JWOC 2016 is underway!

The 2016 Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) run from July 9 to 15, 2016 in the Engadin region of Switzerland. Team Canada is made up of both juniors who have raced in JWOC before, as well as younger athletes new to the international competitive scene.

Women:

• Pia Blake (Whitehorse, YT)
• Emma Sherwood (Calgary, AB)
• Emma Waddington (Hamilton, ON)
• Nicole Whitmore (Hamilton, ON)

Men:

• Leif Blake (Whitehorse, YT)
• Robert Graham (Ottawa, ON)
• Caelan McLean (Whitehorse, YT)
• Christian Michelsen (Dundas, ON)
• Jan Erik Naess (Chicago, IL/Hamilton, ON)
• Michael Svoboda (Calgary, AB)
• Alternate: Tomas Graham (Ottawa, ON)

The team is coached this year by HPP member Jeff Teutsch of Ottawa. The team manager is Sabine Schweiger of Whitehorse. Erik Blake of Whitehorse is assisting the team with communications.

Athletes compete in the sprint, middle and long distance races individually as well as the relay race with teams of 3 men or women. Canada will field two men’s teams and one women’s team. The winners are expected to finish the sprint distance in 13 to 14 minutes, the middle distance in 25 minutes, long distance in 60 to 70 minutes and the relay races in a total team time of 105 minutes.

Canada’s best ever result at the Junior World Orienteering Championships was a bronze medal won by Ottawa’s Emily Kemp in 2012 in Slovakia in the long distance race. Schedule

• Sunday 10 July: Sprint – 09.00-12.30 CET
• Monday 11 July: Long Distance – 09.00-16.30 CET
• Tuesday 12 July: Rest day / Model event
• Wednesday 13 July: Middle Qualifications – 10.00-12.30 CET
• Thursday 14 July: Middle Finals – 09.00-13.30 CET
• Friday 15 July: Relay – 10.30-13.15 CET

“JWOC is an introduction to international orienteering for our young athletes and an important step in their development. This year 70 percent of the team are returning athletes. We are looking for those athletes to improve on their results from last year. For the rookies, it is a matter of soaking up the experience and learn what it is all about,” said Brent Langbakk, High Performance Director of Orienteering Canada.

“This year’s Canadian team has spent the week of July 2nd to July 9th in the Engadin Valley preparing for the world championships, adjusting to the altitude and time-zone change, and learning what the alpine terrain is like here. The team is feeling confident and prepared for the upcoming races and is excited to face the challenge of running 5 races in 6 days this week,” said Jeff Teutsch, Team Coach JWOC 2016.

The World of O website provides comprehensive information about JWOC 2016 including information about watching live streaming of the events: news.worldofo.com/2016/07/08/jwoc-2016-all-you-need-to-know

Results from the races can be found via the event web site www.jwoc2016.ch

You can follow along by staying tuned to the Team Canada Blog and Orienteering Canada's social media (hashtag: #jwoc2016):

• facebook.com/orienteeringcanada
• twitter.com/orienteeringcan
• instagram.com/orienteeringcanada

JWOC Training Camp Day 3

Click the picture to read about Team Canada's sprint preparation for JWOC and everything else that happened in Day 3 of the JWOC Training Camp!

Be sure to check out a 2Drerun that a few of the guys put together!

JWOC Training Camp Day 1-2

 

 Click the picture to read about the Canadian Junior Team training for the few two days in Ftan, Switzerland.

 Go Canada GO!

Jukola or as I like to call it, Run for your life!

Three weekends ago I participated in the biggest orienteering relay ever for me! Jukola is a 7 man night relay but it’s not dark for the whole race just 3 legs. The race starts at 11pm right after the sun sets with a mass start. This year their was 1707 team racing, that’s a lot of people. Pia Blake wanted to run our first leg so she was crammed in with all those guys and a few girls, she was 4 spots over from Emily Kemp who was running Ottawa’s first leg as well.

Team Yukon before the race (can you see the big rain clouds coming in?)

 The start signal for the relay this year was someone from the Finnish army firing of what sounded like a machine gun to me and then a 4-wheeler takes off with a camera man on the back to film the stamped of racers. Their was also a Drone flying over top so you can see them running to the start control.  The mass starts runners had a longer flagged route to the start then the other legs because trying to fit that many runners under a bridge right away would have been pandemonium.

 

The Jukola mass start, can you see Pia?

I forgot to mention how it was raining pretty much the whole time so Jukola town (what I like to call it) became a gigantic mud bath. I was so happy I bought a pair of rain boots otherwise I wouldn’t have been a happy camper. Outside of Jukola town was where a lot of other teams slept, some also slept in the stadium. Team Yukon and Ottawa were outside and in the same area. The Finnish army set up a lot of their tents for teams to use. It was an experience because I have never slept in an army tent before. It was also easier to communicate with the team stay in a gigantic tent instead of separate little tents.

Pia and Leif at the gateway to Jukola Town!

 

I was running leg 4 for the team, a nice easy princess leg. I don’t remember if I started running at 3:30 or 4:30 in the morning, that’s a hint on how well my first control went. The timing was pretty perfect for the hand off, I was ready 15 minutes ahead and could warm up and not get to drenched. Forest passed me the map and it was the size of those annoying fold road maps. I had a marked route of 600m to the start control which a massive sign with an orienteering flag on it.

As I mentioned before my first leg was not great, it sucked! I got overwhelmed and felt like I had to go fast. I had 20 guys chasing me down right at the start and I didn’t have a great route choice. I got on one of the elephant tracks and checked my barring to make sure it was going in the right direction but I didn’t check it often enough. I was also running a lot faster then I usually do to the first control so I under ran the first control. I kept try to make sense of where I was but nothing was fitting. After trying to relocate for a long time (I am to embarrassed to say how long) I asked someone where are we and they pointed it and the map made total sense after that. I have defiantly learned from my mistake!

Thanks to Ken Walker for the great Photo!
 

The rest of my race was great after that, I either spiked controls or was just a feature over. I could push hard the whole race and not feel like I was dying. The terrain there was gorgeous! I am use to lots of hills, negative topography and messy vegetation. It has so clean, not to hilly just lots of mud and elephant tracks. On facebook there have been post comparing the terrain to war trenches and I can vouche for that. If you could clear a creek or trench you fell into hip deep mud and had to drag yourself out.

The very mucky arena!

 

Jukola was a great experience and a lot of fun. I would defiantly love to race in Jukola again and next time I won’t be as intimidated by all the runners.

A copy of Forest's map

Finish training camp

While JWOC won't be in Finland for another year, a number of the Canadians from Jukola took the opportunity to explore relevant terrain.  The second Jukola was over a group of us packed up and took off to Tampere for the night before driving north to the accommodation.  I am actually rather surprised that we managed to all fit into the car - three over-six-foot boys, two others and all their baggage for the summer, but we managed!

The first training was Monday afternoon, and goodness did I need that map walk.  The terrain was rather flat, and there were hundreds of boulders, many of which unmapped as mapping them all would result in huge black blobs on the map.  This definitely confused me at first (and indeed, continued to confuse me for the second day as well!).

Welcome to boulder land!

Day two found us on a 1:15 000 scale.  All the little details from day one were made even more challenging to read - for those competing next year: bring a magnifying glass!  In the afternoon we switched back to 1:10 000, and for the first time I felt like I really had flow through the controls and was able to simplify to the right extent.

A snippet of forest

On the third day we started out with intervals on some of the gorgeous trails around our accommodation.  In the afternoon we did some compass/corridor work.  One thing is for certain: in Finland the mosquitoes will keep you moving.  At one point, I lost where I was but was unable to stop for any length of time and find myself again unless I wanted to be eaten alive by the 'friendly' insects.

While finding where I was, I discovered a large
 mine under the 'fin5!'

The last day found us running a relay session in the morning and a sprint session in the afternoon.  There was a wonderfully complicated section towards the end, as seen below.

How would you go from 28-29?

The Canadian Crew

Thank you to Jeff for stepping in and coaching!  And good luck to those going to JWOC next year - if our time there was any indication you are all in for wonderful terrain!

Team JWOC doing a little cross training

A view out Emma S and Pia's window...

Go Canada!

Canada's JWOC 2016 team is on-site in Ftan, Switzerland

The JWOC 2016 team converged on Ftan, Switzerland, traveling variously by car, bus and train (one car took the northern route from Zürich through Austria, and owing to a missed turn, ended up in Nanders - we almost added Italy to our list of countries visited). We all arrived safely in time for dinner and celebrated Emma's birthday with two Black Forest cakes! We're not sure why Jeff appears overwhelmed.

Tomorrow we will pick up our training maps in Scuol, and then get our first taste of the forest in the Engadin Valley.

The accommodations at the Hochalpines Institut Ftan are excellent, and the food so far has been plentiful and tasty. The Canadian team has one wing on the third floor all to ourselves.

Go Canada!