National Junior Development Camp

Tasmania – January 2023

In the lead up to the Oceania Championships, from the 3-5 January 2023, a National Junior Development Camp was held in Launceston, Tasmania. Training sessions were conducted on nearby maps, and evening debriefings were held in the Hadspen Memorial Hall.

The first training was at Windsor Park Precinct. It began with a short warm-up course in the parkland, followed by a Puzzle O, which predominately utilised the St Anthony’s Primary School on the eastern side of the park. The Puzzle O had each leg individually displayed in map excerpts, with odd and even legs on the opposite sides of the page. The purpose was to only flip your map when you reached a control to prevent planning ahead. This meant that at a control you had to quickly locate your next leg among legs scattered randomly on the page, and then make a snap decision on your route choice. We were given post-training-reflection sheets to analyse how we think we went and what we could do to improve our performance in the future.

On the western side of the map, at the Launceston Christian School, we again started with a short warm-up sprint course. The training had two maps, on which alternating legs were blanked out so you couldn’t see the map section for the leg you were running. This aimed to practice map memory, to always read one control ahead of where you were, to run the leg from memory, whilst planning the next.

That evening there was the first of two debriefing sessions at the Hadspen Memorial Hall. After reflecting on the training, with Brodie and course setter

Rachel, an interview panel was set up with the attending 2022 JWOC representatives, Sam, Rachel (Great Britain), Nea and Ethan. Following some discussion about the races and their experiences, the conversation moved on to their preparation prior to JWOC, specifically how much orienteering training they did and their weekly kilometres. Their responses are listed below:

Ethan:

42–55 km per week when pushing for JWOC.

Approximately two O training sessions per week.

Sam:

50–70 km per week. Not much technical training but went to granite a couple of times for practice.

Rachel:

<20 km per week due to injury. Not too much O training.

Nea:

40–45 km per week. Tried to get on a map. Hill sprints for strength on inclines.

Some general advice was also shared. This included easing down on training closer to a major competition, and walking training. Perhaps the most important advice for those aspiring for higher level representation was to not take everything too seriously all the time. If you do, then you’ll cease to enjoy the sport. Don’t fixate on weekly kilometres and don’t destroy your body, you still have plenty of years of high-level competition ahead of you. If you ruin yourself now, you’ll never be able to make it later.

Wednesday training was at Royal George, southeast of Launceston. Warmup was a game in which everyone secretly picked a “bomb” and “shield” person, and had to keep the shield between themselves and the bomb. We first did a corridor course with a few warm-up controls, and a short control pick midway around. Corridors are great training where navigation from specific features is forced, and to practice running direct route choices using only features very close to the line. After training in a corridor, navigating with the whole map feels easy.

Following that was an “expect the unexpected” training to practice coping with distractions out in the terrain. The format was mass start intervals, to simulate head-to-head racing, and there were dummy controls, coaches in the terrain shouting misleading information about the whereabouts of controls, and a control in a blanked-out section of the map.

That evening, Brodie gave a presentation about physical training. The common theme was the repeated recommendation to get a coach. On Thursday the warmup was “stuck in the mud”, after which we had a peg race at Trevallyn. The peg race included a mass start, with the first couple of runners who find each control taking a peg that was clipped onto the control, then running to an extra penalty control. When the pegs ran out the rest of the group were able to skip the penalty control to catch back up, so the pack stayed together. This was a fun and competitive conclusion to the camp and allowed us to practice some of the techniques we had learnt in a more fast-paced setting.

Overall, the camp was a fantastic experience, and it was great to be able to gain a variety of tips, tricks and knowledge from each other and older, experienced orienteers. A huge thankyou to everyone who was involved in organising, running, and helping at the camp, we’re grateful for the effort you put in to provide opportunities like this, and we look forward to making the most out of similar opportunities in the future.

Q&A with Sam about the camp

SOPHIE: What was your favourite orienteering activity and why?

SAM: Royal George corridor because I like the challenge of navigating with only a small sliver of the map, it was nice terrain and well-set. There were enough features to navigate by but obvious features that I’d usually navigate off were just outside the corridor so I was unable to use them. Also, Ethan managed to find my whistle which I dropped, proving that I was within the corridor.

What do you think was the most useful thing you learnt?

Don’t trust Tasmanian tracks (I had some trouble with indistinct tracks at Royal George, and it proved good to know, as I also completely missed crossing a track in the Oceania Long Distance).

Is there anything you’d like to see at a camp in the future? (Specific training or training focus, layout etc).

Star relay (with teams comprised of people from different age groups) because it’s a fun and friendly competition, and a good social experience in the team.