Silent auction sneak peak

As I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my plane I figured I would give everyone a peak at an item I'm bringing with me to the silent auction. 

Blue Hills by Bryan Chubb

Painted in the 1980's possibly at Myrtle Lake, BC.

More details at Bryan's site: http://tinyurl.com/l4oktca

Don't forget your wallet and remember you can always appoint someone to bid for you if you are not able to make it to COC's. Just give them an idea of what you'd like and a price limit. There will be plenty of goodies up for grabs, and the HPP will be very grateful of all your support as always.

A report from Alberta Champs

Alberta Champs were held this year in and around Calgary. It was uncertain for a while if they were going to happen as there had been extensive flooding in Calgary and area in the spring. This caused areas that were to be used for the events to be closed and damage to roadways that will take a long time to clean up. However, with a team of very dedicated volunteers, new locations were found and the weekend turned out to be wonderful! A big Thank you to all of those numerous people who put a lot of effort in with short notice and made this weekend so great!

The weekend started off with a sprint at the University of Calgary. For me, who had not been on a map since the spring, it was a good wakeup call with some fast paced decisions and a reminder of how I need to do more intensity! Super fast and fun race! 

The second event was the middle on the new Connop Creek map near Bragg Creek. As previously mentioned I had been unable to do any orienteering over the summer so my goal was to take it slow enough that I would stay in contact with the map and not have a large error. It worked for all the legs but two... and those legs didn’t go so well... one was particularly bad. We were warned before the race to make sure we knew the symbol for ‘rough open with scattered trees’ as some areas had been recently clear cut. This was very good advice, some areas had so many fallen logs it took nearly all my concentration to move, faster than a walk, through them without falling! (not that I can blame my navigational errors on the logs, in fact I would have been faster on a particular leg if I had walked…!)  It was a good learning day (as messing up in orienteering always is!) And as I had volunteered for control pick up, I got to head back to the area I had trouble with in the race, for more learning! 

The Sunday brought us the long event which was a gruelling 310meters of climb on a 6.3km course. Oh boy did I feel my legs after this weekend! After my abysmal control the day before my plan for the long was simple. Choose simple rout choices (taking into account elevation) and stick to them. It worked well. I wasn’t the fastest out there but I wasn’t the slowest. I even got to visit some of the hillier sections again with control pick up! Below are the links to the maps on Rout Gaget for your viewing pleasure!

Short - http://orienteering.ca/cgi-bin/reitti.pl?act=map&id=464&kieli=

Middle - http://orienteering.ca/cgi-bin/reitti.pl?act=map&id=465&kieli=

Long - http://orienteering.ca/cgi-bin/reitti.pl?act=map&id=466&kieli= 

One thing that I am going to take away from this event in preparation for Canadians is that to always remember that in Orienteering anything can happen. As proved to me in my sprint and middle, just because you have made a mistake does not mean others are having clean races and you are out of the running. Always race the whole race and get back in the game after a mistake, no matter how big or small! Hope everyone is as excited as me for Canadian Champs (although I think that part of that excitement for me is that I get to go a week without having to work a night shift!)

Happy Running!

BC Orienteering Champs

I've been feeling a bit under the weather lately. My course load leaves little time for anything but homework and causes a lot of stress. I'm unable to make GVOC's weekly events and the orienteering I have done has been mistake ridden. In short, Kendra's post describes my situation all to well.

However, this weekend, I was literally under the weather. The BC Orienteering champs took place in the pouring rain. The first event, a long, was held at Thetis lake. I was surprised to find myself swimming through raindrops rather than the expected salal. Instead, the course hopped between beautiful white hill tops.

In spite of, or possibly because of the downpour, the race was the most fun I've had orienteering since JWOC.

The other race at BC champs was a delightfully tricky sprint at the University of Victoria. Take a look and decide for yourself.

The identical looking student housing might explain my trouble with 7. Maybe my problems stemmed from being a UBC student racing on the UVic campus. Either way, the sprint gave me a chance to practice my mental fortitude for the upcoming Canadian Championship.

The BC orienteering champs were a blast but I'm sure the Canadian Championships will be even better.
Hope to see you there.

Perseverance!

It is always easy to stay motivated when things are going well. This is true for everything! Here, talking about orienteering, it is applicable in numerous ways. Currently, I’m unfortunately on the other side the equation: it is pretty hard to stay motivated when things are not going great. Well to clarify: that may be an overstatement, but its not going stellar. The orienteering that I have done during the past few weeks, I may have been lost more than I have been found! This is always hard on the mind and motivation.

Here comes the mental reframing and perseverance that needs to happen; especially when Canadian

Champs are a week away.

When things are not going great, I tend to think more about the expectations I place on myself and why I am not meeting them. THIS IS NOT HELPFUL! Even when I realize that I am not helping myself, it is hard to change the attitude. So here comes sport psychology. Stay in the moment. Focus on the process, not the result. These are key to overcoming the lack of motivation and frustration.

Focusing on the process, and staying in the moment, for me, capture the idea of completely letting go of any expectations you have of yourself. Thinking instead about the technical aspects, the physical aspects and the real reason why we orienteer: to have FUN!

When things are not going as planned, focusing on the basics gets you through and back to the enjoyment of sport. Coming into Canadians, this is my biggest goal. I will focus on the basics and just have fun getting out there. Happy orienteering! J

p.s. Thanks for the Ottawa Orienteering Club for putting on some great events that I could take advantage of!

HPP Silent Auction

Every year the High Performance Program holds a silent auction fundraiser at the Canadian Orienteering Championships. This year the silent auction will be at the Orienteering Canada Expo and Banquet on Saturday afternoon/evening in Hamilton, ON.

Members of the high performance program will be donating items, but we greatly appreciate donations from the Canadian orienteering community and their family and friends. If you would like to donate something, here are a few ideas:

• Could your club donate an entry to an upcoming event?
• Are you a crafter – can you donate something like a pair of home-made mittens or a hat? pottery? weaving? sculpture? jewellery? This could be the perfect place to try out something you've been eyeing on Pinterest or Craftgawker! 
• Are you a foodie – can you donate a jar of home-made jam, a batch of cookies, a ready-to-go home-made baking mix, some home-made granola? 
• Do you have a cabin or cottage that you could donate a gift certificate for a weekend or a week’s stay at?
• Do you live in a tourist destination and could offer B&B for a weekend or longer? (especially great if it was in conjunction with future orienteering events)
• Are you an artist – do you have a sketch of an orienteering scene, or a great photograph that you could put in a frame?
• Could you ask your local running/sport store to donate an item?
• Do you have a new unused item kicking around your house that you would love to get rid of – it might just be someone else’s treasure!
• other ideas? Think about what you would like to bid on.

If you have an item to donate, you can bring it with you to Hamilton or send it along with someone who is attending (Here’s the list of attendees). Or contact Charlotte MacNaughton to make other arrangements or if you have any questions.

You can also bring your item to the auction if you haven’t had a chance to submit it earlier. You can also leave it at the registration desk when you pick up your event package.

Your support is much appreciated… And if you are coming to the COCs, please bid generously! Don’t forget your wallet and/or your cheque book. Cash or cheque is the preferred payment method. But we can sort out other options if you don’t have enough cash or a cheque with you.

Those of you who have been to one before know that the Silent Auction is a lot of fun, often with frantic bidding as time runs out. You never know what the highly sought after items will be. And if you can’t make it to Hamilton this year, there is always the option of allowing a trusted friend to bid for you! Just give a budget limit and an idea of what you want.

The HPP is very appreciative of all the support we receive and we look forward to seeing you in Hamilton!

Night Orienteering in the Yukon

Tonight was our last orienteering event of the year - Night Orienteering!  Personally, my highlight of our local season. 

Why?

Now for those who haven't thought about it too much, one might ask "what is so special about that, isn't it always dark up north?"

Think a bit harder....

When is orienteering season for us?  When there is no snow!

When is there no snow?  Summer!  Does it ever get dark in the summer in the north?  NO!  Remember, we are known as the Land of the Midnight Sun.

So, darkness and no snow is a very precious window for us, and so over the last few years we've tried to squeak in a night orienteering event when it starts getting dark, but before the snow comes.  Actually, our first night-O event four years ago (at Yukon College map, thanks Bob for starting this up!) did have snow, but we've had lucky late-Septembers since then.

This year we squeaked in one last event.  The meet organizers figured it would only be the "hard-core" orienteers that might come out, so the decided to plan the race down on the Lorne Mountain map, about 40km south of Whitehorse.  This is the same map area that Yukon Orienteering hosted the 2011 Canadian Sprint Orienteering Championships if anyone remembers.  Typically, this map is "too far out of town" for our mainstream members, so we don't get a lot of use of it.    So this made it a double-treat: night orienteering on a super sweet, high-speed open forest map we don't get to run on very often.

Here's how it went down:

Waiting around for it to get dark.  Note Afan's washing machine drum-mobile fire pit - a life saver on a late September Yukon night!

The Boys are Back in Town - Caelen and Leif!

Leif figured mounting a car light on his head was a good idea.  Unfortunately, he forgot to fully charge it before the race.

Loading up control descriptions and getting ready to go!

Excellent - Sprint map in the nice stuff!  Parts of the Robinson Roadhouse map used for the 2011 COC Sprint.

Ah, this is what we are looking for - the night time flash of the control.

In reality, with a narrow-beam super headlamp this is what it looks like.  See the flash and run like heck towards it.

Afterwords, looking happy to have made it back.  A close race, everyone in the 20's minute range!  Ross, Erik and Caelen.

Figurin' where the race was won and lost afterwords.  Katherine and new baby in background.

Pretty darn fun!  Thanks Afan for being the event planner - a fun end to the season!

Wrapping up the season

As my orienteering season up here comes to an end I have a choice to make. This was my last year as a junior on the national team. Next year I will officially be a senior if I continue to orienteering. After I got back from JWOC I had a meeting with Brent to go over my races. After we talked about the races he asked me a very interesting question. He asked me, “ So now that you have been to JWOC and this also you last year as a junior do you think you will keep orienteering?” That thought had not crossed my mind. Am I done competing or doing I want to continue training and aim for WOC?

I feel like that is a big decision that every junior goes through when they are going to move up. It is not a question to take lightly. For the pass 2 years I have been traveling, working and training and I am now at that point in my life were I want to make a change. I have respect for all the orienteers who go to school, work and train their butts off.

I feel like for me it would be very hard to go to school, train for a big competition and also have a part-time job because you also have to take a moment to breathe. I feel that I have taken a long enough break form school and I am ready to go back. That helped me with my decision about if I want to keep orienteering. I decided Yes I do want to keep orienteering but I want to take a few years to get better first before I try for WOC or any of the other big events.

When I was thinking it over I kept thinking I love this sport and I don’t want to stop but I will have to slow down a little. I love all the opportunities I have had. I have met all lot of new people, made new friends and been to some amazing place just because I like to orienteering and it drives me to have these wonderful experiences. When it comes time for you to decide if you want to keep orienteering or not don’t make a snap decision, think it over long and hard!