HPP Winter Happenings

Yes, Canadian orienteers typically face a major obstacle in their orienteering training for 6 months of the year: winter. Nevertheless, things have happened, and thanks to my good friend google I've been able to track come up with some updates and results from some of the HPP members. One would assume that if any of them had exciting things going on that I didn't mention, they'd probably post it themselves *cough* *cough*.

- Vancouver Sprint Camp: This event probably deserved an entire post on its own, but I'll give a quick update. The camp happened this year Feb. 11-13, under pretty rainy skies. With 10 activities in 2 & 1/2 days, there was no shortage of orienteering opportunities. The big highlight this year was the WRE at the Surrey Bike Park, which was a baffling array of singletrack trails and thick forest in between. I just yesterday dug a thorn from my hand that I got during this race. There were also presentations from Gold Medal Olympic rowers, and on using a headcam as part of training. You can see results, photos, and the video from the headcam at http://www.orienteeringbc.ca/sprint/. All in all I think the entire weekend was viewed favourably by all participants, despite the occasionally atrocious weather. I was especially pleased to meet the Hong Kong crew that traveled over for the camp, and would like to propose that to give Vancouver a break next year, we switch it just a bit further west. Just a bit west and south of the international date line.

Other events/results:

- Ottawa Winter Triathlon: Robbie Anderson and Jon Torrance laced up the skates/boots/shoes for this one, and Skate-Ski-Run race on the Rideau Canal. Robbie missed the 5000m world record time by a scant 40 seconds, though its also possible that everybody ran the wrong way and did only 3.7k. A full report is on Robbie's blog on Attackpoint

- Prince George Iceman: If there were a gold medal for the most number of times winning the silver medal in a single race, it'd go to Mike Smith in the PG Iceman. Take the above activities, but then add a second run, AND a swim, and you've got a pretty epic race. Results are available here.

- World Student Games, Turkey: Colin Abbott raced for Canada in February in Turkey for the World Student Games, and was the top Canadian in the 15k pursuit. From what I hear the snow and course were not entirely amazing, and a large portion of the team was sick a lot of the time. Apparently Turkey is gearing up for an Olympics bid, though!

- Canada Winter Games, Halifax: Colin, Dahria Beatty, and myself were in Halifax for the Cross Country Skiing Event of Canada Winter Games. Dahria has some awesome results, placing in the top 10 in all of the races, and Colin cracking out a top 15 and qualifying 10th in the sprint. They were both skiing for the Yukon. I, being too old to race, was there being a guide for a blind skier. I daresay I was more nervous than most of the athletes simply because my biggest fear was causing another person to smash into a tree.

Upcoming Events:

- World Ski-O Championships, Sweden: Robbie & Nick Duca are heading to Sweden in a few weeks for the world Ski-o Championships in Tanndalen. I'm not quite sure what sort of updates we'll be able to get from the event (aside from the inevitable blog post), but the website is

at http://www.skiwoc2011.com.

- Portugal O-Meeting: The most popular early season event around, Carol Ross, Emily Ross (heck, all the Ross') and Emily Kemp are heading there as we speak to get in a week of hopefully awesome weather and some sweet orienteering. There are four races, including a WRE on day 3. The website says "Live on March 5 at 8AM", so for any night owls, you may be able to follow the race here: http://www.gd4caminhos.com. This will undoubtedly lead to a blog update, so stay tuned for that.

Well, that's all I (and Google) can think of for the time being.