The eve...

Last day before JWOC officially starts. Pretty quite day for the whole team watching movies on the 'borrowed' couch and easy runs to get the legs turning over. The army base were staying at has its own map so most of us used that for our session today.
Most of the brochures from the other teams are up, so the boys replied with a poster that really captures the laid back and envronmentally conscious nature of New Zealanders.
Tomorrows when the action starts, live on the jwoc website....

Tom and Jack








Taking a break from training on Partille, the long map. Sweet lake behind where the photo was taken

A week in Göteborg

We've been pretty busy all week training on new maps, so we're a bit out of date with the blog, but now its time to catch up...

We've done some awesome training at some cool maps, including Björnbergen, and the trial race maps that Georgia ran against the Swedes on a few weeks ago. We're all getting more used to the mapping of bare rock as clearings, and mossed over rock as just normal forest and knolls. We did a bit of relay training with the Aussies, and discovered that they're almost all sick, including Ollie, who had fainted at breakfast that morning - luckily we don't seem to have caught anything. Sprint training at Eriksberg was pretty cool, and the course had about the same ratio of forest to urban that is going to be in the race on Monday (20:80). Ross rejoined the team for a little while, and is helping out a bit with our training. Angela's back is getting better - she's jogging quite a bit now, and Todd's physio seems to be working, but Tessa's leg has gone downhill a little bit, so she's been taking it easy the last few days, and hopefully it will improve. Greta's calves are tight and a few others have got niggles, but nothing too serious we hope.

On Friday we visited Rannebergen, and did some control picking at 1:15000, sorting out some more marshes and working on our compass bearings. Greta and Georgia are getting pretty good at Nana-napping in the afternoons, but tea at 4pm puts a bit of time pressure on things. After tea we went to the Göteborg O shop (open Fridays, 5-6pm, in the owner's basement), where a few people got shoes that are more appropriate to Swedish terrain. We also discovered that we've been driving through part of the sprint map everyday - its that close to where we are staying.

Today we had a rest day, which involved the girls tramming it into town to find a party uniform, and the boys chilling out at the base watching movies. Greta and Kate discovered that their sense of direction was not what they thought when they sat at the wrong tram stop for an hour, but we eventually got them back (lets hope the fashion for tie-dyed stuff hits New Zealand soon though, after their shopping spree). Lizzie is also the proud new owner of a moose shaped hat.

Most of the army people have left now, which means they're not attempting to assimilate us to their rules, but its also a lot noiser, and the computers are always busy! We've got the Irish and the Germans on our floor, the Hong Kong and Hungary teams above us, and Spain and a few others below us, all sharing the one wahing machine in the basement and the three showers on two of the floors. The boys were disgusted to find the other day that a sign on our floor has gone up telling us that our showers are 'women only' - a rule which has already been flouted several times, and doesn't make much sense, as the room doesn't have a door anyway.

Norm has done an awesome job sorting out stuff for us, sourcing the weirdest things, including a blind for one of the windows, some washing powder, and a kettle...and the boys have just commandeered a couch from somewhere for movie-watching purposes. We're hoping Sweden will discover some new music soon, as 'the Voice of Hiphop and R and Bay' doesn't seem to have much of a play list, but the weather's warming up, so its all looking good for the week ahead.

We should be updating this every day now, so keep checking on us...

Tessa

Tuesday training in Göteborg

Waiting.... in Oslo Bus station

We managed to make it to breakfast this morning, following the 6-7am military breakfast timetable. At least the food pretty good and not too weird.
Picked up some more rental cars this morning after deciding that public transport to the maps like the organisers suggested wouldnt really work for us.
Today we headed out to Partille-Gunnilse, the map for the long distance. We trained on the North Eastern bit which isnt being used and did some long leg training. We all found it much easier than norway, the contour features are much easier to read and the visibility is slightly better so you can get a better perspective of whats going on around you. Still a really physical map with lots of blueberries and heather all over the place. The marshes we have been warned about are reso dry at the moment, but a bit inconsistent with some being pretty deep. Saw a couple of snakes, we think, Kate almost stood on one, we think.
The irish moved in downstairs from us today and the candians, americans and russians are all in another building, not quite like jwoc yet, should get more other countries towards the end of the week.
Everyones in pretty good condition, Angelas back is getting better and Georgia tweaked her ankle but will be sweet to train and race.

O-festivalen Relay

Last day in Siggerud. Had the relay from the same events centre. Tom and Greta who were both first leg found it the most physical start to a relay they had done. lots of pushing and shoving and really fast. Tessa found the same when she was handed off too just as the m/w12 grades started and having to fight though swarms of little kids.
Greta and Tom both had good runs to bring both teams back near the front. Kate and Scott on second leg found the same and both teams were consistent around 20th to 25th. Unfortunately scott mispunched, not sure where and didnt really chase it with the organisers. The aussies mped on the same leg too so not too sure.
Georgia and Lizzie both had longer legs to finish off the girls relay and moved the team up to 16th which they were stoked as with.
Jack had by his own admission, his worst run so far, and lost some time. At least he looked good in his singlet and tights. Simon had the longest leg for the guys and made it around with only a few small errors.
Ross ran for his danish club Pan Århus and they finished in 11th after running in 3rd for a long time. The commentators kept calling it the joint Danish New Zealand team.
All of us felt like we had learned heaps from the first few days and that the mapping style and terrain is starting to help, hopefully we can translate this to göteborg.

Norway turned the rain on for us as we rushed to the bus station to leave. Norwegian public transport it turns out isnt flawless either and we had to wait an hour and a half for a bus. Lots of weird looks for our huge pile of luggage in the middle of oslo central bus station. As well as our luggage we also have another team member, Todd Oates is going to be our team physio.

Now that were in Göteborg were getting a taste of the Swedish military staying in an Army barracks. Had to present our passports to get in last night for our escort to our quarters. Also turns out were sharing our floor with a few soldiers until the end of the week. Lots of food though and plenty of space. Going to get our first taste of Göteborg terrain this afternoon.

We will add some photos here soon, otherwise check out Norm's Picassa Web for all the photo updates.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Norm.Jager

O festivalen Long Distance

Another day in Siggerud, this time heading north of the events centre in the town. Was a really hard day. Everyone found the nav more difficult than yesterday and the added physical factor of a classic hurt too. The girls had 8km and the boys 10km. K rates were slower than yesterday with the map being a bit greener.
The times on the o-festivalen website include yesterday and today added together because it was a chasing start from yesterdays results, so for those of us who ran the world cup our time has had our start time added to it, even so we didnt have very good runs.

Lizzie was the best of the girls by about 8 minutes. Georgia had a good run too but mispunched on the last control. Angela hurt her back yesterday and struggled with the running in terrain. Shes going to have a day off tomorrow to rest it. AFter a days rest it will be all right.

The boys all made big mistakes, all on different controls and up to 20 minutes long. Most of them were due to going too fast in terrain that we're still not used to. Struggling with trying to figure out what they map as yellow and what they don't.


The last two days have really put in perspective how good the top people are. When the top guys are runing 6 minute k's through terrain like today it makes us all have so much respect for kiwis like Ross and Tania who can get good results. It's been great watching the world cup grades, seeing Minna Kauppi run through the field from 9th to easily win. Then seeing Thierry Georgiou appear to win by 4 minutes, only to have missed a butterfly loop.

Tomorrow we have relays. The girls have Greta, Kate, Georgia and Lizzie in that order. While the guys are Tom, Scott, Jack, Simon. Another day will bring more experience and hopefully a bit more accuracy.







Scott coming out of todays spectator, for more photos check out Norm's Picassa Web album, should be a link on maptalk.co.nz

World Cup/O-festivalen Middle

We arrived the other day. Not sure when exactly cos we're kinda screwed up with the whole time zone thingy and not having a night time. Got into the country with no passport check even though James had a bag full of white powder and we were importing 5kg of mince. Lucky it wasn't potatoes, apparently they are a great bio hazard risk. We had a day of training with Thierry Guergiou. He wasn't coaching us, in fact he didn't even know who we were or acknowledge us but we were there and so was he so it was pretty sweet. We then proceeded to attempt to compete with the world's greatest bush runners. Somewhat unsuccessfully. Unfortunately jet-lag was definitely a major problem. It caused us to lose several minutes per control due to the extreme need to sleep while on the course. That is our excuse anyway. However it was a really good learning experience as everyone was like "meuh meuh meuh don't go to Norway" but it seemed all G cos it was pretty similar to Gothenburg. Not that we've been there yet but it just was.

Angela and Jack ripped up top quality fields, "thrashing the gash" and managing to place in the top half of the field. LOL! The World Cup competitors all finished in the Top 50 for women and Top 70 for men, an outstanding display of NZ's prowess on the world stage. Well done guys!

We are staying in a club house between Stunner and Booger. I think they're spelt and pronounced different to that but it's pretty similar anyway. We kinda broke the water which means we can't enjoy communal team showers and now have to shower with the majority of the 7000 competitors at O-festivalen after the events. (There's lots of old naked people in there...) We're blaming the Americans though because there was a strange coincidental effect namely everything seemed to work less well after they arrived. There is a sweet Croatian dude there called Lino who doesn't really talk to us but he's cool. He has both apple AND orange juice but Tom and James still managed to beat him hahahaha.

Sweet as. Hope all is well in the land of the Kiwi. Love from The Team

Navman supporting Tom and Greta

Navman Electronics are supporting Tom and Greta in their 2008 European Campaign. Navman are a New Zealand based company specialising in in-car navigation devices and marine electronics.
Is a Navman faster than an orienteer?
Navman products can be seen at www.navman.co.nz

As well as Navman we have our wonderful team sponsors, Inov-8 footwear, Dave Melrose Design, Leppin Sport and Silva.

After a final preparation weekend for the team at Queen's Birthday we are into the home straight leading up to JWOC. There were many impressive runs throughout the weekend by members of the team, particular standouts were Tom, Scott and Lizzie who are all showing that their training, despite injuries and other commitments with uni, has been consistently good to get them all to the top standard they appear to be.

Hopefully their successful runs were reassuring despite the helpful talk with Magnus and several emails from Georgia in Sweden telling us the maps for the long and middle are the most physically and mentally tough maps they have ever been on. And that was before the grass had grown chest high which is what we have been told to expect.

However the arrival of our uniforms, courtesy of James and Puma, meant we were able to partially overlook our intrepidation over the terrain, and instead spend a decent amount of time admiring ourselves in our new gear. I think I also now have enough Leppin to get me through the next year or two at least.

Now we move into the final two weeks the training schedules of most of the team are slowly being completed while Tessa enjoys the pool in Dunedin, I plan on venturing out into the more wintery conditions of Dunedin for the first time in 6 weeks. It should be interesting. Hopefully everyones training goes to plan and all the injuries and niggles are ironed out before we leave. Only 2weeks and counting.

The NZ Team heading to the Junior World Champs in Goteborg, Sweden are
Boys:
Thomas Reynolds
Simon Jager
Jack Vincent
Scott McDonald
Girls:
Lizzie Ingham
Georgia Whitla
Kate Morrison
Angela Simpson
Tessa Ramsden
Greta Knarston

Coach: James Bradshaw
Manager: Norm Jager

Two weeks and 5mins and we will be gathering in the airport to begin our rather long journey to get to Oslo, Norway where our adventure begins.