O-Races as a competitor and as an organizer

I was tired after the Canadian Championship races last weekend near Edmonton in Alberta. It was a challenging bunch of races with the heat, the tall grass and the mosquitoes. I was also tired from the couple of weeks before when I was doing a lot of planning for the Ontario Orienteering Championships. My club the Stars are hosting the Ontarios this fall in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Things are coming along nicely, but organizing an orienteering event takes a lot of energy and effort. I am responsible for the course setting of two of the three races that weekend and along with all the other technical aspects organizing an event definitely takes a toll on my training. On the other hand, I know how much effort goes into hosting an orienteering event with planning, mapping, course setting, dealing with registration and lots of other issues. It makes me grateful to the organizers of all the other events I participate in each year.

 

As competitors we want to be successful, and as event organizers we want success as well. That means many happy competitors. As an organizer I think about what I want as a competitor from a race and try to offer a nice challenging course. That’s what I am going to do for the Ontarios. Our club will do our best to give our competitors good orienteering challenges, and we hope we have lots of participants to make it a good event.

 

Register (http://baleka.org/stars/events/20121006), plan your trip, train hard and come out and compete. Use this event as your last test before the North American Orienteering Championships and then treat yourself to a beer at the largest Oktoberfest celebration outside of Germany happening in Kitchener that weekend. We have a brand new area for the middle distance, a nice campus map for the sprint, and a tough technical terrain on an updated Hilton Falls map, which Golden Horseshoe Orienteering has very kindly allowed us to use. This technical terrain is adjacent to the site of the NAOC 2006 and will be very challenging.

 

I promise not so much heat, not so much tall grass, and definitely no blood donations to the mosquitos! And all three  races are part of Canada Cup where you can score more points. For you and for your club .

Train hard, stay healthy

Nick Duca