments after the race.

Above: Claus Bloch (DEN).

Above right: Allan Bogle (GBR).

Right: German Roman SchulteZurhausen. Photos: Lucie Navarová Placegetters at Brindisi: Øystein Kvaal Østerbo (NOR) 2nd, David BrickhillJones (AUS) 1st and Claus Bloch (DEN) 3rd. Photo: Lucie Navarová.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 11

AUSSIES OVERSEAS Näsman defeated The PWT 2004 Champion, Sweden’s Johan Näsman, claimed silver, four seconds behind the young Norwegian.

David-Brickhill Jones grabbed the bronze, only half a second behind Näsman. Østerbø’s club mate, Stig Alvestad, finished 4th, ahead of the best Italian, Carlo Rigoni. Østerbø and Alvestad had travelled all the way from Trondheim in northern Norway for the PWT races in Italy.

BJ reflects Orienteering Today asked BJ what had changed after his ‘debacle’ at WOC’04 in Sweden.

“Yes, I felt I had such a great chance there. But during the qualification I just lost my head and made two huge mistakes.

All the other controls were perfect. I thought I’d missed the Final for sure. In the end I just scraped in and had to start first.

That threw me a bit. I’d thought about that race for so long and that option had never crossed my mind. I just went flat out as I usually do, but made some bad errors during the race. I guess, when I look back on it, I just wasn’t as good as I thought I was.”

BJ lives in Norway and competes for the Haldin SK club. During the European autumn and winter he has regrouped, focusing on developing

David Brickhill-Jones made several mistakes on the course which probably cost him victory. Yet his speed and technique were good enough for third place. Photo: Lucie Navarová.

Orienteering skills. “I think I can run as fast, or faster, than every other orienteer. But Orienteering isn’t a running race. So I have focused a lot more on the Orienteering and mental side of it and now my confidence is 50 times higher.

I think maybe I just believe in it more. Now I think I’m a great runner and also a pretty good orienteer.”

BJ is now looking towards WOC’05 in Japan. “The winter training was good to me. I trained in Japan then enjoyed myself in China (at the PWT races). Then I started training

hard when I got back to Australia. Maybe I trained a bit too hard because I had to have two weeks off when I got back to Norway. So I started doing spinning and water running. I used to think that was such a waste of time but now it takes up maybe 40% of my training.

I certainly haven’t peaked yet.

I can go a lot faster. I think it was the Orienteering confidence that got me the PWT results in Italy.”

Results – Round 1, Otranto, Italy Men: 2.5 km, 18 controls 1 Øystein Kvaal Østerbo 2 Johan Näsman 3 David Brickhill-Jones 4 Stig Alvestad 5 Carlo Rigoni 6 Claus Bloch 7 Ingo Horst 8 Michele Tavernaro 9 Allan Bogle 10 Matthias Gilgien

NOR SWE AUS NOR ITA DEN GER ITA GBR SUI

Results – Round 2, Brindisi, Italy Men: 2,8 km, 11 controls 1 David Brickhill-Jones 2 Øystein Kvaal Østerbo 3 Claus Bloch 4 Carlo Rigoni 5 Ingo Horst 6 Johan Näsman 7 Matthias Gilgien 8 Michele Tavernaro 9 Allan Bogle 10 Mats Haldin

AUS NOR DEN ITA GER SWE SUI ITA GBR FIN

Men’s winners routes – Otranto PWT, Italy.

12 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

12:19.6 12:24.0 12:24.5 12:27.2 12:32.2 12:44.0 12:44.5 12:48.9 12:53.4 12:56.7

11:58.5 12:14.9 12:15.5 12:23.5 12:44.7 12:48.6 12:52.4 12:55.0 12:56.4 12:56.6

AUSSIES OVERSEAS Women’s winners routes – Gallipoli (Italy)

David Brickhill-Jones (AUS) and Øystein Kvaal Østerbø (NOR), in Brindisi. BrickhillJones dominated the race and won with a 16-second margin ahead of Østerbø. Photo: Lucie Navarová.

Results – Prologue, Gallipoli, Italy Men: 2.6 km, 14 controls, 25 m climb 1 David Brickhill-Jones AUS 2 Øystein Kvaal Østerbo NOR 3 Claus Hallingdahl Bloch DEN 4 Ingo Horst GER 5 Stig Alvestad NOR 6 Matthias Gilgien SUI 7 Michele Tavernaro ITA 8 Carlo Rigoni ITA 9 Johan Näsman SWE 10 Marc Lauenstein SUI

TOS_Ins_148mm_eng_RZ

29.4.2005

12:25.5 12:42.9 12:43.6 12:51.2 13:03.8 13:05.8 13:12.0 13:12.5 13:17.7 13:24.0

Placegetters at Otranto: From left, Johan Näsman (SWE) 2nd, 10:58 Uhr Kvaal Seite 1 Øystein Østerbø (NOR) 1st and David Brickhill-Jones (AUS) 3rd. Photo: Lucie Navarová.

One week trip along the alps.

The perfect O Programme between the World Masters and Swiss O Week in Zermatt.

8th–15th July 2006

One more special Swiss O-Summer

Eiger · Mönch · Jungfrau

• download your flyer • more information Travel

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Culture

www.tour-o-swiss.ch JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 13

JAPAN – WOC 2005

Heat, Humidity and Hills (the three H’s) – that’s what will confront our competitors at WOC 2005 in Japan.

The first-ever World Championships to be held in Japan, scheduled for August 7-14 in conjunction with the World Expo, will sorely test the physical strength and endurance of the world’s best orienteers. Heat, humidity and hills will require both physical and mental toughness to succeed. Summer in Aichi Prefecture sees maximum temperatures in the 27 – 35OC range with 60 – 94% relative humidity. Maintaining high levels of body fluids during competition will be extremely important.

T

HIS will be a championships to remember for the world’s elite - a warm welcome and fine Japanese hospitality combined with terrain which will provide a major physical and technical challenge. Training camps in Japan have been well attended, and much has already been said and written about the skills needed to achieve success in terrain with steep slopes, often complex contours, and areas with ‘bamboo bush’ and prickly vegetation.

National squads from many countries including Sweden, Switzerland, Britain and Australia have already spent time training in Japan. The Australians were there in March where they trained with the UK squad and took part in the All Japan Championships.

Familiarisation with accommodation, local food and customs, as well as the Japanese terrain, are all important factors in preparing the squad for those vital days in August.

Troy de Haas returned to Japan for another month of training after his success at the Aust 3-Days. Troy then went back to Finland for competition and to fine tune his training program. He will be back in Japan in July for at least two weeks of acclimatising to the summer conditions there.

Mt Fuji – Japan’s sacred mountain

14 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Above: Japanese hills. Photo: Sara Thörn – Skogssport Below: Map of region around WOC2005 Event Centre

JAPAN – WOC 2005 The rest of the Australian team will also arrive early for WOC in order to acclimatise to the ‘hot and sticky’ conditions. They will bring with them Warren Lowry, an athlete recovery specialist, who also assisted the team last year in Sweden. Lowry’s ability to help athletes quickly recover from a gruelling race is seen as a vital component to team success. The team will use ice-vests in active-cold recovery sessions after each race.

Troy de Haas spent 10 days training in Cairns during February to gain experience of high humidity conditions. Other squad members, particularly those based in Canberra, planned to train in special environment chambers. The chambers at the AIS can be set at high controlled temperature and humidity and contain equipment such as exercise bikes and rowing machines.

The program for 2005 WOC is: Sun. 7th August

Middle-distance Qualification Tsukude Village

Mon. 8th August

Long-distance Qualification

Tsukude Village

Wed. 10th August Sprint Qualification and Finals Fujioka Town Thu. 11th August Middle-distance Finals

Shimoyama Village

Fri. 12th August

Shimoyama Village

Long-distance Finals

Sun. 14th August Relays

Tsukude Village

Event reports and results can be found on the IOF web site: www.orienteering.org

Sweating it out on an exercise bike

Selection trials for the team included the Aust 3-Days and special events staged in Victoria in the last week of May. Squad members based overseas such as Rob Walter, Allison Jones, Troy de Haas and David Brickhill-Jones relied on their performances in European events.

JWOC 2005 team announced AUSTRALIA goes into the 2005 Junior World Orienteering Championships with high hopes for some impressive results in Switzerland in July. Leading the team will be Julian Dent and Hanny Allston - both impressed at the Australian 3-Days at Easter with 2nd places in very competitive elite fields, and will expect to improve on their previous JWOC results.

Jasmine Neve and Erin Post will both be returning for the third time and will also look forward to strong performances in Switzerland; Erin won the last day of Easter in a pressure situation, and Jasmine’s excellent run against elite opposition in the Oceania Championships relay in New Zealand suggests that she will be a more consistent competitor this year.

Conrad Elson and David Meyer competed in JWOC 2004 in Poland. Conrad was in excellent form in the second half of last year, finishing 2nd to Julian Dent at the Australian Championships; illness ruined his 2005 Easter, but he should be fit by July. David won M20A at Easter, and has raced creditably at both senior and

team members will be eligible to compete at JWOCs for the next couple of years suggests that the results achieved by this team will be improved on leading up to JWOC 2007 in Australia.

Greg Hawthorne

2005 World Games

Men, back row from left: Louis Elson (TAS), David Meyer (NSW), Conrad Elson (TAS), Simon Uppill (SA), Julian Dent (NSW), Ryan Smyth (TAS). Women, front row from left: Erin Post (WA), Jasmine Neve (VIC), Hanny Allston (TAS), Ainsley Cavanagh (QLD), Vanessa Round (SA), Zebedy Hallett (SA). Photo: Jan Elson

FOR the second time Orienteering will be one of the sports in the World Games when they are held around Duisburg, Germany starting on 14th July.

The Games are an important showcase for Orienteering, with the best in the world competing for the title of World Games Champion. The individual races for men and women will be held at Bottrop on 16th July and the relay on the following day.

junior levels over the last couple of years.

Three boys and three girls will be making their debuts in 2005. For all the first-timers, an “A final” place in the short race or a top-half result in the long race would be a very respectable result.

Simon Uppill and Vanessa Round won impressively at last year’s NSW championships, and followed up with wins at Easter.

Louis Elson has run well in his

Australia’s Grant Bluett is the reigning World Games Orienteering Champion having won in Akita, Japan four years ago.

age group for many years, and was an obvious selection after his 2nd place finish at Easter.

The remaining team members will be Ryan Smyth, Zebedy Hallett, and Ainsley Cavanagh.

W-20A winner at Easter, Sophie Barker, was unavailable for selection.

Australia has seldom made the most of its opportunities in the JWOC relays and is yet to make it beyond 9th in either class. The fact that many

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 15

GREAT LEGS

Australian 3-Days 2005, Day 3, Buckenderra South

Australian 3-Days 2005, Day 3, Buckenderra South

by Nicki Taws & Anthony Scott

ON Day 3 of the Australian 3 Days event held last Easter near Jindabyne, the first eleven courses had a similar long leg, with slight variations on the control siting at each end. This leg was set with no particular optimum route in mind – the challenge was for the competitor to decide on the most suitable route for themselves and to execute it cleanly.

The red line on the leg tended to lead the eye to the righthand route, down the steep gully, around the side of the steep slope and across the track with various options for going through saddles or over low hilltops depending on where the final control was.

The left route was not necessarily obvious at first, particularly as it involved a steep climb out of the gully early on. However once up the top there were fast track options and very little climb left to do.

If executed well, the right-hand route had similar climb to the left, however it was easy to drop much further down the gully than intended, resulting in unnecessary climb.

16 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Rob Preston

Contouring around the steep slope also carried the risk of getting stuck in green or slow rocky areas.

Tom Quayle (8.39): “Happy with route choice to the left, and using a later control (number 12) as an attack point.”

On M21E, leg 8-9; Julian Dent had the fastest time (8.22) and took the right-hand route, as did Rob Preston (8.44). However, Grant Bluett ran the left route in 8.29 with a fair-sized wobble at the end which probably cost him much more than 7 seconds. Rob Walter (9.34) ran a similar route to Grant but also lost time, probably well over a minute, when coming off the knoll at the end (following another competitor to a nearby control). Tom Quayle ran wider on the left route than either Grant or Rob and nailed the control in 8.39. Kerrin Rattray took a similar route to Julian but was sucked further down the gully than intended by following a competitor in front of him, and then almost made a mistake similar to Rob Walter’s coming off the top of the knoll at the end. He recovered from both these near-disasters to run the leg in 9.05.

Rob Preston (8.44): “I hadn’t planned the leg ahead, but quickly decided not to go left, but rather run into the large gully and study the route when I got there.…… Thought about running over the hill immediately before the control, but was tired and decided it would be easier contouring to the right. The rocky ground was quite slow, and I got nervous about attacking the control from the side, so I climbed a little, and then saw the gully from above.”

Kerrin Rattray (9.05): “I left the control looking down at the major gully ahead. Adrian Jackson was in front and I initially followed. Once in the gully I saw the left option.

It was too late and I was committed. I wanted to leave the gully earlier but got sucked into following it all the way….. decided to go over the last hill as it was an easier approach

ended up running together which would have helped their speed. The right hand route proved to be slower and also created problems in its execution.

Jo Allison (8.47): “I chose the (left) route because; a) it was a safe approach into the control, b) it went back past the triangle and control 1, so I was familiar with this area, and c) it got the climb out of the way early on.”

Anna Danielsson down to the gully.. nearly made a mistake…needed to check the compass coming off the hill.”

W21E had a similar, but slightly shorter, leg (control 10-11).

The fastest times were made by those taking the left route; Hanny Allston (8.37), Jo Allison (8.47) and Alison Jones (9.32), although these three women

Mace Neve (11.30): “I wanted to go through both saddles just before control 11, and I didn’t want to drop right down to the paddock. The plan was to go a lot straighter than I did. But there were two girls in front of me and they both headed down the gully so I did too. I wanted to stay with the group.”

Anna Danielsson (12.04): “I was too tired to run up the hill (on the left-hand route), so decided to go right. In the end I lost direction and went too far down. Stood still for a long time and was really confused”.

In the words of the competitors: Grant Bluett (8.29): “Why I took that route …… it was one of the two options that I thought was the fastest, the other was more to the right doing a lot of running on the side of the hills.

I thought the way I chose was the safest of the two. I got a little confused in the circle, there seemed to be a lot of ‘greeny’ stuff just before the control, and the gully was more defined than I thought it should be, I probably lost about 40 seconds.”

Tom Quayle

M21E had another interesting route choice later in their course (control 16 – 17). The controls at the start and the end of the leg were only one contour different in height, around the side of a steep hill. The main route choice was to drop initially and attack from the clearing at the bottom (Julian Dent 3.57, Rob Walter 4.13), or to climb initially and approach the control on a tricky diagonal downhill through some green and rock features (Rob Preston 3.52, Grant 5.27).

In the words of the competitors: Rob Preston (3.52): “Looked at this leg while I was struggling up to 16, and considered contouring. Changed mind, and ran straight up the hill and over spur. Was catching Eric Morris so followed his line, angling down the hillside.

Through a gully, with rocks either side, through another gully. Hesitated about 100m from the control, but spotted the two boulders to my right and dropped into the control.”

Grant Bluett (5.27): “…..this was a shocker. I went straight but never picked up anything on the way, I couldn’t read the rocks when I went through the big gully (gullies?) before the control. I came out on the vague spur a little below the control and stood for quite a

Grant Bluett

while trying to read myself in. I couldn’t do this so I had to choose to go up or down. I thought that I was usually too high on the other controls this week so I would go down. I was wrong!”

The times and route choices for these legs show that there was little difference between quite different routes – time lost was mostly due to navigational mistakes. Therefore route choice should be made primarily with: a) a good attack point in mind; b) regard to the “obstacles” on the leg, ie. climb, steep descent, green; c) how you are feeling physically and mentally at that point of the race.

Once the route is chosen, make it a “no regrets” leg, ie. commit to it – run the leg like there was no choice and execute it to perfection.

There’s nothing worse than running the leg believing that you are losing time by going the “wrong” way (when in fact you probably are not), then really losing time by missing the control because you were distracted and annoyed all the way there.

JO ALLISON takes us through her entire course on pages 40 and 41 in this edition.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 17

Great Legs Letter I enjoy reading your magazine and will settle down the first night I receive it for a good night’s reading. Alas, once again I was disappointed because the 2004 Australian Championships course comparison was devoted to the elites. An outsider would think elites were the only competitors in major events. Since the elites make up just a small percentage of the Orienteering community I think more space should be devoted to the more numerous age groups like W50 or M55. There are some wonderful orienteers in these age groups.

Let’s face it, unless one has competed on the course, and more specifically, on the leg it is hard and not interesting to compare which runner took the best option.

After the Easter 3-Days in Perth (2003) I was asked to submit legs for Day 3. I chose and submitted to our secretary W40 and M50 legs. I don’t know whether they got to you or whether they were not chosen but things haven’t improved since then.

With twenty-four or more courses at the Australian Championships, what could be done is to compare an elite with (say) an M40, or a W40 with an M55. Surely there are common legs used for different age groups. I would love to compare my route choice three months later when the winner’s route is published in the magazine.

John King (M55 – OAWA) Ed: The Great Legs section is very popular and readers clearly like seeing how others solved the route choice puzzles. This edition carries some detailed route choice analyses from Jo Allison and Thierry Gueorgiou which will be of great interest to elites and non-elites alike.

These analyses can be treated as good ‘armchair coaching’ in which

NEWS Russian Ski-O Development THE reason why the Russian juniors are so successful in Ski-O is their development program.

Throughout Russia there are regional championships for 13 to 20 year-olds. The best 1,000 from the 37 regions qualify to take part in the finals. What potential for development!

Firebug settlers changed our climate A report of a study in the latest issue of the journal Geology supports arguments that early settlers changed Australia’s landscape. The geological record shows that the interior of Australia was much wetter about 125,000 years ago and research indicates that the burning may have changed the climate by weakening the penetration of monsoon moisture into the interior.

The last Ice Age changed the weather across the planet but monsoons returned as the glaciers retreated 12,000 years ago, with the exception of the 18 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Australian monsoon, which brings about 100 cm of rain annually to the Top End and the far north Queensland coast as it moves south from Asia, though only about 33 cm falls on the interior.

Researchers from the University of Colorado and John Magee of the ANU in Canberra, used computerised global climate simulations to show that if there were some forest in the middle of Australia, it would lead to a monsoon with twice as much rain as the current pattern.

Fossil evidence shows that birds and marsupials that once lived in Australia’s interior would have browsed on trees, shrubs and grasses rather than the desert scrub environment that is there today. It also shows large charcoal deposits, most likely caused by widespread fires, which date to the arrival of the first settlers. People are also blamed for killing off 85 per cent of Australia’s huge animals, including an ostrich-sized bird, 19 species of marsupials, a 7.5metre lizard and a Volkswagensized tortoise.

orienteers of all standards will gain from the insights on route choice and decision-making by competitors who were on the course and under pressure.

The elites are very good at providing their route choice analyses to this magazine and I’m most grateful to those who take the time to do so. If others believe that there have been great legs on their particular courses then please send them in and I will be happy to print them whether they be single legs or entire courses. But, I can only print what I receive.

I need to have a detailed analysis in text similar to those provided

by Jo Allison and Thierry Gueorgiou. I also need the map file in OCAD8, preferably with the leg and route choice drawn onto it. Alternatively, send the map file and a hard copy of the map with leg and route drawn – I will add them to the map file.

Words of Wisdom on Route Choice •D on’t change your route choice part way along the leg – once the decision is made, stick to it; • C hoosing a route which is not a straight line must give you a significant advantage such as less climb, a fast track, avoiding thick vegetation - otherwise don’t choose it; •D on’t be put off by other competitors choosing another route – they may be wrong; • T he best designed legs will always have you wondering which is the best way to go – that’s the skill of good course setting; •Y ou can always find out which choice was best by comparing split times afterwards.

Swiss at Aust 3-Days Sara and Rolf Gemperle completed their Australian bike tour of over 6000 km from Cairns to Melbourne in time to compete at the Aust 3-Days last Easter. Rolf is former Swiss National Women’s Squad trainer (he won M40 at Easter) and Sara is in the Swiss Elite Squad (Sara finished 5th in W21E at Easter).

Their epic journey down Australia’s east coast was done on touring bikes with a special tandem for young daughter Elaine.

Good News for Orienteers SEX, jogging and some mental exercise can help reduce the risk of developing demetia and other degenerative brain conditions, says Thailand’s head of their Neurological Institute.

He confirmed the results of Australian research which found that cryptic crosswords and a long run helped create new brain cells and stimulate existing ones, forestalling the symptoms of Alzheimers and Parkinsons by increasing levels of prolactin, a protein hormone commonly found during sex and pregnancy.

Bankok Post

IOF World Rankings

Australian Geographic Sara finishing on Day 3.

Photo: Mike Hubbert

Men: 1 Valentin Novikov RUS; 2 Mats Troeng SWE; 3 Thierry Gueorgiou FRA; 4 Jarkko Huovila FIN; 5 Emil Wingstedt SWE; 6 Jani Lakanen FIN; 7 Mats Haldin FIN; 8 Holger Hott Johansen NOR; 9 Johan Näsman SWE; 10 Pasi Ikonen FIN; 49 Grant Bluett AUS; 55 David Shepherd AUS; 96 Troy de Haas AUS. Women: 1 Simone Niggli-Luder SUI; 2 Heli Jukkola FIN; 3 Jenny Johansson SWE; 4 Karolina Arewång-Höjsgaard SWE; 5 Hanne Staff NOR; 6 Marika Mikkola FIN; 7 Tatyana Riabkina RUS; 8 Minna Kauppi FIN; 9 Emma Engstrand SWE; 10 Dana Bro_ková CZE; 47 Jo Allison AUS; 71 Natasha Key AUS; 76 Hanny Allston AUS;

SPORT PSYCHOLOGY

Distracted by other competitors?

– the Orienteer’s problem

Jason McCrae – Intern Psychologist

The automatic thoughts could be of any nature, but might be along the lines of “there’s Joe Bloggs”; “He started 4 minutes before me”; “I’ve got him covered”; “which way is he going”; “He usually knows what he is doing”; “He’s going left, I’d better go with him”; “Wonder if we’ll catch Fred Bloggs – he started 2 minutes ahead of Joe”; etc. etc. If our attention was just able to take in that “there’s Joe Bloggs’ we might not lose concentration however generally automatic thoughts also rush in meaning we are not concentrating on the important and challenging task of Orienteering which results in mistakes. If, additionally, Joe Bloggs’ attention is on you and he is focussed on his automatic thoughts about the situation then both of you are on the way to errors.

So what to do?

Troy de Haas, one of Australia’s leading orienteers, is a picture of concentration at the Oceania Championships earlier this year.

Photo: Rob Crawford

O

NE of the most common things you’ll hear after any event is competitors complaining about mistakes they made when they were running with others. Things were going really well, spiking all the controls and very much in control when they caught ‘Joe Bloggs’ and made mistake after mistake after mistake. I know of a fellow Sport Psychologist who in fact calls this type of problem “the Orienteer’s problem” as every orienteer she has worked with at some stage has to deal with the problem of being distracted in the forest by fellow competitors and making a navigational error.

What’s happening?

So why does this occur? To orienteer well requires a great deal of concentration. Virtually all a competitors’ attention needs to be focussed on the process of navigation – reading the map, identifying the surrounding terrain and planning where to run next. Any attention not focussed on the navigational process is required for ducking branches, climbing logs and just keeping going physically. When we see another competitor what happens is that our attention shifts to that other competitor and, more importantly, away from navigational/orienteering tasks.

Additionally we don’t just see Joe Bloggs. The mind is often then flooded with what are known as ‘automatic thoughts’ – thoughts, memories and evaluations associated with Joe Bloggs.

How do we overcome this problem? There are three key steps: The first thing to do is recognise that there will be times when you are orienteering when you will be distracted, be it by fellow competitors, your own internal thoughts or, as outlined here, by both. Even races when you orienteer relatively error-free and well you will probably be distracted from navigation and orienteering for short periods of time but it doesn’t result in errors/lost time.

The difference is that on days when you don’t make mistakes your attention returns to navigating/orienteering relatively quickly.

Secondly, be aware that your attention can waiver and try to notice when it’s happening. If you consistently lose concentration in a particular situation (e.g. when you see another competitor) then noticing you are no longer focussed on orienteering should be easier. If it happens on random occasions then realising you are not focussed on orienteering might be more difficult but it can still be done. The trick is to be able to notice that it is happening (i.e. that you are distracted) and notice it as quickly as possible.

The third part of the plan is that once you have noticed you are distracted you need to have a plan to return to what you should be doing (i.e. orienteering/navigating). What is the key thing you should be doing? For most people it is navigating. To get back to navigating identify something that you are supposed to be doing and tell yourself aloud or in your head to do it. For example if you notice that you are distracted then say to yourself “Where am I now?”; or “Where am I going next?”; or even “What feature am I going to see next?” and then follow up your statement with that action. Look at the map and bush around you and work out where you are now, where you are going next or what feature you will see next.

This process of telling yourself what to do and then following it up with swift action not only puts your attention back where it should be, on navigating and orienteering, but also ‘trains’ your mind not to wander off onto distracting thoughts in the future.

To summarise, you will lose concentration at some stage while orienteering – it is a rare competitor that doesn’t! The challenge is to recognise that it’s happening or happened. This might be when you realise the thoughts in your head are about a fellow competitor or other thoughts not relevant to the actual process of navigating.

Once you have realised you are distracted you need to get back into the process of navigating and orienteering. The way to do this is to have a key element of navigating, such as identifying where you are on the map, and tell yourself, preferably aloud, to do it!

Jason McCrae is a registered Intern Psychologist in the ACT currently completing his Masters in psychology. He is also OA’s Manager (High Performance). He can be contacted on Jason.mccrae@act.gov.au JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 19

SKI-O WOC

Ski Orienteering World Championships 2005 Levi, Finland (5th - 11th March)

Melissa Thomas’ story starts a week before the Ski Orienteering World Champs, when she jumped on a plane headed for Tampere, Finland. The actual championships were held in Levi, a ski resort north of the artic circle.

Her Irish mountain biking buddy, Nina Phillips, had been living in Tampere since January, so Melissa joined her there for a little bit of skiing practice.

I

N preparation for the upcoming World Champs, we thought it was best to at least try out ski orienteering, so we entered a two day event half way between Tampere and Helisinki. I’ve raced some cross country ski races, and I know how to orienteer, so how hard can this be?’ I thought naively. I was about to discover ski singletrack (keep in mind that all my skiing until this point had been on nice, wide groomed trails!). First imagine you have slipperyslidey 1.93m long planks attached to both feet. Now imagine you are faced with a tiny little track, less than 1m wide, lined with trees, rocks and an assortment of other hard objects to crash into.

Needless to say, I made good friends with some trees and figured out that once you are stuck in a tree, the only way out is to reverse exactly the way you came. Any other extraction method resulted in getting more tangled, and entertaining still more people as they skied by, all upright and going the right direction. It was at this stage that I first realised what I’d gotten myself into; it was going to be a lot tougher than I’d imagined!

So the next 5 days were filled with skiing practice; Nina and I heading out on our skis, looking for the smallest, worst looking trails we could find (and ignoring the plethora of lovely smooth groomed trails!). Along the way, I kept discovering important things about surviving European winter - one of which was to make sure your hair was completely dry before heading outside (I have never given this a second thought until now!). But it really is quite interesting to have frozen hair; there is an irresistable urge to snap some off... (which by the way, I managed not to succumb to; it all thawed out, nicely intact!). Throughout the week I continued in my tradition of learning a bunch of useless words in a foreign language - my Finnish vocabulary expanded to include important words such as hovercraft, oxygen, asparagus and sleeping bag. I can’t ask ‘Where does the bus go?’, but if you need to enquire about jellyfish whilst in Finland, I can help with that!

The final control at my first ever Ski-O race - it looks warm enough, but -12ºC is a little cold when you are waiting at the start, trying to figure out what is going on!

20 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Anyway, getting side-tracked. After an epic 10hr train journey north, we arrived in Levi to find surprisingly warm temperatures of -6ºC. Unfortunately this gradually dropped throughout the week; the morning we left it was a chilly -25ºC! Nearly all the teams (there were twenty nations competing) had accommodation in the same hotel, which was brilliant for getting to know everyone. One of the joys of being the only Aussie was that I was immediately adopted into the ‘we-don’t-have-a-full-team-so-lets-all-be-friends’ Team, a nice Irish/Hungarian/Danish/Aussie mix! The German and Swiss teams were also fun to chat with and gave me a chance to practice my sub-standard German skills (although after being told that my German was ‘special’; I wasn’t so sure whether I should keep on trying!).

The opening ceremony was brilliant, although a little chilly (I found out the hard way that the cold can still penetrate through six layers of clothing!), with the highlight being a spectacular fireworks display at the end. I was quite surprised to find Australia was second in the line up; ‘Someone should teach those Finnish how to spell!’ we were thinking. Afterwards someone made the connection that French spelling had been used to order the teams (‘Allemagne’ is the French word for Germany), however it did seem a little odd considering the absence of anything French at the Champs (including a team!).

Left: The number vests were made specifically for Ski-O; at this stage I was still devising exactly how to pin the plastic bag to my tummy...

Right: Somehow it made me feel much more normal to have the pizza board contraption protruding from my chest like everyone else!

The first race was the Sprint distance, and I have to admit I haven’t been so nervous (and scared!) in a long time. We even had to use those start gate contraptions you see in downhill ski races - I was a bit worried I’d end up tripping myself, but thankfully it wasn’t too hard. I even managed to forget it was there, probably because I was otherwise occupied trying to get the map into my map-holder without poking an official in the eye with my pole! I wasn’t used to my thick gloves and the resulting inability to do anything involving fine motor skills - 15 seconds just didn’t seem like enough to get the map into the contraption strapped to my chest! Here I have to say a big thank you to the Swiss Team, who allowed me to use their spare map-holder for the Sprint race (after a chat over dinner, when conversation releaved that my plan was to use safety pins to attach a plastic bag to my stomach!). Also, big thanks to Eike Bruns from Germany, who ended up giving me his old map-holder for the remaining races, and saved me from the embarrassment of having a plastic bag safety-pinned to my belly!

For that I am eternally grateful.

Anyway, back to the race. The snow was particularly soft, making conditions slow for everyone. The biggest difficulty was managing to get any sort of traction with your poles; they would just disappear deep into the snow, making the uphills even more difficult.

So after gracefully ploughing into a tree in front of the camera at the final control I arrived at the finish all in one piece, although

SKI-O WOC

Leg 6-7 in the Women’s Sprint Distance race. The navigation was quite similar to mountain bike orienteering, and owing to my somewhat subdued skiing speed I had no problems finding controls. However, managing to stop in time to punch them was another story!

with a little more snow on me than everyone else seemed to have..

Yay, I made it! My excitement was soon replaced by apprehension as I realised the next day I faced the long race - 18km of ‘steep’ terrain (the 3.6km sprint race had been described as ‘flat’). OK, apprehension is the wrong word. I’ll tell you the truth - I was flat out scared. Why did I decide to do this?

But I needn’t have worried; the long race actually ended up being one of my favourites! I managed to reach the goals I had set myself - finish in less than twice the winners time in every race. My best result was probably the long race; 34th (43 starters), although I have to admit to taking off my skis and running up the steep skinny trails, it just wasn’t worth me filling my ears with snow trying to ski them!

One funny story (but slightly embarrassing for me, I’m not sure why I’m telling you this!) was during the long race, which consisted of two big loops followed by a small one. I had just gone through the map change the final time (so only a couple of km’s to go!) and as I skiied out, I noticed a Japanese girl coming in! That made me rather excited as I wasn’t really expecting to be ahead of anyone, so I skiied off, trying to go fast.. Anyway, on my way to the next control I decided to take off my skis and run up the steep single trail - it was less than 100m to the control, so I thought it’d be OK... I got most of the way there, I could see the control 20m away, but started sinking into the snow, above my knees! So there Start of the womens relay.

It was compulsory to stay in the classic tracks until you passed the red line, then you were free to ski away however you pleased - in my case, skating technique with a somewhat lower level of finesse than the other competitors!

was nothing else I could do - I crawled through the snow to the checkpoint! By this stage I was rather embarrassed and was very much hoping that the Japanese girl wouldn’t catch me; I wasn’t sure what I would do if she discovered me lying on the ground, pulling myself towards the control! But all was well, I made it before she arrived, slid back down the slope, put on my skis and kept going!

By the end of the week, I had a good technique going - on the single trail I would just let myself go (the trails weren’t wide enough to snowplough!), try to stay upright; then if I had to turn at a junction, I would make myself fall over a bit before (momentum would mean that hopefully I’d come to a halt in a pile at the track junction!), then get up, change direction and ski off happily down my track! I even had my own Aussie cheer squad - a couple from Melbourne living in the town nearby had heard an Aussie was racing, so they came to cheer me on, which was great!

In conclusion I have to say the whole experience was just fantastic. The races were brilliant, I learnt a lot, had heaps of fun and made a bunch of new friends from all over the world. What can I say?

Let me practice a whole heap more on those little single trails, then bring on next year!

Melissa punching at the spectator control.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 21

SKI-O WOC RESULTS

MEN (12.7km, 63 competitors): 1 Ruslan Gritsan RUS 40.53, 1 Andrei Gruzdev RUS 40.53, 3 Eduard Khrennikov RUS 41.13 WOMEN (10.1km, 43 competitors): 1 Tatiana Vlasova RUS 37.22, 2 Erja Jokinen FIN 37.27, 3 Stine Hjermstad-Kirkevik NOR 38.22, 3 Stina Grenholm SWE 38.22, 41 Melissa Thomas AUS 1.13.22

Long Distance

Relay

MEN (3.9km, 63 competitors): 1 Matti Keskinarkaus FIN 12.01, 2 Bertil Nordqvist SWE 12.02, 3 Tobias Aslund SWE 12.03 WOMEN (3.6km, 44 competitors): 1 Stine Hjermstad-Kirkevik NOR 13.16, 2 Erja Jokinen FIN 13.18, 3 Katja Rajaniemi FIN 13.33, 40 Melissa Thomas AUS 24.57 MEN (25.5km, 59 competitors): 1 Eduard Khrennikov RUS 1.35.02, 2 Andrei Gruzdev RUS 1.35.15, 3 Jukka Lanki FIN 1.35.24 WOMEN (18.1km, 43 competitors): 1 Tatiana Vlasova RUS 1.14.08, 2 Natalia Tomilova RUS 1.15.00, 3 Olga Shevchenko RUS 1.15.05, 34 Melissa Thomas AUS 2.18.21

Russian Eduard Khrennikov won Gold in the Long and Bronze in the Middle Distance.

Erja Jokinen FIN. Silver in the Sprint and Middle-distance events.

Men’s Middle-distance gold medallist Ruslan Gritsan of Russia Antje Bornhak (Germany) won a bronze medal in the 2004 MTB-O WOC in Australia. She is also an accomplished skier, finishing 7th in the 2004 German SkiO Champs.

22 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Middle Distance

Sprint Distance

Stine Hjermstad-Kirkevik NOR. Gold in the Sprint and Bronze in the Middle.

MEN (7.7km/leg): 1 RUS 1.15.49, 2 FIN 1.16.20, 3 SWE 1.18.23 WOMEN (6.0km/leg): 1 NOR 1.17.11, 2 SWE 1.17.50, 3 FIN 1.18.16 (AUS, 1 leg only, 47.37) For a list of full results, pictures, etc. check out the website: www.skiwoc2005.org/

AUST 3-DAYS

Report by Blair Trewin

T

ROY DE HAAS, contesting his first major event in Australia for several years, made a triumphant return when he took out the Australian 3Days at Jindabyne over Easter, beating the strongest field seen domestically since the 2000 World Cup. He set his victory up on Day 2, when an outstanding run from him combined with scrappy ones by his nearest rivals to give him a sevenminute margin on the day. He lost some of that on the last day to the impressive Julian Dent, but still had enough in hand to score by a minute.

It wasn’t looking quite so promising for de Haas after the Day 1. The Prologue was interesting in its own right – Grant Bluett coming from behind to register a narrow win, whilst former Australian steeplechase representative Martin Dent missed an opportunity for a breakthrough win when he missed a control – but, as usual, it didn’t resolve much at the

Triumphant return home for Troy de Haas Troy de Haas getting plenty of crowd support as he runs in to win the Australian 3-Days.

Photo: Peter Cusworth

Julian Dent had a great 3-Days to finish a close second to Troy.

Photo: Bob Mouatt

front end. Day 1 didn’t resolve a great deal either, but it featured a good battle between Dave Shepherd and Julian Dent, narrowly won by Shepherd. The two were tied at the front going into the long day. The early controls caught a few unawares, with Rob Walter, Tom Quayle, and de Haas all losing time in the first three, and de Haas dropped further with successive one-minute mistakes at 14 and 15, a stretch which most of the rest of the field were clean on.

He was nearly five minutes off the pace on Saturday night in tenth place, and looked in a lot of trouble.

All that changed on the Sunday. Bluett, who had been there or thereabouts all weekend, again led early, but dropped two minutes at 7. That gave de Haas the lead and he never let it slip. Julian Dent was initially close, but mistakes at 9 and 13 saw him drift backwards, and de Haas had caught him to the tune of six minutes after dominating the long 15th leg.

That leg also marked the end of the challenge of Rob Walter, who had held the gap at about two min. after losing that amount on 6. After catching up, de Haas was content to sit on Dent until breaking away on the climb into 23, and went on to JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 23

AUST 3-DAYS win the day by seven minutes.

It was an indication of his dominance that he won 15 of 31 splits. A group tightly clustered for 2nd were still more or less in contention for the placings, but one who was missing from that group was Bluett; he faded badly in the second half and ended up another six minutes adrift.

De Haas took a threeminute lead into the last day, which meant he only needed to avoid significant error to be reasonably safe. He hit the lead briefly two-thirds of the way through the course, then eased back a bit but had more than enough in hand, scoring by just over a minute. Julian Dent, still a junior, had already impressed enough over the first three races in such a strong field, but he took a further step up here, finishing full of running to win the day and secure 2nd overall. Bluett showed that his Sunday was an aberration, running a very fast first half and coming through to share 4th (a dead heat after more than 3 hrs of running) with the consistently good Rob Preston, who could be well pleased with his step up in this field. Rob Walter’s consistency saw him in 3rd place, whilst the biggest surprise of the last day was the disappearance from the list of Dave Shepherd, who was third going into the last day, but lost four minutes at 3 and more time over the next few controls before pulling out.

Jo Allison withstands a strong challenge from Hanny Allston to win four in a row

A

S with the men, the Elite women had a virtually full-strength field, although that is less of a novelty for them with fewer having been based overseas in recent times. Hanny Allston, taking a further step up after her outstanding World Championships of 2004, once again showed that she belonged at the very front end of the field – in a terrain, granite, where she hasn’t always been at her best in the past – but in the end Jo Allison weathered the storm to win Easter for the fourth successive year.

Four in a row for Jo. Photo: Bob Mouatt

Hanny Allston took another step up. Photo: Bob Mouatt

Tracy Bluett – getting back her best.

24 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Opening skirmishes in the Prologue at Jindabyne on the Friday sorted out a clear top three, to the surprise of no-one.

Natasha Key, with considerable international credentials in sprint racing, came through at the very end to pip Allison and Allston. The three were only 11 secs apart, and half a minute clear of anyone else, and the only dramatic thing to occur elsewhere in the field was the demise of 2004 WOC representative Danielle Winslow through a mispunch.

Tracy Bluett made a great start to Saturday and was in front by 5, but just when it looked like she was going to push seriously for the win, three minutes lost at 6 put paid to her chances on the day. That left Allison and Allston to fight it out. The 45 seconds that Allison lost at 4 proved to be decisive, although she still managed to get in front by a second at the second-last before Allston ran away over the last two legs, winning the day by twelve seconds and leading overall by eight. In something of a surprise, Natasha Key was nearly five minutes down, thanks to a scrappy start and successive one-minute errors at 6 and 7,

and unlike her fellow Victorian Troy de Haas, was unable to work any Sunday miracles from a similar position, whilst Swiss WOC representative Sara Gemperle put together a second consistent run to be third overall at the end of the day.

As with the men, Sunday was a critical day. It didn’t feature a leave-everyone-else-reeling performance as the men did, but Allison proved to be the strongest on the day, taking the lead by 5 and then edging away leg by leg. A slightly wobbly start by Allston saw her two minutes down by 4, a gap which then stayed fairly stable to the end, whilst Allison Jones was very solid and just edged Allston out of second place on the day. Outside the placings, the performance of the day was that of Rebecca Minty, running her first high-level race for four years; the reports coming out of Canberra in the lead-up suggested that she was very fit, and she showed it with an impressive sixth place.

Classic Injuries Neil Schafer (M75-GO-NSW)

Tom Quayle (ACT) was 6th in M21E on each of the three days and 6th overall.

Photo: Peter Cusworth

Jo Allison took a two-minute lead into the final day, and any real chance Allston had was snuffed out when she lost a minute at 3, setting the stage for her to be caught by 7. The two were together for most of the rest of the course, and also hauled in Allison Jones and Tracy Bluett, ensuring that the top four would stay as it was with the margins stretched a bit – a not-uncommon feature of the last day of Easter with the current start time structure.

Allston and Bluett ran away from the other two right at the end, Bluett particularly impressive as she consolidated fourth in her best result since motherhood, but it was too late to make any impact on the lead, as Allison won by four minutes overall. Outside this pack, Grace Elson had a great run, with the fastest time for the first half of the course; she couldn’t quite sustain it but still ended up in third on the day, picking up two places in the process

Erin Post (WA) W20A I went really badly yesterday, (Saturday). I smashed my compass and made a mistake early on. Then I hit my head on a tree. I tried to line up my map with the big contour features like spurs and with the vegetation. I didn’t use the sun, I don’t know how to do that.

My aim is to get into the team for the World Junior Championships (JWOC) in Switzerland in July.

I need to have clean runs. The selection is Easter as a whole so I’m aiming to do well today and Monday.

Erin won Day 3 comprehensively to finish 2nd overall and made the JWOC team for Switerland.

This will be Erin’s third trip to the Junior World Champs.

Simon Uppill (SA) had a good Easter winning M18A and a place in his first JWOC. Photo: Bob Mouatt

IT’S all about “insurance”. After 27 years of Orienteering one would hope to have learnt something. Early on I observed the potential for injury and saw that others taped their ankles. This seemed a sensible idea and I made it part of my preparation routine. Over the years it has served me well, except at a minor event when I didn’t tape and broke my ankle. We learn the hard way!

Not so frequently seen is blister prevention. I have long practised heel protection insurance. Plaster applied on the heel is a great help in avoiding blisters. The plaster should be extended around the heel and along the sole of the foot for about 8cm. This ensures there’s no ‘roll-up’ which can occur if only the heel is covered. Plaster 5cm wide is recommended.

Some years ago in Qld, I was running through knee-high grass when I hit a jagged rock resulting in a badly cut shin which needed stitches. I normally wore the reinforced Orienteering socks but after this incident I decided that gaiters with a substantial protective strip down the shin would be better insurance.

That was until Day 3 of the 2005 Aust 3-Days when somehow (one is never sure how) I had a heavy fall, taking it on my right hand and knee. Most of the pain was in the knee but I could feel something wet on my hand – blood? No, I had smashed my compass and the fluid ran out. What a relief! Fortunately another insurance was available.

For years I had always carried a small compass and a whistle on a cord around my neck. So, on getting to my feet, I was able to proceed in the right direction.

It was only after finishing my course that I discovered my main injury was to my LEFT knee and shin where there was a 2cm gash. I now had a sock saturated in blood as well as a blood-stained gaiter.

The St Johns people bandaged the leg to stop the bleeding and later applied another dressing. The mystery is that the gaiter shows no signs of having been pierced. The wound seems to be on the mend and I should be around to orienteer another day.

(Ed – we’re sure you will be Neil.)

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 25

AUST 3-DAYS Barker leaves the others to fight out the JWOC places, whilst Meyer heads the junior men THE battle for JWOC team places is always a major feature of Easter, but this time, amongst the women, centre stage was taken by someone who wasn’t in that battle. Sophie Barker has not nominated for the 2005 team (she will spend the winter working in northern Australia instead). It was apparent after the first day that Jasmine Neve was her only real challenger, and when Neve dropped away on the second day (to disappear altogether on the last thanks to a mispunch) she had the race in her keeping, winning by seven minutes.

The rest of the W18 and W20 field was where the interesting action was happening, as four minutes covered six contenders for what turned out to be four places. Sunday proved to be a particularly interesting day, with less than two minutes covering the top six two-thirds of the way through the course. Up until the end of Sunday Zeb Hallett and Vanessa Round looked the best of the rest, but both stumbled on the last day to make it a bit more interesting.

Both were significant casualties of the short but difficult tenth leg, which ran downhill to a rockface (Hallett had already lost time at 8), which also claimed Whitfield and Cavanagh as victims. Once the dust settled from that, Erin Post, who had been trying to get back into the race ever since things went awry

Ilka Barr (VIC) puts in a big finish sprint.

26 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Sophie Barker )ACT) was dominant in W18A but is not available for JWOC this year.

Photo: Bob Mouatt

Darryl Erbacher (ACT) M60A

on Saturday (with a four-minute mistake at 2 and assorted other misadventures), was left with a useful lead and kept it to the end, seeing her in second overall ahead of Round, who was also the W18 winner.

There wasn’t as much depth amongst the junior men, particularly once illness forced the withdrawal of M20 favourite Conrad Elson at the end of the first day, but there was quality at the front end as David Meyer, Simon Uppill and Louis Elson fought out the top placings.

For the first two and a half days the margins were fine, and small advantages were crucial, whether they were Meyer’s

explosive Day 1 start which saw him 90 seconds up by 3, Uppill’s strong finish on Sunday which saw him pull two mins out of the field over the closing controls, or twenty- or thirtysecond mistakes here or there.

In the end it was the long 13th leg on the final day that was decisive. Uppill lost two mins to the other two here, giving Meyer the overall lead which he did not relinquish for the rest of the course. That leg also put Louis Elson back in the game, but he couldn’t quite go on with it, and a 50-second error at the third-last deprived him of the consolation of beating Uppill on the day.

Arto Laukka from Finland was an unexpected competitor at the 3Days. He has been on a working holiday in Australia since last year and was on his way to Melbourne for Easter when his old Volvo broke down 60km south from Jindabyne along the scenic Snowy River road. After spending 24 hours waiting for the NRMA he took a lift back into Jindabyne with orienteers Terry and Helen Haebich. As he couldn’t get anything done on his car until after Easter, he decided to take up the Haebich’s suggestion of doing some orienteering. He had done some orienteering before having competed in the Jukkola Relays in Finland on several occasions.

He filled in on an open relay team and won a third place badge, and then took a spare spot in the M21E field, which he found quite a challenge with his limited training, but really enjoyed the event.

I’m National Statistician for Orienteering Australia. I work out all the rankings based on performances at Easter, the Aus Champs and in all the State championships. The Silva Orienteer of the Year Award is based on points, three-two-one in all those events with Easter and the Aus Champs counting double. I have a computer program to keep the scores.

2003 was a really good year for me - I actually topped the Silva OY. But in 2004 I broke my arm before Easter and later in the year I caught the flu. In between the high point was finishing 18th in M60 at the World Masters at Asiago, Italy.

My wife orienteers too and my son Grant is just into M18, but he has other interests including basketball. He used to flog me but it’s pretty even now, half and half.

Darryl finished 5th in M60 and Grant was 7th in M18 in the Australian 3-Days.

W16 – an epic contest W16 is a class which has something of a history of producing drama at Easter, Phoebe Dent’s 1998 win being perhaps the most memorable, and they turned on a great race again this year. No-one was in the top two on more than one day, and after two days only four minutes covered the top eight. Marissa Lee led at that stage, but crashed on the first half of the last day and ended up 7th. In the end it was Bridget Anderson, starting the day in 3rd, who held it together best to win, whilst Bronwyn Steele made an even bigger move, rising from 7th to 2nd.

Veteran men decide their races in the paddock

Easter may have seen three days of reasonably technical granite orienteering, but M50 and M55 were both decided in the paddock at the end of the final day. Perhaps the biggest turnaround there came in M50.

Ted van Geldermalsen had run well over the first two days and took a lead of just under four minutes into the last, but he faded on the third day and had slipped 27 secs behind Ross Coyle by 16, with only the apparently straightforward last few hundred metres to come.

It looked a lost cause, but he won five of the last six splits, retaking the lead only at the last control and holding on by thirteen seconds.

M55 was even closer, with only seven secs separating 1st and 2nd, and 25 secs covered the top three. Bob Allison, Terry Bluett and Steve Flick all had chances through a fluctuating

Teri McComb (SA) W45-54A Short I won yesterday (Saturday) which was a surprise since it took me 15 minutes to the first control. I wasn’t really into the map. I’d run the Family Relay on Friday with my rabbit ears so I should have been a bit more with it. After I found the first control I slowed down and took things more carefully and was alright from then on.

Big comebacks and a bizarre finish

Ted van Geldermalsen worked hard right to the finish on day 3 to win M50 by 13 seconds.

Photo: Peter Cusworth last day, with each in turn looking like they had the race in their keeping before making a mistake. Allison looked like he had enough in hand entering the paddock, but he had to withstand a storming finish by Bluett, who took big chunks of time out of the other two in the last few hundred metres, gaining 2nd place but falling just short of the win.

The best race of the rest was in M45, where the two Tasmanians, Darryl Smith and Mike Dowling, were so closely matched that the margins were in single digits on both Sunday and Monday. Smith’s two-minute lead after the first day was the difference in the end; it wasn’t looking that way for a lot of Monday as Dowling wrested the lead by 13, but he couldn’t quite finish it off against the strong-finishing Smith.

The younger end of the veteran female list is not noted for close finishes – the fields are often a bit too thin for that – but 2005 was a conspicuous exception, as the winners of W35, W40 and W45 all came from behind on the last day.

W40 saw perhaps the best performance, as Nicola Dalheim won the last day by seven mins to overturn a three-min deficit against Christine Marshall. The victory was set up on the tenth and eleventh controls, where Dalheim took nearly five mins out of the field. The margins weren’t quite as big in either direction in W35, but Linda Sesta still managed to reverse a one-min gap against Sheralee Bailey on the last day. This race also marked the return to Orienteering of Louise Fairfax, although illness and a fair bit of navigational rust kept her out of the placings.

The final come-from-behind result was the most bizarre. Liz Abbott had a two-min break over Carolyn Jackson in W45, and looked to have coasted in on the last day, stretching that lead by another couple of minutes, but it turned out that she had somehow managed to miss the last control, handing an easy victory to Jackson.

The “Sledge” class was big and well contested again with much fun and good natured rivalry had. Here some of them line up for a photo, at an appropriate location, after the final boxer shorts were awarded.

Photo: Peter Cusworth

Rod Dominish (QLD) M60A I was one of the people who got Orienteering started in Sydney and then in 1974 I helped get it going in Wagga. I was there seven years, so the Waggaroos are just over 30 years old now. I still try to yell “Wagga, Wagga!” as I run down the finish chute but these days the breath is not as good as it used to be.

I’m in Queensland now and work as a quantity surveyor/estimator, building power stations that use sugar waste - very green.

I’m manager of the Australian Team to the World Championships in Japan in August. I was the first Aussie ever to run in a WOC - that was 1972 in (then) Czechoslovakia.

I was the only representative, team manager too! It was the first time I’d ever run on a colour map and the first time I’d ever seen rock detail on a map. It took me three and a half hours to finish 72nd out of about 90.

In 1981 I was team manager in Japan when David Rowlands (BK-V) won the Asia-Pacific Championships ahead of the world’s top two orienteers, OyvinThon (Norway) and Jörgen Mårtensson (Sweden).

I’m aiming to keep up my record!

Rod finished 25th in M60 at the Australian 3-Days.

Why the ears? Last year we won the Family Relay at Easter, but this year my husband Andrew has an injured knee so cannot be here so I’m out to enjoy myself.

I’ve got a fluffy tail too and a little bow tie. We had a good time at the Relays on Friday, even though it was rather chilly.

Teri finished 1st in W45-54AS. JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 27

TOP GEAR

Wearing Good Looking Gear also Improves Performance THERE’S no doubt that good-looking uniforms worn by fit young athletes does much to promote a particular sport and sporting activity in general. Everyone has heroes and if the heroes look good others are encouraged to try to emulate them.

The competition outfits worn by swimmers, cyclists, triathletes, gymnasts, basketballers and athletes all promote an image of health and vitality and each promotes the allure of that particular sport.

Beach volleyball and even tennis are other excellent examples.

Common images spring to mind – Kathy Freeman in that body suit; the Thorpedo in his racing suit; Emma Snowsill winning the triathlon world championship; sprint cyclist Ryan Bailey at the Athens Olympics; the list goes on.

But as well as creating a great visual image these outfits are giving the athletes a competitive advantage. The swimming suits are designed to cut drag in the water; Kathy Freeman’s body suit was claimed to reduce air drag (as well as to intimidate the opposition).

For some years outfits woven from “microfibre” have been generally available and are worn by young and old. The “microfibre” is hollow and serves to wick sweat away from the skin keeping the body cooler than it would be if a simple cotton outfit was worn.

At the World Championships in Sweden last year the Swedish Osuit looked great on both men and women and was clearly designed with promotion in mind. Much of the emphasis at major events is to “bring Orienteering out of the forest” and present it in a very public way to spectators and the media alike. But these new Orienteering outfits also serve another very important purpose – they keep the wearers cool in the forest.

World Champion Karolina A Höjsgaard promotes the Craft range of undergarments specially designed to cool the body during competition. There’s no doubt that these materials will be incorporated into Swedish team O-suits in an attempt to counter the heat and high humidity conditions at WOC 2005 in Japan this August.

An Australian company, Linebreak, has developed a range of form hugging garments which are claimed to absorb sweat and reduce muscle vibration, lactic acid build-up, muscle fibre tears, chafing 28 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Left: World Champion Karolina A Höjsgaard promoting Craft cooling undergarments (photo – Skogssport).

Right: Linebreak form hugging undergarments claimed to lift confidence and cool the body.

Centre: Emil Wingstedt & Karolina A Höjsgaard show off the new Swedish Team outfit at WOC 2004. (photo – Skogssport).

and post-exercise fatigue. Linebreak emphasise that these garments are for elite athletes and weekend warriors alike. Trials with AFL footballers, rugby players and cricketers have all been positive with one well-known fast bowler reporting that he felt much more confident whilst bowling and didn’t seem to tire as much.

Research has shown that these types of fabrics can result in significantly lower heart rates and sweat losses thereby reducing heat strain during exercise. When the body is sweating hard it is using its energy to keep cool - this is energy which could be used to perform.

Then if the clothing is soaking up that sweat and does not dry quickly, as with cotton, the wearer carries around more weight and can ultimately get too cold when he/she stops moving, especially in the cooler months.

It seems that the form hugging designs not only provide a physical advantage but also give a psychological lift to the wearer. If an athlete’s confidence level is high it’s very likely that he/she will perform better.

Linebreak garments were trialled by several orienteers at the Aust 3-Days last Easter and there is an on-going evaluation program.

And in another example, the Tassie East Coast Escape and Australian Championships carnival will be offering souvenir garments in Kooldri moisture removal micro-mesh fabric. Even the weekend warriors will be wearing high technology garments.

HIGH PERFORMANCE

Mike Dowling, OA Director, High Performance

Australian Teams The main international competition season is about to commence, with JWOC in Switzerland and the World Games in Germany to be conducted in July, the FootO World Championships to be held in August in Japan and the MTBO WOC to be held in Slovakia shortly after.

Congratulations to all who have been selected to represent Australian Orienteering in our respective World Championship teams. We have a number of athletes in all our teams who have the ability to achieve benchmark performances and build on our results of 2004.

The Boomerangs Are Here!

The Board of OA in conjunction with the Foot-O HPMG (High Performance Management Group) and athletes have completed the process of developing an identity for our Foot-O senior team who will be known as the Boomerangs. A logo has been developed, voted upon and registered to formalize this process. Look out for the team identity on national team uniforms and banners which will used to promote and market our senior Foot-O team.

Easter 3-Day a Great Success The Easter 3-Day conducted by the ACT Association was a great success in the presentation of our senior elite orienteers to the wider Orienteering public. The presentation of each race day met all the aims of the Liebnitz Convention in the visibility of elite Orienteering where the finish set up on each day provided a fitting climax to a great series of races. In particular the reverse chasing start on the final day provided a close and exciting finish for both athletes and spectators with the last few controls of the elite courses in full view. It is the sort of spectacle we hope will be used as a model for future elite races. In addition, the competition was enhanced will almost all our top international competitors competing, making it one of the highest standard domestic competitions in recent memory. Again congratulations to all athletes, and in particular, the organization team from the ACT led by Anthony Scott.

The OA Annual General Meeting The Annual General Meeting of Orienteering Australia saw the endorsement of the final set of updates of documents that form the part of the OA Operational Manual and refinement of policy direction of high performance Orienteering. A key aspect of the AGM was the adoption of new funding arrangements for the support of State teams in our National League developed by Jason McCrae our Manager, High Performance. The central tenet of the of the new funding arrangements is to transfer significant funding to the development of State-based coaching programs to support high performance Orienteering at a more local level. The hoped outcome will be to see States take a more active role in the training and preparation of their National League teams and lead to the further enhancement of our premier domestic competitive series.

New Codes Of Conduct The Board of Orienteering Australia has adopted a new set of codes of conduct to provide a clearer direction for both our national team officials in their roles with national teams and for our respective national squads in all Orienteering disciplines. These will work in conjunction with existing team agreements that apply to all athletes selected in our national teams. The new codes of

Mass start on Day 1 at Easter for the M21AS “Sledge” class.

Photo: Peter Cusworth conduct will apply to all new national team official appointments and national squads for the next period of 2006-07. Such codes of conduct and athlete agreements work in tandem with the broader Orienteering Australia Member Protection Policy to provide a clear direction of obligations and commitments for both official and athletes.

A new High Performance Strategic Plan As a part of our agreement with the Australian Sports Commission, our principal external funding provider, we are obliged to formulate a strategic plan for the policy direction of our high performance programs. The current strategic plan expires at the end of this year. The major focus in the coming months for both the respective High Performance Management Groups for Foot-O and MTBO, athletes, coaches and the OA Board will be to work on developing a future strategic plan framework for the next period of 2006-2008. This will involve reviewing the current plan and its aims and looking at future policy direction to continue to build on the large number of achievements and developments that have occurred during the life of the current plan.

The goal will be to formulate a new plan in conjunction with all stakeholders with a view to its adoption at the 2005 OA National Conference in December of this year. As such, we invite input from all stakeholders and the broader Orienteering community. If you would like to have some input into the development of the new strategic plan, your thoughts are always welcome. Contact your HP Director by phoning 03-62447073 or via email at mdowling@tassie. net.au .

OR I ENTEER I NG PUBL I CATI ON S IOF Publications

Australian Publications

International Specifications for‑Orienteering Maps . . . . . . . . . . $11.00 Competition rules for IOF events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $11.00 Control Descriptions. . . . . . . . . . . . $11.00 Simple Maps for Orienteering . . . . $11.00 Trail Orienteering (BOF book) . . . . . $30.00 Trail Orienteering (booklet). . . . . . . . $8.25 Trail O (leaflet) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $0.70

Elementary Orienteering Instructors‑Manual. $13.20 Level 1 Coaching Manual. . . . . . . . $22.00 Level 1 Coaching Syllabus . . . . . . . . $3.90 Level 2 Coaching Syllabus . . . . . . . . $4.40 Level 3 Coaching Syllabus . . . . . . . . $4.40 Among the Best Orienteers (video).$19.75 Sponsorship & Advertising, 1996 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . available from states Club Guide, available on disc.

Prices include GST and postage within Australia for single copies.

Prices for bulk orders available on request. Orders should be addressed to Orienteering Australia, PO Box 740, Glebe, NSW 2037, with cheques made payable to Orienteering Australia. Email: orienteering@dsr.nsw.gov.au JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 29

TRAINING

Steve Bird

The Principles of Training

So getting fit for a particular sport is not just about “doing a bit of exercise”. For training to be really effective it should be planned in accordance with the physical demands of the sport and with definite aims. If training isn’t carefully thought out it’s not likely to give you the best possible results. No exercise session should be undertaken as an isolated event, but should form part of a planned program. So in order to get the most benefit from your training you need to apply the principles of training which are as follows; (i) Overload, (ii) Specificity, (iii) Duration, (iv) Intensity, (v) Frequency, (vi) Recovery, (vii) Progression, (viii) Reversibility and (ix) Periodisation.

Overload

The previous two articles of this series outlined the key components of an orienteer’s fitness, which are: 1. A high capacity to utilize oxygen (VO2max) 2. A high lactate threshold – the ability to run at relatively fast speeds without accumulating lactic acid 3. Good running economy This article will look at the principles that we need to apply to our training in order to improve these factors. There is no magic recipe for training that suits everyone, but by understanding the basic principles we can make informed decisions about what is right for us. Individuals vary in the amount and intensity of training that they perform best on. What someone can undertake may be too much and injure another person. Additionally the amount of training for each individual will vary at different times, depending upon what other demands they are experiencing, including work stresses and personal factors. Additionally when reaching the Masters age groups, ageing is liable to reduce the amount of training that can be performed, often it is a case of the spirit being willing but the body needing more time to recover.

Each sport has specific fitness requirements, so we need to tailor our training accordingly. Which is why the participants in different sports need to train differently. Of course there is often some overlap in the fitness requirements of different sports, with for example, a fit squash player being fitter for Orienteering than a sedentary person, but even the best squash players wont be as fit for Orienteering as the best orienteers because the fitness requirements are different and they train differently. The reverse will also be true, as many of us who consider ourselves to be quite fit find out when we attempt a sport or activity to which we are unaccustomed.

30 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

The idea of training is to promote improvements in the physical condition of the body. Exercise is the stimulus that promotes these improvements. However in order to stimulate the desired improvements, the body has to experience a certain amount of physiological stress - it has to work harder than it normally does in most everyday activities. For example to stimulate improvements in the cardiovascular system’s (heart and blood) capacity to deliver oxygen to your muscles (VO2max) you have to make the heart beat harder and faster. Additionally, in order to increase your muscles’ capacity to use the oxygen you have to make them exercise at levels that require large amounts of oxygen, and perhaps for brief periods just beyond their oxygen utilizing capacity. This is also liable to improve you lactate threshold. For an orienteer these training stimuli are best achieved by running for foot orienteers and by cycling for mountain bike orienteers.

If trying to increase the strength of your muscles (as this may assist with running uphill and over difficult ground features, and has particular implications for older orienteers who may lose strength due to ageing), you have to make your muscles work against harder resistances than they would normally encounter.

This can be achieved by weight training. Whereas to improve your flexibility, you have to stretch your muscles and move your joints through a greater range of movement than usual. Each of these activities provide the required overload and stimuli needed to produce improvements in these aspects of your fitness, which if applied correctly will improve your performance and will be covered in a future article .

Specificity Any improvements in fitness will be related to the type of training being undertaken. For example doing weight training in a gym will increase the strength of your muscles but will have little, if any, impact upon your VO2max. The specificity of changes in cardiovascular fitness (VO2max) may be divided into those associated with delivering oxygen to the muscles (primarily involving the heart, blood and lungs) and those involved with utilizing the oxygen when it gets to the muscles (primarily involving the biochemistry and morphology of the muscles).

It is recognised that almost any form of cardiovascular exercise (jogging, cycling, swimming and aerobics) will cause improvements in oxygen delivery and will therefore have some fitness benefit to an orienteer, but the improvements in oxygen utilization primarily occur in the specific muscles being used for that activity. This is why runners need to spend most of their time running, swimmers swimming and cyclists cycling. That is not to say that they should not do the other activities and indeed on occasions they may benefit from them. For example a runner may switch to cycling if they have an injury, as this will help to maintain a certain amount of cardiovascular fitness as they recover from the injury.

Also, by doing another form of training you may prevent staleness and overuse injuries that can occur if one activity is repeated too often. However if not injured, cycling will not be as effective as running at improving their running performance and vice versa, as the muscles are used in different movements, differ in their relative

contribution to the activity and therefore experience different training stimuli.

This principle is also applicable to the development of an economical running and/or cycling action. The best way to develop an economical technique is to repeat that movement many, many times. That way our nervous system learns to send the most appropriate signals to the correct muscle groups. Consider it an extension of how you learned to walk as a young child, going from difficult steps that had to be concentrated upon, to a smooth and fluent automatic action, and this is a further extreme refinement of that process, either in terms of your running gait or muscle recruitment patterns when cycling.

So in the case of Orienteering the concept of specificity includes the consideration of the type of Orienteering being trained for, such as foot, bike or ski. Additionally you may need to consider the terrain you want to compete on. For example, as mentioned in the previous article, many runners are fast on paths, which is good for street-O, but it requires a more specialist form of fitness and running technique to run fast over rough terrain and dodge trees at speed. This can best be achieved by training over rough terrain and in forests, therefore all bush orienteers should consider spending at least some of their training time off paths.

Whilst some form of steady running or cycling will form the foundation of Orienteering fitness training, in reality Orienteering courses require the participants to run or cycle at a variety of intensities.

Intensity Intensity of training refers to how hard you make it. Most Orienteering training is liable to be at an intensity that makes you work quite hard but which can be sustained quite comfortably for in excess of 30 minutes. Those who are familiar with the idea may use their heart rate as a gauge of exercise intensity and although it can be extremely variable between individuals, somewhere between 65 and 85% of your maximum heart rate is often used as a rough guide for your ‘training zone’. Steady training at this level will provide a certain amount of the overload and necessary training stimuli described above.

However whilst some form of steady running or cycling will form the foundation of Orienteering fitness training, in reality Orienteering courses require the participants to run or cycle at a variety of intensities. With phases of harder work such as going uphill of over rough ground being mixed in with slightly easier phases such of going down hill or being on a path as you recover from a period of high exertion. So if you are serious about your fitness you’ll need to supplement your steady running with some sessions that include training at a higher intensity.

One way to do this is to run or cycle at a speed that is faster than your normal comfortable training pace. By working hard your cardiovascular system will have to deliver, and your muscles will have to utilize more oxygen, thereby providing a greater training stimulus. If you work hard at a speed you can only just sustain for about 30 minutes, you’ll also be producing a substantial amount of lactic acid that your body will be removing as rapidly as it can.

At these speeds you’ll attain a delicate balance between your muscles producing lactic acid and its removal. If you were to work any harder your lactate production would exceed its removal and accumulate causing fatigue. You are therefore working at that threshold, which is why such training is sometimes referred to as lactate threshold training. It is liable to be at the kind of intensity that you experience during a hard competition.

Another way to increase training intensity, and hence the training overload, is by doing interval training. Interval training may be organised in a number of ways - fartlek, parlauf relays or set designated intervals. They all work on a similar principle

by interspersing repeated periods of high intensity exercise with phases of recovery, usually in the form of easy jogging or cycling.

A detailed discussion of the different variations on this theme and the specific training benefits requires a whole article in itself and will be dealt with later, but I will generalise the benefits by saying that, the basis behind this form of training is that it requires the cardiovascular system to work harder than it would on a steady run or cycle thereby providing extra overload.

For example, when doing an interval session of 12x2-minute efforts with a one minute recovery between each, or a hill session of 12 hills with a recovery between each one, the whole cardiovascular system will be required to deliver oxygen to the muscles at a much faster rate than on a steady run. Similarly the muscles will be required to use as much oxygen as they can thereby providing an even greater training effect than you would get during a session of steady running or cycling. During the efforts you’re liable to be working at 100% of your VO2max, whereas during a comfortable steady run or cycle you may be only at 70% VO2max and during a lactate threshold session about 85% VO2max. Indeed during the brief efforts of an interval session the muscles are liable to have to work beyond their maximum capacity to use oxygen and will accumulate fatiguing lactic acid, which will provide stimuli to help to improve your lactate threshold. However you need to be reasonably fit before you even attempt this type of training as it is very hard work and it is certainly too tiring to do everyday.

Duration and Frequency The duration of training should reflect the prolonged endurance nature of Orienteering. To gain cardiovascular fitness a session should last for at least 30 minutes, although this will depend on the individual and their current level of fitness. Indeed for the unfit, 30 minutes may be too long until they have become accustomed to the training whereas for a very fit orienteer 30 minutes may be too short and an hour a day may be more appropriate. For interval sessions the duration will include about 10 minutes of easy exercise as a warm-up and cool down at the beginning and end of the session.

Even if training is of the correct type, intensity and duration, improvements in fitness will only occur if the training is repeated often enough. Training once a week will be better than doing nothing, twice a week better still and three times a week even better. However there is a point of diminishing return and whilst additional sessions may continue to bring some benefit the effects become less pronounced. When this point is reached depends upon the individual and their level of fitness. Some orienteers appear to be able to train every day whereas others function better on 4 runs a week. Just remember that even though 3 sessions a week may be good, 30 a week may not be 10 times better and you have to find what suits you. The most suitable duration and frequency of training is best judged by the individual who has to balance the additional benefits of doing more with the increased risk of overuse injury and perhaps in extreme cases overtraining if attempting to do too much. The best advice is to listen to your body.

Recovery The purpose of training is to place certain physiological stresses on the body and then let it adapt to these. However the body must be given the opportunity to adapt and recover. Exercise can cause a certain amount of unwanted physical stress, deplete energy reserves and cause damage to the muscles tendons and joints, which if allowed to heal will go unnoticed. However if not allowed to heal then training with this damage, even if unnoticed, will cause further damage and the body tissues will start to break down. This is the typical scenario of an overuse injury.

Some recovery must be planned and incorporated into a training program on a regular basis, typically this may be a rest day during the week, an easy day for those who insist on training every day or switching to another form of exercise. Research has indicated JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 31

TRAINING a reduced incidence of injury in those who take regular rest days and without a loss in fitness. Indeed overtraining which can result in a decline in performance, injury, a loss of motivation, immune suppression and hormonal imbalances is a major problem with high level performers in many sports and regular rest days can help to prevent it.

Certainly be wary of training hard on consecutive days and reduce your training prior to an important event - a process known as tapering.

Competitive Orienteering requires a specific form of fitness that should be developed through a carefully constructed training program.

Progression If training is effective it will bring about improvements in fitness, which means that the body will start to find the exercise easier and experience less overload.

This is fine if you have achieved your desired level of fitness. If however you wish to continue to improve you must once again place more overload on your body. This is referred to as progression and should be applied carefully in a systematic manner. It can be applied by increasing one or a combination of the following; (i) the intensity of the exercise (training harder), (ii) the duration of the exercise (training for longer) and (iii) the frequency of the exercise (training more often). Alternatively changing the type of terrain you train over can also increase the overload as when moving off the paths onto the rough ground. Progression must be applied gradually if the body is to be given time to adapt and maximum increases of 10% a week or less are often advocated with regard to total mileage.

Reversibility This refers to the fact that if you stop training for a prolonged period of time your body starts to loose fitness and will revert to a sedentary level. But you don’t need to worry about taking a few days off as you won’t lose much fitness in such a short time. Indeed a few days off whilst you are recovering from an illness or injury is essential and will do you more good than trying to continue training. However when you do start training again don’t try to go straight back to what you were doing before. Start at an easier level and build up gradually, this is even more significant if you’ve had a long lay-off - your body won’t be able to withstand the stresses you used to place upon it and therefore you must allow it to adapt slowly over a period of weeks or even months in some cases.

Periodisation Training programs should be planned on a weekly, monthly, seasonal and in some cases a 2 - 4 year basis. They will usually involve a planned change of emphasis at different times of the year, a factor known as periodisation. This process is used by many top performers and coaches in all sports to try and ‘peak’ for the most important events. Training programs are commonly divided up into phases such as; (i) general conditioning, (ii) event specific, (iii) competition and (iv) recovery. The training during each of these phases will vary with the general aim being to reach the peak of fitness during the competition phase when the most important events are held.

General conditioning is the phase where you build up your fitness base by doing a relatively large volume of mileage and some strengthening work. Essentially this phase provides a foundation of fitness, which should get you fit for the more intensive and demanding event specific phase during which you sharpen up your fitness. In this second phase the volume of training often 32 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

diminishes but the quality increases by incorporating interval work, hill repetitions and the more intensive forms of training. During the competition phase the training loads need to be reduced in order to ensure that the orienteer is fresh for the important competitions and therefore training is often just a means of ticking over or providing a means of active recovery and fine tuning between events.

The recovery phase occurs after the main competitions and is used to enable both the mind and body of the orienteer to recover ready to start the cycle again. Throughout all these phases a certain amount of flexibility, strengthening and cardiovascular fitness work should be undertaken at all times to maintain these aspects of fitness. It is the relative intensity, duration, frequency, volume and emphasis of each that changes.

Summary Competitive Orienteering requires a specific form of fitness that should be developed through a carefully constructed training program, applying the principles of training to the demands of the sport. Some forms of training may develop a single fitness component while others may develop a mixture. The correct balance must be attained within a whole program if the correct form of fitness is to be achieved. Factors such as Orienteering skills and psychological work may be incorporated into fitness training sessions to create added interest, provided that it is not to the detriment of the fitness training work.

All training programs must be flexible with modifications incorporated when necessary. For example a slight illness may set you back a few weeks, in which case it is important do a few easy sessions once you start training again and not try to catch up for lost time by attempting to do too much too soon. You may also find that you were over-ambitious with your initial ideas and therefore need to modify the program, or alternatively you may readjust your sights towards something more demanding. Whatever training you are doing or planning for someone else, it must be considered alongside other commitments such as work, family life, exams and so on. Think carefully about how you are going to fit it into your lifestyle and whether what you have set yourself is realistic.

Whenever you do each session remember to include a warm-up and cool down.

Finally training should be enjoyable, and sometimes doing a session or an activity just for the fun of it is enough justification in itself as it will refresh the individual mentally and provide new interest both of which are just as important as any fitness gains.

Professor Steve Bird is Director, Centre for Population Health, Sunshine Hospital, Melbourne. Steve worked with the Great Britain National Orienteering Squad for over 10 years.

GREAT LEAPS

s ‘04 European Sprint Champ

AN innocuous looking water channel on the map became a major hurdle for competitors in the 2004 European Sprint Championships held near Roskilde, Denmark.

Photographers had a perfect vantage point to capture shots of unsuspecting orienteers as they plunged into the water. Photos courtesy Matthias Merkli.

Eventual winner, Simone Niggli-Luder of Switzerland, finds the water a lot deeper than she had thought.

Finland’s Minna Kauppi pauses before puttng all she has into a giant leap.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 33

GREAT LEGS

WOC 2004 – Sweden

The Golden Route

there, I use mostly hilltops for navigation, in order to be able to apply my good speed without technical risk. I punch the first control, I am feeling good, and my legs are light.

Leg 2: When I am punching the first control, everything has already been prepared for the second control. I let myself be guided by the big hill in the middle of the leg. I do not slow down while approaching the post, using the small hills which securely lead to the second control.

Leg 2

1. Novikov (RUS)

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA)

.49 2. Gueorgiou (FRA) 4.03 2. Näsman (SWE)

+.02 2. Haldin (FIN) +.01 3. Wingstedt (SWE)

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 4th +.13 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 2 Time .51 Best time

Thierry Gueorgiou (France) shows us the route he took to defend his Middle-distance World Championship and win again in 2004

O

NLY a few hours are left before my start, but since my wake-up, I feel calm and relaxed. My slight nervousness from the previous days has changed into a great serenity. The day is finally here, the day which I have trained for all year. I know exactly what I must do. I also know that I do not have to invent anything. I feel ready, and my self-confidence is high. I start the warm-up 40 minutes before my departure. The rainy weather suits me perfectly.

Even if there are just a few minutes remaining before the biggest challenge of my O-career – to defend last year’s title – I try to remain concentrated on just myself. In this stage of my preparations, nothing is more important than my technique. I try to forget the environment and the stakes.

Only a few seconds left. I am standing in front of the desk before my map; once again I remember that I must make my map-reading simple.

Leg 3

1. Gueorgiou (FRA)

1.34 1. Sirmais (LAT)

+.00 3. Olsson (SWE)

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA)

5.37 2. Näsman (SWE)

+.05 3. Wingstedt (SWE)

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 4th +.23 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 1 Time 1.34 Best time

34 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

+.02 +.19 6th +.25 .00

Leg 4: No difficulty until I reach the large, open marsh. Meanwhile, I try to prepare the final part of this leg, which initially looks difficult and tricky. I hover between the idea of taking the time to read all the small details in the final part of the leg (with the risk of wasting a lot of time), or just passing the area (and maybe also the re-entrant where the control is located) with a light voluntary left error and at full speed. Even if the forest is rather dense here, I decide to choose the second option. First, I reach the highest point on the final hill and then try to cross directly to the reentrant. I find the control without any problems.

Leg 4

1. Huovila (FIN)

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA)

.51 2. Omeltchenko (UKN) +.02 3. Gueorgiou (FRA) 6.31 2. Näsman (SWE)

+.10 3. Wingstedt (SWE)

+.03 +.24 5th +.28 -.03

Leg 5: The way to the next control is difficult in this very broken terrain. In the first part of the leg, I keep a general direction with my compass. Then, in the second part, I try to use the rocky surface. The

Leg 1: For me, the first control is always very important. The key to a good race is hidden in its opening part. I try to start with very good speed and with a solid map-reading tempo, because I know that it will be almost impossible to change any kind of “wrong” attitude during the race. The visibility is very good in this part. The first big contours are really remarkable and easy to reach. Then I am waiting for the small, wet ditch which is very visible between the two hills. From 3.11 2. Gueorgiou (FRA) +.01 3. Omeltchenko (UKN) +.03 3.11 2. Gueorgiou (FRA) +.01 3. Omeltchenko (UKN) +.03 2/+0.01 2. Novikov (RUS) 9/+0.16 3. Nordberg (NOR) 9/+0.16 2 Time 3.12 Best time -0.01

+.09 6th +.16 -0.02

Leg 3: On this leg, I probably have the best feelings with the map and terrain. I immediately make a good selection, running on the highest part of the area, using hard-and-fast rocky surfaces instead of wet and soft marshes. I let myself be guided by the contour-line to the final slope where the control is located. After climbing up onto the slope, I try to look as far as possible and see the small hill in the circle, which is some 70 meters ahead of me, in order to avoid any extra map-reading.

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 4th +.27 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 3 Time .54 Best time

LEG 1 1. Näsman (SWE) Overall 1. Näsman (SWE) Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) Gueorgiou Leg place

+.02

Leg 5

1. Novikov (RUS)

2.24 2. Gueorgiou (FRA)

+.01 3. Nordberg (NOR) +.02

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA)

8.56 2. Näsman (SWE)

+.11 3. Novikov (RUS) +.26

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 3rd +.26 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 2 Time 2.25 Best time

4th +.29 -.01

GREAT LEGS control is quite easy, being surrounded by small hills and in terrain with good visibility. Now looking back at this leg, I can see the more-left selection. What Jarkko Huovila did (FIN – 2:40 – in blue) was really clever, as it was based on big and remarkable terrain features.

1. Huovila (FIN)

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA)

.53 2. Novikov (RUS) 9.52 2. Näsman (SWE)

+.01 3. Näsman (SWE)

+.02

+.10 3. Novikov (RUS) +.24

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 3rd +.24 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 4 Time .56 Best time

4th +.31 -.03

Leg 7: I use the white band as a guide towards the small path. I go for quite a straight selection. The forest is very open here, and it is very easy to use the big hills for navigation. Then, I use the long nose and hill with the small cliff as the last collecting feature.

Leg 7

1. Novikov (RUS)

2.10 2. Gueorgiou (FRA)

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 12.03 2. Näsman (SWE)

+.01 2. Ikonen (FIN)

+.01

+.21 3. Novikov (RUS) +.23

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 3rd +.23 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 2 Time 2.11 Best time

1. Ikonen (FIN)

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 15.46 2. Näsman (SWE)

.42 2. Hott Johansen (NOR) +.01 3. Wingstedt (SWE) +.02 +.36 3. Wingstedt (SWE) +.37

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 4th +.43 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 4 Time .45 Best time

Leg 6: My first fight with dark forest. I use my compass more often, but it is very automatic. I try to reach the small path as fast as possible. The flag is visible right from the path bend.

Leg 6

Leg 9 Overall

4th +.40 -.01

Leg 8: I prepared this choice during the previous leg. I quickly forget the straight option, which does not use any path. I believe it is always important to have some easier periods, where you can refresh your neurons a little, even in the Middle-distance ...

There are two route-choices around the top. I choose the left one and use the small path, which I leave as late as possible in order to get close to the 8th control. I try to be very aggressive in the first part of the route, in the low vegetation. Then I use the small path and run with a very high pace.

I wait until the last moment before I go up onto the top where the control is located.

I reach the spot where I think the control should be, but there’s nothing ... Some slight doubt ... I’m however sure of myself. I find the control slightly further to the right. I lose some 5 secs here.

Leg 10: I reach the track as fast as possible.

Then, I hesitate over the option to take.

Normally in Middle-distance, I try to use a selection very close to the red line. Often it pays back, at least it never is very penalizing. But, I do not want to risk getting trapped in the low vegetation area under the red line. I use the track as long as possible, but I still leave it too early. In the last metres, the map is very difficult to read (low vegetation and detailed). However, the terrain is much simpler. The control is located on the second big hill. No need to read the map carefully too early. The boulder between these two hills gives me enough information about my exact position. I purposely go up a little bit more on the right side and then follow the small hills which lead me to the control.

Leg 10

1. Nordberg (NOR)

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 18.38 2. Näsman (SWE)

2.42 2. Hott Johansen (NOR) +.02 3. Novikov (RUS) +.04 +.33 3. Wingstedt (SWE) +.37

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 3rd +.37 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 8 Time 2.52 Best time

Leg 8

1. Wingstedt (SWE) 2.55 1. Sirmais (LAT)

+.00 3. Hott Johansen (NOR) +.02

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 15.01 2. Näsman (SWE)

+.31 3. Novikov (RUS) +.36

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 3rd +.23 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 4 Time 2.58 Best time

4th +.40 -.03

Leg 9: It is very important to change rhythm quickly on this kind of short leg. There is no technical difficulty, so any, even the slightest, relaxation would immediately have cost me some few seconds.

The open marsh close to the control is very easy to see. When I’m punching, I see another competitor leaving the control.

5th +.43 -.10

Leg 11: Again a relatively long leg. But this time there is no routechoice. The key is right feature-selection in order to have fast progression. In the first part of the route, the visibility varies from very good to relatively poor. I use the first big hill with the small open marsh at the foot as the first important point. This top is very remarkable, and I can see that, during the end of race, we will cross this area again. So, I try to record its characteristics to use later. I see Mats Haldin in the open area. I decide not to waste time with map-reading, and raise my head to see the vegetation boundary along which I guided in the first part of the leg. The last metres to the control are no problem – the open forest and different hills give it away.

Leg 11

1. Wingstedt (SWE) 2.12 2. Pasquasy (BLG)

+.01 3. Olsson (SWE) +.02

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 20.56 2. Wingstedt (SWE)

+.31 3. Novikov (RUS) +.37

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 3rd +.37 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 7 Time 2.18 Best time

Overall

5th +.53 -.03

5th +.43 -.06

Leg 12: I control the direction with my compass. For the first time in the race, I find some paths made by competitors who started earlier, which I use. I try to see the field through the trees as soon as possible.

Leg 12

1. Wingstedt (SWE) 1.07 2. Ikonen (FIN)

+.01 2. Sirmais (LAT) +.01

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 22.06 2. Wingstedt (SWE)

+.28 3. Novikov (RUS) +.36

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 3rd +.36 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 6 Time 1.10 Best time

4th +.39 -.03

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 35

GREAT LEGS Leg 13: The spectator-control. The risk is always very high of losing concentration at such moments. I think the part of the course after the spectator-control must be approached as the first control – with 110 % concentration and a positive attitude – as if it were a totally new race which has just begun.

control is the kind of decisive control where you can lose the whole race. For this reason, I want to leave the open area knowing exactly where I am. For this reason, I make the small turn to the vegetation boundary. Then I use my compass very carefully.

I hear Damien Renard shouting that I am in the lead, but I know nothing exact about how large my lead is … but I know it must be tight. Control 13 is not so difficult, and the slope helps a lot.

Leg 13

1. Haldin (FIN)

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 22.46 2. Wingstedt (SWE)

.38 2. Novikov (RUS)

+.01 =3. Gueorgiou (FRA)

+.02

+.28 3. Novikov (RUS) +.35

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 3rd +.35 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place =3 Time .40 Best time

4th +.39 -.02

Leg 14: Probably the worst leg for me, even though I do not make any major mistakes. However, some hesitations, in combination with not very relevant route-selection and also tired legs, give me a “not so good” time. I lose some seconds immediately after punching the 13th when I try to locate my position with precision – something which I do not manage to do anyway and which is not really necessary in this part. I am probably less lucid and apply my technique less well. But then, I start again to use the big features, such as the marsh and hills. The vegetation boundary and cliff in the slope are quite remarkable. On the flatter area, I use my compass. I do not try to find the control in a direct way.

I reach the top of the hill which, for me, constitutes the control.

Now the flag no longer is 40 cm x 40 cm large but becomes as huge as 40 m x 40 m, which makes it appreciably easier to find. From the top of the hill I can see the control.

Leg 14

1. Hott Johansen (NOR) 2.40 2. Haldin (FIN)

+.02 3. Novikov (RUS) +.05

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 25.45 2. Novikov (RUS)

+.21 3. Wingstedt (SWE) +.25

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 2nd +.21 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 17 Time 2.59 Best time

Leg 15

1. Hott Johansen (NOR) 2.20 2. Renard (FRA)

+.01 3. Nordberg (NOR) +.03

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 28.10 2. Novikov (RUS)

+.23 3. Wingstedt (SWE) +.27

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 2nd +.23 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 5 Time 2.25 Best time

Leg 16

1. Novikov (RUS)

2.00 2. Näsman (SWE)

+.01 3. Nordberg (NOR) +.05

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 30.19 2. Novikov (RUS)

+.14 3. Nordberg (NOR) +.28

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 2nd +.14 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 9 Time 2.09 Best time

4th +.32 -.05

Leg 16: In the first part, I try to reach the highest point of the area without following my progression with precision. Once in the open area, it is very difficult to locate properly, but I try to see the big hill which I used during the leg to the 11th control. It helps me in determining my precise location. I very well understand that the 16th

3rd +.28 -.09

Leg 17: Now, I know that the technical difficulties are over, but I try to remain concentrated, so as not to lose any extra seconds.

Leg 17

1. Ikonen (FIN)

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 31.24 2. Novikov (RUS)

1.02 2. Nordberg (NOR)

+.01 3. Merz (SUI) +.02 +.17 3. Nordberg (NOR) +.26

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 2nd +.17 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 5 Time 1.05 Best time

3rd +.26 -.03

Leg 18: For the last time, I look at my compass and make sure I leave the control in the right direction. Now, I can hear the speaker very well: “He will defend his title from last year, that’s for sure …” Good news!!! Even if my tiredness is high, I understand that my dream will become reality.

4th +.34 -.19

Leg 15: Quite a straight selection. I prefer to cross the marsh which, although wet, offers better runnability than the open area. From the cliff, I follow the contour to the control flag. Mats Haldin, whom I have not seen since leaving the 13th control, punches a few metres in front of me.

38 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Once on the path, I do not want to take any risks. I try to fix my exact position with the small hill. The extra 90° turn costs me a few seconds, but gives me much safety. In these moments, when the finish is so close that it is already possible to hear the speaker, it is difficult to keep a clear mind, cold blood, and make the right choice.

Leg 18

1. Nordberg (NOR)

.45 2. Gueorgiou (FRA)

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 32.10 2. Novikov (RUS)

+.01 2. Haldin (FIN) +.01 +.18 3. Nordberg (NOR) +.25

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 1st 0.00 2. Novikov (RUS) 2nd +.18 3. Nordberg (NOR) Gueorgiou Leg place 2 Time .46 Best time

3rd +.25 -.01

Finish: Only few metres left, and the feeling is incredibly nice. I do not touch the ground anymore. These last metres completely contrast with the way in which I tried to approach this race. The key was to remain concentrated on my technique, to forget the environment and the stakes. During the race my emotions were completely evacuated.

The finishing line is crossed; my goal is reached. Even if I would never have acknowledged it, 2nd place would have been a disappointment. But I did it!

Finish

1. Gueorgiou (FRA)

Overall

1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 32.45 2. Novikov (RUS)

.35 1. Wingstedt (SWE) +.00 3. Olssen (SWE) +.01 +.22 3. Nordberg (NOR) +.27

Medalists 1. Gueorgiou (FRA) 32.45 2. Novikov (RUS) Gueorgiou Leg place 1 Time

33.07 3. Nordberg (NOR) 33.12 .35 Best time .00

NATIONAL O DAY

O-Mazing Eaglemont National Orienteering Day on May 1st saw events of all kinds conducted around the country. Four events were staged near Melbourne, one being a Maze-O event at Eaglemont Flats designed by Ian and Debbie Dodd of Dandenong Ranges Orienteering Club (DROC). The Maze-O course was set up on a tiny patch of parkland alongside the main event, a series of MicrO courses organised by Melbourne Forest Racers (MFR).

THE two events complemented each other in that most competitors who came for the MicrO courses later came over to try the Maze-O event with many finding it wasn’t the ‘pushover’ they had at first assumed.

And, while parents were out on the MicrO courses all their kids were over negotiating the Maze-O course again, and again and again …… What a great way to learn the techniques of Orienteering within the confines of a 40 x 50 metres maze.

There were 102 attempts on the Eaglemont Maze record but Bruce Arthur (MFR) reigned supreme with a time of 3:44 and a convincing 25 secs lead. Tash Key (MFR) was best woman with 4:39 and Lachlan Fraser (BK) best junior with 5:35, edging out Jasmine Neve (MFR) by 3 secs.

But the performances of the day were by some of our very youngest orienteers. Elana and Lauren Frost (DROC) were just 2 sec behind Jasmine Neve on 5:40 with the group of Becky, Rose & Ruby equalling that time. Maze-O might well be the right breeding ground for future JWOC representatives.

This event design was based on an idea developed by Newcastle Orienteers for their Australia Day promotion (see The Australian Orienteer – March’05). From the success of both events it seems likely that we’ll see more Maze-O events in the future.

Race for the Finish line Studying the map

Maze designer Ian Dodd tests the course.

Learning how to punch a control JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 37

URBAN-O

Scatter-O

– the mass-start format where orienteers dash off in all directions

For an Urban-O course-setter, a certain feeling of satisfaction settles over one when the maps are handed out (upside down), the clock ticks over and you shout “GO!” The field in the Scatter-O turn over their maps… but no-one moves.

Seconds pass while they try to discover the best direction to take.

The seconds seem like minutes – pressure builds. Then a few move off and others begin to follow, more through fear of losing even more time than of having ‘found the way’. The course-setter allows a faint smile to cross his face.

Park & Street-O began in Victoria a very long time ago: • In March 1972, John Oliver organized an event in Warrandyte and 138 competitors turned up.

• From 1972 onwards, events were held regularly in Studley Park.

• In 1974, Larry Sykes held events in Ballan and Little River. Larry was a Red Kangaroo. When he returned home to New Zealand he formed the Red Kiwis.

• In 1976, a series of Park & Street events was run. Mike Hubbert organized two at Blackburn Lake, Ian Baker held one at Beaumaris and another was run in The Domain/Albert Park area.

• Steve Key organized the Melbourne 3-Days in 1979 with events in Warrandyte, Mt. Evelyn and Lilydale.

• Throughout 1978-80, both evening and night events were held in Lilydale, Mt. Evelyn, Beaumaris, Warrandyte, Valley Reserve, Ringwood and other well-known suburban areas.

• The Victorian Night Championships for 1980 were held at Mt. Evelyn.

• In 1981, Dandenong Ranges OC began a series of Park & Street events around the Blind Creek area in Knox, held on Wednesday evenings.

• Early courses were very simple – 10km line event with 3 controls. By the time the first control was reached the field had spread out well and truly.

• As attendances grew more courses were needed, but soon queues at the first control stretched back towards the start. It was a mad rush to get there first.

• So “Scatter-O” was developed, with the added bonus that you had a choice of which controls to find.

• Soon other series were started on Tuesdays (in 1986) and Thursdays (in 1990). It seemed people couldn’t get enough of this running and navigating sport.

38 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

• T here seemed to be a group who preferred to walk so, in 1997, a Power Walkers class was added. PW has grown steadily ever since to now become the leading category accounting for one-third of all participants.

• In 2004 a Monday series was started with immediate success.

• Participants in the various Summer Series seemed disappointed when daylight-saving finished. They clearly wanted more, so Score-O events on mid-week nights and Saturday afternoons were introduced from April to October.

• In the summer of 2004/’05 a total of 81 events were held in Melbourne (another was cancelled due to floods) with 8,669 participations by 1367 people.

• Snow and a blizzard once caused the cancellation of an event at Braemar College, on the side of Mount Macedon. On other occasions heavy rain has flooded creeks and caused some frantic late adjustments to courses.

Map drawing was initially limited to the skilful few but the advent of OCAD and a PC in every home allowed many more people to get involved with map production. This change was timely because the growth in popularity of Park & Street-O events meant more and more maps were needed. The mapping load was spread amongst many willing helpers who soon found that map drawing on computer wasn’t such a ‘black art’ as they had thought. The contribution of Hans Steinegger and his OCAD software to the development of Park & Street-O in Australia should not be underestimated. A few people stick with Corel Draw and Illustrator but by far the majority of mappers now use OCAD, in Melbourne at least.

Part of the strategy for maintaining participation growth has been to keep the costs down. Entry fees are $3 for adults and $1.50 for juniors. Season tickets make competing even cheaper for those who do large numbers of events. Maps are high quality, but black & white, master prints from which copies can be mass produced on any good photocopier (see the Donvale Pines example opposite). Controls are preprinted on the masters. With 82 events in 21 weeks during summer the emphasis is on keeping map production simple.

Event organization is kept as simple as possible too. An event held on a pre-existing map will typically take 6 man-hours to organise and

conduct. Often just one person will organise and conduct the whole event. The task is a relatively easy one and there is no shortage of volunteers.

In summer participants on five different courses are asked to find a certain number of controls from the 20 set out. They can choose to find any of the 20 to make up the set number for their course but the shortest route around will get them back quickest. A sixth course for Power Walkers is always a 60-min Score-O. Let’s get back to our course-setter. As participants start to come in it’s easy to tell whether your course has challenged them. Are they flustered? Do they immediately gather in groups asking “which controls did you leave out?” Do you here comments like “that group of three controls way out – I had to get one of them, so I got all three and then had to miss two closer in”; or “damn course setter !”

That course setter’s smile will start to broaden as the sense of satisfaction grows with the knowledge that you have set a good one.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 39

GREAT LEGS

Australian 3-Days 2005, Day 3, Buckenderra South

Jo Allison was W21E winner at the Australian 3-Days for the fourth year in a row. She also won Day 3. Running for the Canberra Cockatoos and Red Roos club, Jo finished in 2nd place in the Prologue and on Day 1, improving to 1st place on Days 2 & 3.

boulder below the rocky slope and used compass into the control circle.

5-6: I ran to the right of the two knolls either side of the straight line. From there I could see the saddle before the control. I tried to be careful going down the slope towards the control, checking off the rock and looking out for the small gully below the control.

6-7: I angled down the slope towards the open gully. I wanted to pick the gully going up the slope on the other side where there was a slight gap between the rocks. I ran to the top of the ridge and along to the knoll. I thought this control was tricky so I was careful to check my compass before leaving the knoll and going down to the control. I first met Hanny Allston at this control and we saw a lot of each other for the rest of the course.

Jo’s route choices at Buckenderra South Photo: Mike Hubbert DAY 3 was a fun and technically challenging course on ”Buckenderra South” with the added excitement of a chasing start in reverse order of placings after the first two days and the prologue.

Start-1: I was feeling quite nervous at the start. I thought I’d be safest running along the little track as far as I could to no.1, to let myself calm down.

I turned into the forest after seeing the second boulder on the right and ran between the two big groups of rock, then ran on careful compass down to my group of rocks. Was very happy to see the control.

1-2: I dropped down to the clearing and ran along its edge to the track. I saw the group of rocks to the left just after the track. Keeping on compass, I checked off the skinny clearing, ran between the two boulders and slowed down into the circle 40 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

to make sure I ran to the right rock.

2-3: Ran up the gully and just to the left of the major rockface.

Misread the rock slightly going into the circle, although I wasn’t really off course, I lost some seconds hesitating.

3-4: To get my direction right out of the control, I picked the big boulder just right of the straight line and the little knoll with the boulder on it to the left of the line to run between.

Then, keeping the big knoll to the left, I saw the three boulders in the clearing. From there it was a nice short run up the track and into the forest after the boulder on the right.

4-5: I had planned to run straight, over the knoll and down the gully on the other side, but I drifted a bit right and suddenly found myself on the rocky part of the slope. Still managed to pick the big single

7-8: I always think short legs like this across rocky hillsides are difficult as its easy to drop or climb the wrong amount and lose track of the rock detail. In this case, fortunately it turned out less scary than I initially thought. There was a group of boulders on the left leaving no.7, and a big lone boulder nearly half-way. From there it was possible to see the group of rocks before the control and read the detail into the circle.

8-9: I tried to angle up out of the control on compass, intending to pick up the big rock on the edge of the circle and the little gully right before the control. I think I must have misjudged the distance going so slowly uphill through the green and veered slightly left as I was expecting to see these things a bit too soon. I hesitated a bit below the control before spotting the boulder I’d been hoping to see, losing a little bit of time.

9-10: Ran on compass over the hill. The huge boulder on top of the ridge and boulder cluster after it were good features to lead me into the control.

10-11: Decision time. The first option I saw was to run left up the hill and pass by the start.

I considered going right, down the steep gully and cutting

across to the saddle two-thirds of the way on the right side of the line. I decided left looked safer (some track running and a nice track leading to the control) and it got the climb over with early.

11-12: Things were getting pretty exciting by no.11, with Hanny, Allison Jones and I all leaving there at about the same time, and the pace was getting quicker. I headed straight for the top of the hill from where I could see the knoll with the bare rock on it. That was a good attack point as it was easy to spot the cliff and the control from there.

12-13: The rocky knoll to the left of the straight line was a good big feature for getting my exit direction out of no.12.

I saw the boulder below it, crossed the track and looked for the shallow gully leading to the control. There it was...nice.

13-14: Straight up the gully and over the spur, keeping the rocky ground on my left. Ran straight down the gully and got a good view of the cliff from a distance.

14-15: I’d say this is the control where I took the biggest risk, running a bit faster than I can safely navigate. I contoured round the hill and crossed the track a bit of a way above the big bend at the bottom of the hill. From the track, I ran for a bit without making much fit on the map, but knowing I was below the green. Thankfully, I saw the clearing in the gully, but lost a few seconds in the circle running towards a different boulder thinking it was mine, and then suddenly Tracy Bluett also appeared from behind.

15-16: Now with four of us together, I left the control too fast in the wrong direction down to the track, and so I did a bit of extra distance and fell behind Hanny and Tracy who ran straight. Still, once on the track I got a sense of relief that all the difficult forest orienteering was done and now it was just a matter of not doing anything silly.

16-17-18-19-Finish: A few short legs and very good visibility to finish off.

Tracy Bluett and Hanny Allston in the finish chute whilst Jo Allison and Allison Jones loom just out of view. Photo: Peter Cusworth

Jo leads Allison Jones from the final control.

Photo: Bob Mouatt JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 41

NUTRITION

Gillian Woodward

Protein in Sport How much protein do athletes really need? How often have you seen high protein supplements being recommended in sporting magazines? How many sports bars and drinks promote their high protein content?

In this edition we look at the truth about our protein requirements for sport.

T

HE RDI (Recommended Daily Intake) for protein is approximately 1 gram per kilogram body weight. Hence, if you weigh 75 kg, you need about 75 grams per day. Most Australians have an intake much higher than this – in fact, more like 120-150 grams is easily attainable. Why? Because many of our food groups contribute protein – even breads and cereals may have 2-3 grams per serving.

Meat and dairy foods are of course the main sources of protein, but considerable amounts are found in legumes, nuts and seeds, with smaller quantities in our vegetables and fruits.

In early sports nutrition advice there was great emphasis on the higher need for protein in those who exercised compared with those who were more sedentary in lifestyle. This was considered necessary due to the need for more muscle in exercise and extra need for repair of damaged tissue. Some protein may also be broken down to provide energy, but when a good supply of carbohydrate and fatty acids is available, the body avoids this energy pathway.

Despite these extra needs in exercise, it is now recommended that only an increase to 1.2-1.4 grams per kg body weight is needed by endurance athletes, including orienteers. This means our 75 kg athlete would need 90-105 grams of protein daily, still highly attainable from a normal diet.

A 10 gram serve of protein would be found in 30 grams of meat (the eye of a loin lamb chop), 40 grams (2 slices) of cheese, 3 slices of bread, 2 eggs, 2/3 cup of baked beans, 300 ml milk, 200 grams of yoghurt or 2 protein sports bars. From these few examples, you can see how easily we obtain our protein requirement each day. Our body does not distinguish between animal or vegetable protein, so either are useful sources.

For vegetarians, it is important to include a variety of protein foods like legumes, nuts, seeds, grains as well as eggs and dairy foods (these latter two if you are lacto-ovo-vegetarian).

Some athletes (particularly those involved in strength sports) take high protein supplementary drinks or powders to achieve higher protein intakes of 2-4 grams per kilogram body weight. They are lead to believe by advertising or product promotion, that such a process will enhance muscle growth. In fact what is actually required for muscle growth is the right genetics, a well designed resistance training program and of course a high energy, high carbohydrate, adequate protein intake to fuel the developing muscle.

42 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

The problems with extreme protein intakes above 2 grams per kilogram include the fact that they can cause dehydration, as well as loss of calcium from bone (more being excreted on higher protein diets). The protein may also replace other important nutrients in the diet such as carbohydrate and vitamins. Another disadvantage is that high protein foods are usually much more expensive to purchase and they often contain a lot of saturated fat, which can lead to higher blood cholesterol levels and contribute to blocked arteries.

Timing of protein intake, however, may be of more importance to sporting performance than previously considered. In a typical Australian diet, a large proportion of our protein intake tends to occur at the main (evening) meal of the day, via a substantial serve of meat. It is now thought that spreading our protein foods throughout the day more evenly in smaller doses, may be more beneficial for muscle growth and maintenance. This is also considered a good strategy for those who are trying to maintain muscle mass while losing body weight. A constant supply of amino acids (the building blocks of protein) is needed throughout the day for muscle growth.

This is easily done if you add milk and /or yoghurt to cereal at breakfast, use lean meat, fish, egg or cheese in a sandwich at lunch and then eat a slightly smaller portion of meat/fish/ egg/legumes at the evening meal.

Nuts and seeds or dairy foods can also be eaten or drunk as proteinrich snacks throughout the day.

Is there a case for using high protein energy drinks or meal replacements in sport? Yes there may be, particularly in those who are undertaking heavy (endurance) training schedules and find it difficult to achieve a high enough energy intake to prevent weight loss.

Some athletes also find it difficult to consume solid foods prior to or even after training or competition.

The meal replacement drinks can be useful in these cases and also as between-meal snacks for those wanting to ‘bulk up’ or gain muscle mass. In Orienteering however, most are aiming to maintain a lean body mass to enhance their speed, so unless weight loss has occurred through illness or other cause, such supplements should not be necessary.

AUSSIES OVERSEAS

World Cup

BJ takes 2nd in Sprint

THIS year’s first round of the World Cup was held south-west of London, UK, with the Sprint qualifiers at Guildford University and the Final at Battersea Park on 2nd May. In the Final, David BrickhillJones showed he is fast becoming a world-rated Sprint specialist by Australian Sprint specialist, David taking 2nd place behind Brickhill-Jones celebrating his second place Switzerland’s rising star in the Men’s World Cup Sprint at Battersea Daniel Hubmann.

Park, UK. The Sprint qualification race at Guildford University was surprisingly tricky with lots of buildings, alleyways, staircases etc. It’s also on the side of a hill so there were some fairly steep climbs. Sole Aussie, David Brickhill-Jones, said he was pleased with his qualifying run but reckoned he could have run a bit faster.

In the Sprint final at Battersea Park 24 year-old BJ had a brilliant run to finish 2nd behind the Swiss Daniel Hubmann. BJ took Australia’s first-ever top-three place in a World Cup race outside Australia. “It’s fantastic. This really means a lot to me”, he said. BJ was fastest through the first 15 of 26 controls by three seconds but faded slightly towards the end to finish 18 seconds adrift of Hubmann. Our reporter tried to get a word with him afterwards but he rushed to a phone to ring (National Coach) Jim Russell!

Our reporter noted that BJ was wearing the ultra-lightweight roadracing Nike Firefly shoes. They could have been worth a few seconds over those runners in heavier studs, which certainly weren’t necessary in Battersea Park.

For BJ this event marks a step-up in achievement for the once ‘wild man’ of Australian Orienteering. He has matured markedly in the past nine months and has strung together some very good recent performances with two wins and a 3rd place in the Park World Tour (Italy) and now a 2nd place in the World Cup. With an ounce of luck he might even go one better at the World Championships in Japan this coming August. (see interview with BJ in the Park World Tour section).

BJ thinking about his route as he marks it in the finish tent.

Photo: Steve Rowland

Sprint success for Hausken and Hubmann MONDAY morning saw a scorching UK Bank Holiday in Battersea Park, bringing out scores of potential spectators for an incredibly pacey Sprint Final held beside the River Thames.

Courses were relatively long but with winning times of around 14 mins expected the day was always going to be an exciting one. Athletes raced across packed swatches of grass full of picnickers and vaulted fences much to the delight of people Norway’s Anne Margrethe Hausken winner expecting a quite day’s of the Women’s World Cup Sprint at lounging in the sun.

Battersea Park, UK. At a spectator control, many runners went to the wrong boulder in full view of everyone. There were eight to choose from and they were all papier-mache, courtesy of Mike Murray (former UK champion). Briton Claire Ward summed up the day for many: “There was a bit too much thinking. There were so many controls.” Others found the atmosphere exhilarating “It was really fast. You didn’t have much time to think. I probably lost 10-15 seconds. At this speed, anything is challenging. The crowds were cheering at every control.

It was too good. They probably made me push too early,” said one.

A wonderful venue in the nation’s capital to hold the most spectatorfriendly event of the UK World Cup week.

Two clear winners emerged in the Sprint Final. Norway’s Anne Margrethe Hausken was 38 secs quicker than Jenny Johansson (Sweden) and Longdistance winner Simone Niggli-Luder (Switzerland) who shared the same time after very nailbiting finishes from both athletes. Norwegian, Finnish and British colours completed the podium party, with Marianne Andersen 4th, Swiss Daniel Hubmann powers up a hill.

Minna Kauppi 5th and Heather Monro 6th.

In the men’s race 22 year-old Swiss Daniel Hubmann was almost as clear a winner by 18 secs over Australian Sprint specialist David Brickhill-Jones. Third was the consistent Norwegian Øystein Kvaal Østerbø. Hubmann said, “It was a perfect race. I made no mistakes.

It’s the best sprint race I ever have done”. Four Finns, Jarkko Huovila, Tero Föhr, Jani Lakanen and Mats Haldin, took the next three places - the last two sharing 6th place.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 43

AUSSIES OVERSEAS

nt World CutteprseSa pPari rk, London

2nd May 2005, Ba

Main photos: Steve Rowlands

ansen Canadian Sandy Hott Joh se irca sta the rs que con

Sweden’s Elin Dahlstedt

Swiss veteran Vroni Konig-S almi climbs the staircase 44 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

M21E 3.5 km; 60 m climb; 26 Controls; 27 starters 1 Hubmann Daniel SUI 2 Brickhill-Jones David AUS 3 Kvaal Østerbø Øystein NOR 4 Huovila Jarkko FIN 5 Föhr Tero FIN 6 Lakanen Jani FIN 7 Haldin Mats FIN 8 Sandvik Tore NOR 9 Näsman Johan SWE 10 Nielsen Christian DEN W21E 3.2 km; 55 m climb; 24 Controls; 27 starters 1 Hausken Anne Margrethe NOR 2 Niggli Simone SUI 3 Johansson Jenny SWE 4 Andersen Marianne NOR 5 Kauppi Minna FIN 6 Monro Heather GBR 7 König Salmi Vroni SUI 8 Rollins Sarah GBR 9 Dahlstedt Elin SWE 10 Grüniger Brigitte SUI

14:15 14:33 14:40 14:45 14:48 14:50 14:50 14:51 14:53 14:54

14:33 15:11 15:11 15:12 15:19 15:24 15:34 15:44 15:49 15:53

TOP EVENTS Australian Championships Carnival 2005 “Tassie East Coast Escape” EVERYTHING is in place for a fantastic week in Tasmania at the end of September and beginning of October.

The Aus Champs website which is accessed from the home page of the Orienteering Tasmania website www.tasorienteering.asn. au is loaded with information about the events, the orienteering landscapes, transport and accommodation and is being updated and added to weekly. Check out recently added photos and sample map sections.

Deadline for entries is 12 August 2005. Late entries will be accepted until 9 September 2005 with an appropriate late fee. Check out the website for updated details of available classes and an entry form or telephone 03-62342991 to have a brochure and entry form posted to you.

All orienteers in Tasmania are excited about the Championships and looking forward to welcoming our interstate and overseas colleagues.

Get your entry in, make your bookings and look forward to a great time in Tasmania. Have a devil of a time !

Clean Tassie Rivers Twenty-seven Tasmanian rivers have been declared pesticide-free after laboratory tests on water samples as part of the Tas Govt water monitoring program. In particular, the George River at the St Helens water supply intake was tested and declared free of any residues.

The Examiner

2005 AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEERING CHAMPIONSHIPS – TASMANIA 24th September – 2nd October

Individual events include: Sun 25 Sept – Tas LD Champs “Pittwater Dunes” near Hobart Tues/Wed 27/28 Sept – Aus School Champs “Sandstone Valleys” – Tas Midlands Sat/Sun 1/2 Oct – Aus LD & Relay Champs “Littlechild Creek” – St Helens

Entries close 12 August 2005 www.tasorienteering.asn.au tel: 03 – 6234 2991 46 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

WMOC 2006 THE World Masters Orienteering Championships will take place from July 1st-8th, 2006 in Austria, in the heart of Europe. The venue is in Wiener Neustadt, 50 km south of Austria’s capital, Vienna.

We expect about 3,500 competitors from 40 different nations.

Our program: Date WMOC Event Spectator Races Sat 1 July 3.00 pm 3.00 pm Warm up Warm up Mass by W.A. Mozart Sun 2 July 2.00 pm 2.00 pm Park Race AWD-Cup, stage 1 Opening ceremony Mon 3 July 9.00 am 9.00 am Model event Training Bigband/ Open Air Tue 4 July 9.00 am 9.00 am 1st Qualification AWD-Cup, stage 2 Chamber music Wed 5 July 9.00 am 9.00 am 2nd Qualification AWD-Cup, stage 3 Thu 6 July Fri 7 July 9.00 am 9.00 am Final race AWD-Cup, stage 4 Prize ceremony Sat 8 July

Other Events 8.00 pm 5.30 pm 7.30 pm Jazz7.30 pm 7.00 pm Banquet Tourist programme 3.00 pm Departure

The terrain is moderately hilly, open and very runnable. Medium density of path/forest roads with a number of complex, detailed areas with contour and rock features. All maps are 1:10.000, with 5m contours.

Accommodation: We offer a variety of accommodations for your stay in and around Wiener Neustadt: 4-star hotels from €45 to €70/ person/night in double-room, including breakfast; (half-board: + €10 – 15) 3-star hotels from €30 to €45/ person/night in double-room, including breakfast; (half-board: + €6 – 10) Also holiday apartments, B&B, family rooms available in a limited number upon request.

Transport: Organisers will arrange bus services to all training events and races - cost €25.- for the week.

Climate: During July expect temperatures from 20° to 30°C. Cultural program: A variety of cultural events will be offered such as classical, rock and jazz concerts.

Tourist program: Guided tours to Vienna, trips to Schneeberg (2076 m high mountain) by rack railway and more!

Pre- competitions: The world famous cities of Salzburg (3 competitions, 24-27 June) and Vienna (2 competitions, 29-30 June) offer orienteering events just the week before WMOC 2006.

Travel info: It’s very easy to go by Austrian Airlines or Lauda Air from Sydney or Melbourne directly to Vienna.

We can offer travel packages – with or without the flights – including the days in Salzburg and Vienna if you wish. Some of the most impressive capitals and cities in the heart of Europe are not far from our location (see map).

For more information, please visit our website www.wmoc06.com or contact us: info@wmoc06.com

TOP EVENTS 2005

2006

July 2-6 Pilsner MTB-O 5-Days, Plzen, Czech Republic, www.mtbo5days.cz

April 14-17 Australian 3-Days & Middle Dist Champs, Castlemaine, Victoria

July 2-9 5 Giorni-Valle di Non (Italian 5 Days) Trentino Italy. www.oripredaia.it July 3-9 Sorlandsgaloppen, Stavern, Norway. www. sorlandsgaloppen.no/2005/

May 7-14 European Championships Otepaa, Estonia www.orienteerumine.ee/EOC2006

July 1-7 WMOC 2006 Wiener Neustadt, Austria www.wmoc06.com/

July 2-7 JWOC 2006, Druskininkai, Lithuania www.losf.lt/jwoc2006

July 8-15 Tour O Swiss www.tour-o-swiss.ch

July 9-14 World MTB-O Champs, Joensuu, Finland. mtbwoc2006.orienteering.org

July 15-22 Swiss O Week 2006 Zermatt, Switzerland www.sow2006zermatt.ch

July 8-10

orthern Territory Championships N Darwin, NT www.topend.nt.orienteering.asn.au

July 9-14 France - 5 Days of Aveyron, La Cavalerie, France (30min N of Montpelier) www.cdco12.org

July 10-15 Fin 5, Eura (near Pori), Finland. www.hiisirasti.fi/fin5

July 11-16

July 11-16 Swiss 5 Days, Tenero, Switzerland. www.asti-ticino.ch/5days2005

July 14-24 World Games (Orienteering 16 & 17 July), Duisberg, Germany http://www.worldgames-iwga.org/

July 16-21 O-Ringen, Halsingland, Sweden (250 km north of Stockholm) www.oringen.com

July 30-Aug 5 WOC 2006 and Danish WOC Tour 6-Days, Aarhus, Denmark www.woc2006.dk/

29 Sept-12 Oct Australian Championships Carnival York, Western Australia wa.orienteering.asn.au/auschamps 2006/auschamps2006.html

Dec 22-31

APOC 2006, Hong Kong

Dec 27-31

Christmas 5 Days, NSW

July 17-22

JWOC 2005 Tenero, Switzerland www.asti-ticino.ch/jwoc2005

O-Ringen Smaland, Sweden www.orientering.se/oringen

July 26-28 Hallen 3-Days Hallen, Sweden

July 22-31

WMOC 2005 Edmonton, Canada www.wmoc2005.com www.2005worldmasters.com/

July 31-Aug 6 Scottish 6-Days Royal Deeside, Scotland www.scottish6days.com

July 31-Aug 5 Japan O Tour Tokyo, Fuji, Kyoto, Japan

August 7-14 Forest Festival (on WOC 05 maps), Aichi, Japan. www.woc2005.jp

August 7-14 WOC 2005 Aichi Prefecture, Japan www.woc2005.jp/

Sept. 5-11 World MTB-O Championships Banska Bystrica, Slovakia www.orienteering.sk/mtbo2005

Sept 19-24 Region 3 (Asia-Pacific) RadiO Champs, Agano City, Japan www.jarl.or.jp/2005r3ardf/

Sept 24-Oct 2 Tassie East Coast Escape inc Tas Champs, Schools Champs & Aust Champs. Hobart to St. Helens www.tasorienteering.asn.au

Nov 19-20 AUS MTB-O Champs, Maryborough & Bendigo, Victoria

Dec 27-31 Snowy Christmas 5 Days, Jindabyne, NSW

O ri e n t e e r i n g A u s tralia photo archive PETER CUSWORTH maintains an archive of the digital photo files which have been used in The Australian Orienteer. These photo files can be made available for press releases or special promotional projects.

Any material costs will be passed on to users.

Contact Peter on 03 5968 5254 or cusworth@netspace.net.au

2007

April 6-15 Burra to Barossa 2007, Aus 3‑Days & Middle-dist Champs Sth Australia. www.oasa.asn.au/2007

2004 Victorian Championships – Barambogie Fast! Open! Gentle climbs!

IF you think that can’t be Barambogie then think again. This year’s Victorian Championships on 11 September will take place in the gentle northern section of the forest that hosted the memorable Australian Championships two years ago.

While competitors in 2003 battled their way around tough, steep courses and picked their way through lots of rocks, this year’s event will feature open forest, less rock (but still challenging detail), at least one mega (ultra-long) leg per course, undulating terrain and none of the heart-stopping climbs of two years ago.

Event parking and the start/finish area will be within 100 metres of each other, and a spectator control will feature on all but the very shortest courses. There’ll be prizes in the younger categories and the course setters (both Sledgers) have set a special Sledge course featuring prizes for all the usual categories, downhill leg, etc.

The Victorian Championships takes place three weeks before the Australian Championships carnival in Tasmania and is a perfect chance to fine tune your skills in first-rate terrain without blowing a gasket physically.

More information is on the VIC Champs website. Look for the link on the VOA web site at www.vicorienteering.asn.au On the afternoon before the Champs there will be a familiarisation event on the Beechworth Gorge map.

There is lots of accommodation in Chiltern (5 mins from the start/ finish area) and in Beechworth and Wangaratta (both 25 mins away).

Campers are welcome to join event organisers in the start/finish area.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 47

48 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

MTB-O

The MTB-O pages supported by Warren and Tash Key from The MELBOURNE BICYCLE CENTRE, CLIFTON HILL – ph. 03 9489 5569

MTB-O Training From Kay Haarsma, National MTB-O Coach for the World MTB-O Championships last October.

TRAINING for MTBO involves more than just logging up long hours in the saddle. To ride fast and powerfully in all sorts of terrain you have to simulate these physiological requirements in training. The examples below of training done by Belinda Allison and Adrian Jackson in the lead-up to the 2004 WMTBO Championships are excellent models of the specificity needed. They also show good time management, in that both were working or studying full time.

Belinda Allison:

Adrian Jackson:

I

I

work full-time from 9-5 and fit my training around that. I usually ride to and from work, which is about 20 kms a day, but this is in addition to my training. (Note at 5.30am in Canberra it can be minus 7oC) Summer 03/04 - I really just kept building my base, competing in any races (MTBO, cross-country, 12-hour), doing the Thursday night dirt criteriums (25 minutes flat chat) and doing a hill session (Mt Stromlo - long, gradual 20 minute climbs). I would also go to the gym twice a week (total about 2 hours). I kept up that sort of training until June, but increased my volume and added some running and more long mountain bike rides in the later months.

June to August - I began to increase my intensity. Here is a typical hard week: Monday (am) - easy run (45 mins); (pm) - gym (60 mins+, including muscle endurance and power exercises); Tuesday (am) – mountain bike ride, about 2hours; (pm) - aerobic threshold intervals on wind trainer (eg 4x4mins with sustained HR around threshold level) - an absolute killer! Total about 45 mins; Wednesday (am) - running intervals (about 5x4 mins, again tried to keep HR high) - about 60 mins total; (pm) - spin class at the gym - fun and warm! High intensity, sprints etc. - about 45 mins; Thursday (am) – mountain bike sprints (15 secs flat out, then 45 secs recovery x5, then x10, then x5.Do 3 sets of this); (pm) - gym (60 mins) & ‘armchair’ session looking at maps, deciding route choices under time pressure, etc); Friday - road bike hill reps, Red Hill (quite steep climb, 5x5 mins) - about 100 mins total; Saturday - long ride (about 2.5 hours); Sunday - race or MTBO technical training (about 2 hours +) Total = 15-17 hours per week.

I would mix up the types of intensity training, sometimes adding a sort of ‘fartlek’ type session, or omit a lower quality session if I was tired. I would use the spa and plunge pool at the AIS once a week, and tried to make sure I recovered properly with good sleep and food.

Costs: Last year I travelled to competitions or training interstate at least every 2nd weekend, which was expensive - (20+trips). I also spent about $2,000 upgrading my bike and equipment for the World Champs.

I was able to do spin classes for free due to sponsorship, and we received some money from Orienteering ACT, and from Orienteering Australia, all of which was a great help.

Belinda during her silver medal ride at Castlemaine.

Photo: Thierry Sabadel

’M a student in the 4th year of my Aerospace Engineering degree at Monash University. The course is 5 years, and so far I have maintained a HD (High Distinction) average. Last year the average contact hours was around 24 hrs a week, but that has dropped to around 20 hrs now.

Obviously there’s a “bit” of study on top of that!

Over the summer just gone I worked with a company called “CRC (Cooperative Research Centre) for Advanced Composite Structures” in Fishermans Bend, Melbourne. CRC-ACS is in partnership with Hawker de Havilland who have been given the responsibility for developing and manufacturing the trailing edge devices (flaps, ailerons, etc) for the new Boeing 787 aircraft. My course would allow me to work in many engineering fields, but the pinnacle would be to work for an aircraft manufacturer like Boeing or Airbus.

Training towards WMTBO - after Easter ‘04 I started doing lots of strength training to build up muscle strength specific to cycling.

During winter ‘04 in the endurance training phase I was doing lots of long road and mountain bike rides. My longest rides were around 4hrs, and typical weeks were 15hrs in total.

In the preparation phase I then did lots and lots of intervals. Initially shorter intervals (1-4 min), to build up peak power, and then longer intervals (10-20 min) to increase the time for which you can sustain the power. Most intervals were either on the road or indoor trainer.

Throughout the different training phases I was also doing technical mountain bike rides and races to maintain bike handling skills, and O training to hone map reading and decision making.

On the money side, I spend a lot on maintaining my bikes and buying new equipment and gear for riding. You need a lot to wear when riding day-in day-out during winter in Melbourne! My race bike is worth around $7000, which I got though Warren Key at Melbourne Bicycle Centre. I also spent around $2500 on my other bike, other equipment and clothes over the past two years.

2004 was an amazing year for me in MTBO. I won the Australian MTBO Championships in Queensland, just after Easter on a limited preparation.

In the MTBO WOC trials in Bendigo I had a ‘dnf’ through a mechanical failure whilst leading one race, and finished second to Alex Randall in the other. The ‘Worlds’ were an amazing experience, as I had never competed at an international level in MTBO and had no expectations on how I would go. Three medals from three races is probably something which I may not achieve again!

Apart from MTBO races I competed in many foot-O events in elite men, including Easter, national league rounds and AUS champs. I also regularly raced in cross-country mountain bike events, including some National Rounds and the National Champs where I finished third in Expert Men. I am currently hunting for sponsors, but I have had a lot of support from Warren Key at Melbourne Bicycle Centre over the past years.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 49

The MTB-O pages supported by Warren and Tash Key from The MELBOURNE BICYCLE CENTRE, CLIFTON HILL – ph. 03 9489 5569

MTB-O

YOU CAN WIN A Mountain Bike & Mapboard, Compass and Back Packs All you have to do is to take part, and you are automatically in the draw For MTB Orienteers All Australian registered orienteers who take part in three or more official MTB-O events in Australia from June 2004 to Queens Birthday weekend, June 2005, will be automatically entered into the draw to win the Mountain Bike valued at $1799 from Melbourne Bicycle Centre (Clifton Hill) plus a Miry Mapboard.

PLUS Map Board RRP $139

Jamis Exile –

RRP $1799

FRAME: Reynolds 520 Chromoly. FORKS: Manitou Axel Super.

BRAKES: Avis BB5 Cable Disc. DRIVETRAIN: 27 Sram X-7.

WHEEL SET: Alex TD17 Disc Rims and Shimano Deore Hubs.

EXTRA: TruVativ Parts, Hutchinson Tyres. COLOUR: Ano Black

BUY THIS BIKE NOW: Special offer to orienteers, freight to anywhere just $1100 inc. in Australia

MELBOURNE CENTRE

Contact Warren Key at Melbourne Bicycle Centre – Clifton Hill for all of your MTB-O needs – 03 9489 5569.

For Foot Orienteers All Australian registered orienteers M/W19 or older in 2005 who take part in both the Australian Individual Championships 2004 and in the Australian (Easter) Three Days 2005 will be automatically entered into the draw to win a Silva 5NL Compass or one of 4 Snowgum Back Packs.

5NL Turbo compass valued at $68

Competition baseplate model with quick needle dampening. Hand contoured baseplate with sure-grip rubber feet. Front end map scales, !:10000 and 1:15000.

4 Snowgum Back Packs:

22 litre, padded harness, padded back, adjustable waist belt. Zippered opening, front pocket.

Promotion rules – 1. The promotion starts 1 June 2004 and runs until and including Queens Birthday Weekend 2005. 2. Prizes are as described on page 7 of The Australian Orienteer, June 2004. They must be taken as offered and are not exchangeable for cash. No person may win more than one prize. 3. The draw for prizes will be conducted by Orienteering Australia. Winners will be notified and names will be published in The Australian Orienteer, September 2005. 4. Eligibility for prizes is: mountain bike and MTB-O map board– all registered orienteers who take part in three or more official MTB-O events in the promotion period. Other prizes – all registered orienteers M/W19 or older in 2005 who take part in both the Australian Individual Championships 2004 and in the Australian (Easter) Three Days 2005.

50 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Profile of a Mapper

ANDREW SLATTERY ANDREW is the new “young gun” on the mapping scene. He’s only 20 years old, is studying 2nd year medical science, and aims to also do a medical degree.

Started Orienteering - Andrew was a product of the Marryatville High School (SA) stable of orienteers. “I had to choose a sport to do in year 8. I didn’t like football, was too “unco” for most others, so went out to see what this “O-sport” was all about. I was immediately hooked on the mental challenge and the way each course was different. The school trips to Wilpena, Burra, the Vic Schools Championships, and especially the Easter 3-Days at Daylesford and Goulbourn were highlights. I especially like MTBO and night events and also Rogaines.”

Andrew is an excellent navigator but has a dislike of running training.

Mapping. His first map was a re-map of Anstey Hill (small bush map) in 2001 for his club Tintookies. “I thought it would be interesting to see how hard it was to do. Fellow club member Barry Wheeler taught me the initial skills and I found that I really liked it. I then went on to re-do our school map and various other local foot-O maps, before helping with my first MTBO map at Mt Crawford in the Adelaide Hills.”

How did you get to be a mapper for the MTBO “Worlds”?

“Kay Haarsma suggested that I should ‘learn from the maestro’ and attend a 3-day workshop with Rob Plowright in January 2004. I learnt heaps from this and Blake Gordon saw what I could produce and offered me some work. A little became a lot, and over the next 8 months I spent all my holidays in Victoria. I did about half of the five World Champs maps, in conjunction with Reuben Smith, as well as totally re-doing two of the training maps by myself. I also was solely responsible for the new Australian trial map at Wildflower Hill, Bendigo.

What feedback did you get about the maps?

“I actually went to the WMTBO championships and spoke to many of the riders and they were all really positive which was very pleasing.

I think it helped that the areas chosen were all quite different, so this made the riding enjoyable. My favourite area was Maryborough, for its technical difficulty.”

Any funny incidents while you were doing those maps?

“Quite a few actually. In Ballarat, I got in the way of a police stakeout on a drug bust. In Castlemaine I crashed my bike when riding home from the forest. I knocked myself unconscious and got found by a passing walker. On one bus trip to Ballarat, my changeover bus failed to appear in Horsham. I rang the bus company and they eventually provided me with a 300 km taxi trip for my bike, computer and myself at a cost of $300. Not bad seeing I only paid $30 for my ticket.”

You’ve been spending every University holiday and long weekends in Victoria, so what else have you mapped?

“I updated the Nerrina/White Swan map for the Deaflympics and the National League foot-O races. I’ve also re-fieldworked the WOC trial map near Daylesford and made a new MTBO map at Macedon Forest. Further north I’ve done a new MTBO map near Stanley (Devil’s Elbow Gap); redone Nail Can Hill as a MTBO map and tidied up several street maps for the Albury Wodonga club. You will also see my name on a variety of Melbourne school and street maps, including Lysterfield Park. These have been done electronically, with Peta Whitford sending me the fieldwork and I put them on OCAD. What do you like about mapping?

“I like being outdoors and having the challenge of interpreting the terrain and making a readable map for the runner or rider. Additionally it’s great meeting and staying with all the different orienteers who accommodate me while I’m mapping.”

Future ambitions?

“To do more major maps in Australia and perhaps to find some mapping overseas.”

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LATE NEWS

Australian Middle-distance Championships - Ganguddy DAVE SHEPHERD and Tracy Bluett took out the open classes at the Australian Middle-distance Championships, held in the sandstone of Ganguddy in central New South Wales on April 24. Shepherd was particularly impressive in his victory, scoring by three minutes in a strong field. He had opened up that three-minute gap over Grant Bluett by control 6, the most technical section of the course, and held it to the end. Completing the placings, in his best result for some years, was veteran Jock Davis, who took 3rd late in the course after Rob Preston stumbled at the first control of the final loop.

W21E was a much closer affair with a tight battle between Tracy Bluett and Jo Allison, both of whom had excellent runs. After some dicing early, Bluett took the lead by halfway and held it to the end of the course; the gap never got bigger than 23 secs, and Allison had closed it to 12 secs by the last control, but that was as close as she was able to get. It was Bluett’s best result of the year and further underlined her claims to a World Championships Team place. Hanny Allston lost two minutes at 3, but was consistent over the rest of the course to place 3rd, that two-minute gap remaining more or less constant to the end.

The junior fields were thin, particularly the men. There was some quality in W20E where Erin Post continued her good form from the last two days of Easter to take the race out by a minute over Ainsley Cavanagh, whilst Chris Naunton prevailed in a small M20E field.

Cockatoos lead National League after 7 rounds The Canberra Cockatoos have a comfortable lead in the National League after 7 rounds. Their already strong team has been strengthened further by the return of several runners who have been based in Europe in recent years, including Grant Bluett, Tom Quayle and Dave Shepherd. Their 18-point break will be difficult to overcome, but there is a tight battle for 2nd place between the NSW Stingers and the Victorian Nuggets, as there was last year. NSW took advantage of home ground over the Anzac weekend to take a sevenpoint lead at the halfway mark of the season.

Grant Bluett, with wins in the last two rounds, has taken a sixpoint lead over Julian Dent in the individual competition. It looks to be a race between those two, although Dave Shepherd may still be close enough to be a contender if he finishes the season well.

Jo Allison has a comfortable lead amongst the women, and Hanny Allston has a narrow lead over Tracy Bluett in the battle for 2nd.

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Queensland Championships Jimboomba, 27 & 28 August 2005 THIS year’s 2-day Queensland Championships will be conducted in the Flagstone Creek area, near Jimboomba, about 30 mins drive south of Brisbane in the Beaudesert Shire.

The terrain is traditional spur/gully with gently sloping lowlands and forested hills. In the lowlands, the grassy clearings are interspersed with lantana thickets, while the steeper areas have little understorey vegetation and the occasional rock feature.

The area has not previously been used for Orienteering and the new map will be at a scale of 1:10,000 for the shorter and easier courses and 1:15,000 for the longer ones.

Starting times for the Championships will be from 12.30pm on the Saturday and from 9.00am on the Sunday.

A range of accommodation is available in nearby Beaudesert (www. beaudeserttourism.com.au) tel: (07) 5541 4495, or in the southern suburbs of Brisbane.

Entry forms can be obtained from the Championship website: www. qoa.asn.au/champs or by contacting Pam Cox on (07) 3343 4284 or e-mail: pamelacox@powerup.com.au The closing date for entries is Monday 1st August.

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COACHING

Neville Bleakley

Evaluating Orienteering Performance with GPS – the Journey so Far

other system she used) but I won’t go into those in this article. If you want to know more, ask Cassie.

Software. Data is just data unless it can be presented in a timely, convenient way to the user. GPSports’ software was way ahead of any of its rivals in early 2004 but now FRWD seems to be challenging that. Orienteers relate everything to an Orienteering map. Experience at ACTAS suggests that the power of a device will not be exploited unless the software presents results in a simple, familiar and convenient way - on the relevant map. The ACTAS project stalled in 2004 until such a solution could be found.

Rex Saye. Rex Saye is the Canberra-based developer of CORPSE, the software that puts courses on Orienteering maps. He sells CORPSE to orienteers all over the world. I explained my dilemma with GPS to Rex and - to cut a very long story short - he set about developing a software system (OTrack) to meet our need. “It will keep me off the streets” said Rex, who is retired from full-time work. OTrack was designed to put SPI-10 data on an Orienteering map. Cassie carried out trials of each prototype, and we all made suggestions for improvement. Rex’s attitude was constantly “What do you need? – just tell me and I’ll do it”.

I suspect that this project will never have an end, as there are so many ways that data can be presented to an orienteer, and so many views on what a coach and/or an elite orienteer think is important.

However, Rex has developed a system whereby an orienteer can choose any point on their course on the relevant map, and OTrack will provide data on such things as speed, effort and climb as well as showing where the orienteer actually went - every second of their course. OTrack does more than that – it enables orienteers to have their data compared with others doing the same course, and much more. Suddenly the ACTAS GPS project had legs again.

Methodology. GPS can be used in two ways. It can be used on a fixed terrain loop to measure an orienteer’s fitness on the differing types of terrain in the loop. On a terrain loop there are no navigation challenges. The segment times, heart rates and speed (or lack of it) are used to measure fitness/skill in specific types of terrain: uphill legs, contouring, downhill-on-track, downhillin-terrain, cross-country, and so on. At ACTAS we use a terrain loop on Black Mountain. Data from this loop will replace all laboratory-based methods of measuring fitness. A suitable terrain loop could be anywhere in the world for athletes based overseas, as long as they could access the same loop over time. Data is easily transportable over the internet. The second way of using a GPS system is to compare athlete performances over the same courses – in a competition setting. ACTAS has done little of this so far but – with a recent order for seven more SPI-10 units to make a total of ten available to the Orienteering squad - this will change.

Recent Trials. The GPS team carried out a trial of SPI-10 and OTrack at the recent OACT event at Orroral Valley. Cassie and I did the same course. I am embarrassed to say that the “wiggles” in Cassie’s route were deliberate on her part, but clearly not on mine - much to Rex’s amusement. Later in the week, in the presence of Grant Bluett, coach of the Canberra Cockatoos and Jim Russell, the National Senior Squad coach, we used the same system for a terrain trial on Black Mountain with Troy de Haas. Troy’s results were available for him to view within minutes of him completing his run.

The Future. Competition is now appearing, showing that others share ACTAS’s long-held view on the value of GPS for performance analysis. That competition will also, in time, drive price down further. Rex Saye and ACTAS are considering ways to proceed for further development of OTrack. GPS for performance evaluation of orienteers is here to stay.

I

N the December 2003 edition of The Australian Orienteer I wrote an article comparing “old” ways of evaluating Orienteering performance with a new way using a GPS system developed by a Canberra-based firm (GPSports) using a device called a SPI-10 and an integrated software package. At that time, our small team at ACTAS (ACT Academy of Sport) had only used the system a few times, but we were confident that the technology would change the way we measured and evaluated orienteering performances. “GPS was here to stay”, I wrote. Eighteen months later, I have no reason to change that view, but will admit that the journey has had its challenges.

Cost. The cost ($1,500) of the system developed by GPSports has been a deterrent. Many orienteers will spend a couple of hundred dollars on a new device that they think might help them, but $1,500? – not readily. Academies or Institutes of Sport may be a different matter, as most have budgets for performance analysis.

In June 2003 the ACTAS squad bought three SPI-10s. I understand that GPSports Pty Ltd has sold hundreds of such systems to sports in Australia and overseas. It’s most likely those sports have access to more funds than Orienteering, but perhaps they can appreciate their value. $1,500 is not a lot of money to invest in something that will give an athlete an edge over his/her rivals at world championship level.

Cheaper Alternatives. Investigations have been carried out in Canberra into cheaper devices. However, those alternatives need to have a compatible software package. Recent trials by Cassie Trewin and Rex Saye (more on Rex below) have shown that the Gecko GPS system is suitable for some applications and can be used for Orienteering map-making. The Gecko costs approx $250 – even less on e-bay - so it’s cost is in the ball-park for the average orienteer.

However, it all depends on what you want to do with it.

FRWD. A Finnish system has recently appeared that looks impressive from its web site www.frwd.com. The price is still high for the average Australian orienteer, being approx $A960.

Use. The most obvious use for any GPS system in Orienteering is to tell an orienteer where he/she has been. ACTAS’s first “live” trial was at the Orienteering event at the 2003 Masters’ Games in Canberra, and that was indeed what the three volunteer masters orienteers wanted most of all. However, when the system was used later with elites, the elites didn’t want that sort of information – they knew where they had been (for better or for worse). They wanted to know how fast they had done certain legs, with what effort (heart rate), where they had stopped or slowed down, or whether they really had been “steady” on a certain segment. They wanted to know about the quality of their run, and how they compared with others who had done the same course.

It’s Horses for Courses. Gecko does not measure heart rate, so any measure of effort is not available, whereas the SPI-10 and the two FRWD models do. Frankly, as a coach, I want to know how much effort an elite orienteer is expending at a particular point on his/her route – it can tell me a lot about an orienteer’s fitness, running strategy and/or mental resolve. So I would prefer the SPI10 (and probably the FRWD, but I haven’t used one yet) any day, and would think the extra cost worth it – for an elite. I suspect that most non-elites in the sport of Orienteering would settle for less information, and that the Gecko (or some equivalent, lowercost device) might suit their requirements provided there is useful software. Incidentally, Cassie’s trials showed that the SPI-10 had several other advantages over the Gecko (and certainly over any 52 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Editor’s note – an FRWD device was supplied to each competitor in the recent World Ski-O Championships, held in Finland. The device was strapped to the back of their map-holders and information on position, speed, heart-rate, temperature, etc was downloaded when competitors completed their courses. Competitors could not access the data on the course.

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OFFICIAL NEWS Annual General Meeting The AGM of Orienteering Australia was held in Jindabyne, NSW on 27th March during the Easter Carnival. Representatives of all States and a number of observers attended the meeting where the main business was the adoption of the Annual Report and Annual Financial Report for 2004 and the election and appointment of officers of OA for 2005.

OA Board President Bob McCreddin WA Director (Administration) Dave Lotty NSW Director (Finance) Kathy Liley VIC Director (Development) Bob Mouatt ACT Director (Technical) Andy Hogg ACT Director (High Performance) Michael Dowling TAS Committee Chairpersons Coaching Nev Bleakley ACT Development & Participation vacant Events Hugh Cameron VIC High Tech Ron Pallas NSW Mapping Noel Schocknecht WA MTB Orienteering Blake Gordon VIC Publications David Hogg ACT Ski Orienteering vacant Technical Dick Ogilvie NSW Other Appointments Auditor Colin Morgans VIC Badge Scheme Secretary John Oliver NSW Public Officer Bob Allison ACT

Member Protection What is it?

Dave Lotty, AO Director (Administration)

A

T the Orienteering Australia Annual Conference in December the States all adopted a standard Member Protection Policy (as set by the Australian Sports Commission) to provide guidelines for the protection of the health, safety and well being of all Orienteering Australia members and those who participate in Orienteering whether organised by a State Association or a club. The complete policy may be found on the OA website http://www.orienteering. asn.au under Administration, Operational Manual at Leaflet 4.10.

The Policy sets out the procedures to be followed in dealing with harassment, discrimination and other misconduct in an effective, appropriate and timely manner. It provides a procedure for informal and formal resolution of complaints and applies to committee members, employees, coaches, officials and competitors.

It will require OA, States or clubs employing people (in a paid or voluntary capacity) who will or are likely to travel away with orienteers under 18 years of age, or are likely to have individual and unsupervised contact with orienteers under 18 years of age, to be screened by obtaining a police check. The purpose of the Police Check is to see whether the person has any previous relevant criminal convictions. If the Police Check reveals that the person has committed any criminal offences involving a serious sex offence, assault against a person or an offence that in any way involved persons under 18 years of age, then they must not be appointed.

It also proscribes harassment, discrimination or other misconduct in any form. Harassment is any behaviour that is offensive, abusive, belittling or threatening and which is directed at a person or a group of people because of a particular characteristic of that person or group of people. The behaviour must be unwelcome and the sort of behaviour a reasonable person would recognise as being unwelcome and likely to cause the recipient to feel

54 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER JUNE 2005

Dave Lotty, Director (Administration)

Schools Liaison Wendy Read QLD Statisticians Darryl Erbacher ACT & Bruce Arthur VIC Other items of interest included: • Adoption of the 2005-08 OA Operational Plan • Adoption of the 2006 subscription rate for The Australian Orienteer at $4.10 per copy ($16.40 per year). This is a 10c per copy increase over 2005.

• From 2008, all Australian Championships (Long, Middle, Sprint and Relay) will be scheduled on two successive weekends (with the possible use of the intervening Friday). The actual program make-up will be at the discretion of the organising State.

• Adoption of an Orienteering Australia Athlete of the Year Award.

The first award for 2004 was made to Adrian Jackson VIC. • Adoption of the National League Funding proposal with minor amendment to the conditions for support for 2005 only.

Silva Orienteering Awards Each year OA awards three trophies made available by Silva. The trophies were presented at the Australian 3-Days to: • I an Hassall (NSW) for the Silva Medal (Orienteer of the Year) for 2004 •B lake Gordon (VIC) for services to Australian Orienteering. The award was made to recognize Blake’s contributions (among others) as Organiser of the World MTBO Championships in 2004.

•W arren Key (VIC) for services to Australian Orienteering Coaching.

This was in recognition of his contribution as National Senior Coach from 1999-2003.

offended, humiliated or intimidated. Whether or not the behaviour is Harassment is determined from the point of view of the person receiving the Harassment. Discrimination is treating or proposing to treat a person less favourably than someone else in certain areas of public life on the basis of an attribute or personal characteristic they have. Misconduct includes conduct at an event that brings Orienteering into disrepute, damage to property at an event, consuming alcohol (if under 18) or being drunk and disorderly at any activity held or sanctioned by an Orienteering organization, or other disruptive behaviour.

To protect the health, safety and well being of all the people participating in Orienteering, Orienteering Australia has developed a number of Codes of Behaviour which are set out in the Policy.

There are a General Code of Behaviour and Codes of Behaviour for Participants, Administrators, Coaches, Officials, Parents and Spectators Any person may make a complaint about a person to whom the Policy applies, if they consider that person has committed a breach.

The complaint should be made to a Member Protection Officer (MPO). The Australian Sports Commission maintains contact details for most MPOs on its web site at http://www.ausport.gov.au/ethics/ memprot.asp. Not all are listed on the ASC web site as some opt not to be named on it. Five orienteers are currently listed on the ASC web site. It is not necessary for the complainant to lodge a complaint with a MPO in the same State or within the same sport.

The policy is now in place for your protection so if you consider you have been the subject of any form of harassment, discrimination or other misconduct, do not be afraid to use the policy and its procedures and processes to protect your interests.

Should you have difficulty in locating an appropriate MPO or have any inquiries regarding other matters relating to the policy you may seek help from AO Director (Administration), Dave Lotty, AO Director (Development) Bob Mouatt, or the ASC by calling (02) 6214 1111 and asking to speak with somebody in the Ethics in Sport Unit.

RUNNING THE BUSINESS

Bob Mouatt, Director (Development)

National Orienteering Day

The ASC has recommended that NSOs develop strategies under nine headings: • Long Term Involvement • Getting Young People Involved • Physical Growth and Maturation • Sport Pathways • Forming Links • People Making It Happen • Quality Coaching • Making Sport Safe • The Law and Sport However, it is not essential to use all of the headings and Swimming Australia has developed a national policy with the following headings: • Getting young people involved for the long-term • Swimmer development and pathways • Forming links • Quality coaching of junior swimmers • Making swimming safe Swimming Australia has released a brochure on its strategies and Orienteering could benefit from having a close look at it, as there are a number of issues that are common to both sports, but Orienteering Australia will not be seeking a quick solution. The aim will be to consult widely both within and outside of the sport with the aim of presenting the final version of the framework to the OA Annual Conference in December 2006, with it to come into effect progressively during 2007. Coincidentally, 2007 is the year when Australia will be hosting the World Junior Championships (JWOC 2007). A draft will be presented to the 2005 Annual Conference in December.

Sunday 1 May 2005 was National Orienteering Day and as I collate the results from the events held I have the impression that the Day was a most successful one. I was pleased that on the Day we had 18 events scheduled, with at least one in each State and Territory.

While other countries, Sweden, Switzerland, the USA have held National Orienteering Days, this was a first for Australia.

The purpose of a National Orienteering Day is to focus on providing opportunities for people to ‘Give Orienteering a Go’ at an ideal time of the year. Early May is the ideal time in most parts of the world to go Orienteering and in most of Australia it is especially good as the weather is cool, yet not cold and there are usually plenty of follow-up events during the rest of May and in June.

While I could have done more to promote the Day, it was a matter of priorities and I simply did not have the time in the months leading up to it. Nonetheless some States seized the opportunity to use the Day to their advantage.

Queensland used it to seek a grant from the Brisbane City Council to promote an ‘activeandhealthy’ lifestyle; Tasmania used it to launch the Australian Championships Carnival and Western Australia used it to seek funds for top elites Jo Allison and David Shepherd to visit the State to conduct clinics.

Each State reported to the 2005 National Development Conference (Canberra 30-31 May) on how the Day went for them. Regardless of the number of new orienteers National Orienteering Day attracts, I would like to keep it going as I consider that in time it will gain better recognition and be a source of recruits and publicity for our sport.

Junior Sport Framework The 2005 National Development Conference was held in Canberra on 30-31 May. Each State had at least one representative. One of the key activities was to start the process of developing a national Junior Sport Framework. The ASC has recommended that all national sporting organizations develop such a framework and has provided guidelines and a template for developing such.

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You can now receive an e-mail notification whenever a new issue of O-zine is released.

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Books on orienteering

There are a great number of books on all aspects of orienteering. For a list and prices contact: Orienteering Services of Australia 44 Alexandra Parade, Clifton‑Hill VIC 3068 Phone (03) 9489 9766 Email info@macson.com.au

Do you have an insurance policy with EIG Ansvar?

The arrangement between EIG Ansvar and Orienteering Australia includes the provision that OA receives commissions, of 15% on house and contents insurance and 5% on motor insurance. OA uses the proceeds to help fund international teams.

Obviously EIG Ansvar can credit commissions to OA only when the person taking out the policy tells them he/she is an orienteer.

New Policy notices and Renewal notices record this notification, so when you get one, please check that it says the policy is under the OA arrangement.

If you find that OA is not mentioned on your Insurance documentation, please contact EIG-Ansvar and advise them of the need for the policy to be amended to record the OA connection.

EIG-Ansvar can be contacted by email:- insure@eigansvar.com.au or write to EIG-Ansvar Limited, GPO Box 1655N Melbourne, 3000 Victoria.

EIG-Ansvar will be pleased to hear from you and will immediately make any necessary changes.

The information required by EIG-Ansvar is: Your Name, Address and Policy number/s.

JUNE 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER 55

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