Sass Peepre Junior Camp

Today I returned home to Whitehorse after a wonderful week of orienteering in the national capital area. The Sass Peepre camp started out with a race in the Gatineau. Day one of the camp came with a massive rain storm. Personally I have never orienteered in rain like that before so footing was very important. The Farsta race was one of my favourite events of the week along with the Chase sprint at Carleton University. My course had two loops with different forking, so there were people running around in all different directions. The map itself wasn't all that big making it even more exciting because there were always people in your vicinity. Much like most Canadians, the majority of my orienteering has been done alone, well what I means is during my average orienteering meet I don't see very many people out on the course. So for me it was challenging but great practice to be able to have to orienteer with all the people running around and acting as distractions. One of my focuses for the race was to run my own race and not to be led astray by other runners and this, I did. The Farsta was a really cool race and a great start to the Junior Camp.

During the camp we were all very fortunate to have such wonderful parent volunteers who prepared meals for us after our races and training sessions. Day 2 was a Classic race put on by the neighbouring Loup-Garou Orienteering Club. Unlike the day before, Monday was sunny and warm making it a perfect day for an O-Maze on the beach in the afternoon. Juniors and coaches battled against each other through the intricate maze.The day's festivities were not yet over though, in the evening we all ventured across the locks to the Arboretum. Most of us with our headlamps but not all. A few of the older guys tested their orienteering skills and did the night-O course with only the light of the moon.

In this year's camp there was no wasted time. There was no race on Tuesday but that only meant more time for training. After being put into groups we were out for 2 morning sessions and then 2 more after lunch. I learned a lot during these training sessions and it was wonderful for all the athletes to have different coaches working with them.

On Wednesday morning the camp was drawing to a close. As per tradition we had the amazing relay race. My team with Magnus and Scott did very well but sadly we wound up just short of the podium. Next year. Then there was the final race of the camp THE CHASE SPRINT. This race I have crowned my favourite race of the summer. I love urban sprints to start with so this event was great because it had the extra excitement component added to it. After the prologue the real fun began. I started out the Chase part as the rabbit being chased by everyone else. It was nerve-racking and exciting at the same time. After our race was over we were able to become spectators and watch the close finishes between the elite men. This finish was great to see with multiple runners in the finish shoot at the same time.

The Camp was amazing and I can't wait until next year's junior camp. I would like to thank Anne Teutsch for all the time she put in to organizing the camp as well as all the other volunteers that helped make it such a success.