WUOC Middle & looking forward to the Relay!

Today (Thursday) saw the middle distance at WUOC. Generally, the feeling was that the terrain was not remarkably difficult but for the area the controls, as they were often tucked behind large tufts of shrub. People would find that they were very, very close, but unable to find the actual control. Then they would bail out to a nearby feature and try again only to discover it was on the other side of where they were looking. Even the Martin Hubmann (the winner) stated in his interview that he felt he got lucky quite a few times, and the Team Sweden coach said their guys found themselves getting to where they thought the control was, couldn't find it, and then bailed out too quickly. They were often very close, but didn't have good attack points to be really certain of where they were.

Hangout area - trying to shelter from the sun!

Robbie, Jeff, Eric, Damian, and Louise ran for Team Canada. Here's what some of them had to say:

Robbie: "First half was riddled with mistakes, but I managed to find some flow in the second half".

Jeff: "Had some great legs and some not-so-great legs. Everyone inevitably had some very poor legs, and I found my best success by playing it safe and choosing strong attack points. This was especially apparent when I was running several legs head to head with Pavel Kubat, and my safe routes were typically the same if not better than his direct routes."

Eric: "The course was easy enough, if you were smart about it."


In terms of placing, Damian finished 37th, Robbie in 65th, Jeff in 77th, and Eric in 85th place. Louise did well again, finishing in 36th place! You can view the full men's results, women's results, men's splits, and women's splits! You can view the men's map here!

Tomorrow is the final day, and the relay. Team Canada will have two relay teams. Canada 1 has Will starting, Robbie second and Damian anchoring. Will is planning on staying in contact with the lead pack to give Robbie some people to run with, and Damian will try to bring it home in a respectable position.

Canada 2 will be a mixed gender team with Jeff running first, Eric second and Louise anchoring. Jeff will be battling to stay up at the front as well and see if he can come out of the woods ahead of Will. Eric is expecting to be running with other guys out there and wants to challenge them. Louise wants to beat whichever Canadian has similar legs to her.

Tune in tomorrow for post-relay commentary, and a look ahead to JWOC. You can read about the JWOC training on Brent's log. Sounds like they've had a full-on week of training!