West Coast White - WCOC's 2018

The Western Canadian Championships wrapped up last weekend in the surprisingly sunny Vancouver BC area.

The Sprint started the weekend with a park sprint that challenged races by frequently switching between open grass lands and full white woods. But the weekend really ramped up with the middle on the new Ioco map. The map featured the nicest running I've had without going hours from the coast, and some serious detail:

Details, details.

Don't be fooled though, these are still some serious features, my route, east then south, to three became an exercise in rock climbing quite quickly. Personally I started too fast and had issues in the control circle for 2, 3, and 4. Navigating to the circle and hoping to see it certainly wasn't going to work here. I cleaned it up after 5 and started to navigate mostly off of the large ridges visible at a distance. The race went well after that; enough to net me 2nd place to Thomas Nipen, a GVOC expat visiting from Norway. HPP members Adam Woods and Alex Corbett picked up 7th and 10th respectively. While Tori Owen took 3rd for the Women.

The real lessons (and adventure) came in the long. I think as orienteerers we can all do with a humbling once in a while, a race that makes you remember just what can happen if you don't make a good plan. My undoing was the first long leg, 3 to 4:

How would you do it? Could you read it at 1:15,000?

I left 3 hard and with only half a plan. I ran as though I could afford to lose touch and I could grab myself again. It turned out that despite having large ridges and hills on the map they all looked the same, and they are all covered in small cliffs. I ended up south of 4 and had to climb considerable back up to it. Interestingly the leg defeated most runners that day with only 2 people having times around 10 minutes and an astonishing 12/17 M21 runnings having times greater than 15 minutes, including myself, Thomas, and Adam. A similar leg got most of the women's runners as well, sparing only previous HPP members Lousie Oram and Emily Ross.

It was tough terrain and should have been approached with more caution than the running allowed. Great challenge and wonderful to have a high class map and event so close to home for Vancouver HPP members, Adam and myself. Great training before we both head off to Europe for WUOC and WOC respectively. Full results here

Graeme Rennie