Mike's Best and Worst of 2006

Happy New Year. With a new year comes a list of the best and worst of the previous year. Mike Waddington weighs in with his “Best and Worst in Orienteering for 2006”.

EVENTS
Best International race: Swiss Orienteering Week
Best US race: Flying Pig
Best Canadian race: North American Championships

RACING
Best race performance: Florida middle distance
Worst race performance: Tio-mila
Scariest race moment of the year: Tio-mila (losing contact with the map…three times!)
Best elbow of the year: Tio-mila (during the leg#1 mass start)
Most satisfying race moment of the year: Tiomila (after the race)
Best post race bender: GHO Canada GHO at the Flying Pig
Best pre race bender: Estonia World Cup Sprint Finals
Best race accommodation: Estonia World Cup (Sauna, TV, 50m to sprint start)
Worst race accommodation: Tio-mila (my car)
Biggest disappointment: WOC (injured)
Best transport to a race: Gondola and cable car (Swiss O week)
Longest walk to the race arena: SAIK (3.5km)
Best finish line performance: Patrick Goeres and the mud slide
Most interesting map: Swiss Orienteering Week Day#3
Flattest map: Rocky Ridge
Steepest map: Swiss Orienteering Week Day#6
Flattest & steepest map: Flying Pig Classic
Best orienteering debut: Emma Waddington (first place in D-10 in her 2nd ever race)
Most scenic finish line: Swiss O Week Day#6
Shortest wait to start: JK Classic (arrived 30 seconds before the start)
Longest wait to start: COC Middle (stopped keeping track at 2 hours)
Best terrain: Almost any race in Sweden
Worst terrain: Greenwood
Best park race: Stockholm City Cup

TRAINING
Best training run: Edinburgh (narrow streets and a run up Arthur’s Seat)
Best orienteering session: Lunsen with Boris Granovskiy
Worst training session: Getting lost at Rocky Ridge without a compass
Worst training run: Pick any from the last 6 months (injury)
Best club training session: Any TNT session
Biggest inspiration: Sandy and Holger Hott Johansen at training camp in Hamilton
Best training presentation: Mark Tarnopolsky on nutrition
Best training weekend: With Bash and ‘Bent in Caledon
Worst training moment: Knee injury while training with Spike at Lunsen
Scariest training moment: Getting pawed by a cougar in the DV
Top O gear: Axis Gear
Top O supplier: Scarborough Orienteering
Best AP training comment: Yessss Simon Yesssss
Worst AP training comment: The anti GHO NAOC hosting "rant"
Best new AP log training term: The MANther
Best new AP log training name: Poolander

NORTH AMERICAN ORIENTEERING
Top club performance: CSU at Jukola (almost top 200)
Top club: GHO (Hey we won the US Relay Champs and hosted the NAOC)
Top orienteer: Mike Smith (COC sprint, middle and long Champ)
Most improved: Patrick Goeres
Best comeback: Wil Smith
Top new Canadian: Hans Fransson
Top SI guru: Valerie Meyer
Best future orienteer: Mia Smith
Top AR-O crossover athlete: Bob Miller
Best web site: AttackPoint
Most improved web site: www.orienteering.ca
Most impressive race: John Fredrickson (NAOC middle distance)
Best new club: Waterloo Stars

Future Orienteers

Celebrating, with their SI cards, after a great run, from left: Sean (4,5 years), Ben (4 years), Sophie (7,5 years), Isak (3 years), Sophia (7,5 years)

Thomass Chase Update

The Thomass Chase web page has been updated with the results from each of the two races. Click here.

NAOCs: Top event of 2006!

The first and very likely one of the most read orienteering blogs in the World is okansas.blogspot.com! Mike Eglinksi has been writing daily thoughts about the sport of orienteering on this blog for many years now with topics ranging from map quality, marketing, training, route choice selection, map history and more. If you haven't visited this site it is worth a visit a couple times a week.

To celebrate the end of the 2006 orienteering season Mike is putting together his Top 10 of 2006 and in his first entry GHO is mentioned. Here is a quote from the blog:

"If there was an award for event quality, Golden Horseshoe Orienteering's NAOC would win".

Mike Eglinski has written some very supportive posts on his blog for GHO before. These have primarily focussed on our the athletic development approach calling "Hamilton the Halden of North America" (with reference to one of the World's top orienteering clubs - Halden). GHO does not organize major events that often. Instead we focus on hosting a major event every three years, so it is wonderful to see that the great efforts spent preparing and hosting the North American Orienteering Champs have been recognized. To read the entire article visit here.

New Training Partner Motivates therock

Breaking GHO Canada GHO news!
therock has a new training partner. "TnT is good, but I needed more", said therock. "With Izzy on board I've got 7/24 support, and she's a good strong middle distance runner."

therock describes izzy as a tireless trooper. "She'll get out there two, three times a day. She can't get enough." So will this lead to a breakthrough season? "You bet," says therock.

Last seen snoozing in a very cozy personalized bed, izzy was unavailable for comment.

THOMASS Sprint and Chase - Bronte Creek, Dec. 10

The one and only THOMASS Winter Orienteering Series kicked off twelve years ago this month with GHO's first Thomass Chase. The tradition continued with this year's Thomass Sprint and Chase, which attracted an impressive 80 racers, including many new faces. Although there was no snow, it was definitely winter orienteering, with a significant wind chill factor, brilliant sunshine, and a layer of thin ice covering both shallow puddles and chilly, thigh-deep swamps. (Just ask Kristen!)

The new Bronte Creek Provincial Park orienteering map is unusual for southern Ontario, with very few contour lines and only a small amount of forested land. There are some trails and roads, but success depends on correctly interpreting the complex vegetation mapping. The Thomass Sprint was held in a day use area at the south end of the park, while the Thomass Chase explored the campground area at the north end.

Course designers Mike and Jim Waddington tried out a new concept for the Thomass Box in each of the races, with the idea of introducing more route choice. As usual for Thomass events, participants could drop some of the 8 controls in each Box depending on age and gender handicap. They needed to visit the remaining Box controls by running one or more self-selected butterfly loops, normally consisting of two Box controls followed by a return to the numbered control at the Box entrance. Participants with uneven handicap numbers ran one loop where they visited only one Box control. After completing as many loops as required, runners continued to the rest of the numbered controls. Finish times from the 3 km Sprint were used to assign start times for the longer Thomass Chase, with faster sprinters earning a head start in the Chase.

Once again, GHO took all the category wins, and placed several club members near the top of the standings!

Men (four GHO members in top six)
(1) Mark Adams - GHO, (2) Eugene Mlynczyk - UKR, (3) Nick Duca - Stars, (4) Hans Fransson - GHO, (5) Bob Miller - GHO, (6) Andrei Logvin - GHO

Women (five GHO members in top six)
(1) Marianna Weber - GHO, (2) Barb Campbell - GHO, (3) Elena Logvina - GHO, (4) Val Duca - Stars, (5) Trudy Deumer - GHO, (6) Cathy Muffolini - GHO

Juniors
(1) - Serghei Logvin - GHO, (2) Justine Scheck - YOA

An honourable mention goes to 8-year-old Emma Waddington, who became the youngest-ever Thomass finisher!

Results, map and event feedback form can be found here.

The next Thomass event is at Walker Tract in Uxbridge on Jan. 7. See you there!

GHO GHO GHO Awards

Each year GHO hands out a few 'fun' awards at our year-end GHO GHO GHO party. Here are a few of this year's GHO GHO GHO Awards.


The “Could You Just Hum A Few Bars of That” Award
To Mike Van den Bosch

Who served double duty at the North American Championships as disk jockey and first aide expert. This lead to some confusion when Starr asked for some help. Although he knew about the Beasties, he had to admit he didn’t know what to do when Starr asked him what he had for bee stings.


The "It Wasn’t Meant to be” Award
To Barb Campbell

She had a little trouble back last winter while going to a Thomass event. It is best described in her own words....”A tree in our front yard, about 25 cm in diameter, had split vertically all the way down its trunk, and its branches were blocking part of the driveway. I had to bushwhack through it in my car as I shot out of the garage into the deep snow, trying to keep up some momentum. Our driveway is 125 m long, and I got stuck for the first time ever in a Subaru Outback as I did my turn-around. Got out and kicked down the heavy snow around all the wheels until I was able to move again, then when I made it to the end of the driveway, the snowplow had blocked it with a 1 m high snowdrift, heavy as concrete. Ran back to the house to grab a snow shovel, then dug out the minimum necessary opening in the drift, then took a run at it to get to the road. Made it. Phew.

Only one side of the road was driveable, so I stayed in the tire tracks, approaching hilltops carefully in case another car was approaching in the same tire tracks. Just before I reached the main road, a huge fallen tree blocked my way, and I had to backtrack and take a longer route around on deep snow-covered country roads. Finally got to an intersection where the road had improved to half-snow, half-pavement - still not great, and the snow was still falling.

I checked the clock and realized that given how long it had taken me to get to this point, I was going to be cutting it close to reach the race on time. And then I glanced below the clock into the passenger foot-well where my running shoes SHOULD have been - and, well... the decision was easy after that. It was totally clear that I was not meant to do this race!! I turned around and slipped and slid all the way back home.”


The "Two Minutes for Elbowing”Award
To Mike Waddington

Who ran the first leg of the Tio-Mila, a very large 10-person orienteering relay. The club he trained with in Sweden chose him to start the race and run first at night. Mike thought that this was a great honour. So 350 men started off at once, in the dark, and had to squeeze through a narrow running chute. Mike was involved in a great pile-up at the bend. There was lots of shoving, pushing, swearing etc. This is where Mike realized why he had been chosen to go first. In his own words he put it very nicely. “I really knocked this guy good at the start. Gordie Howe would have been impressed.”



The “How Could I Be So Dumb” Award
To Jim Waddington

Who after losing 4 compasses in one year was told that he really should tie a bright red ribbon on the compass so that if it fell to the ground, he would be able to find it. Well on Thursday when he returned from checking out the controls for today’s race, he has happy that he still had the ribbon. Unfortunately it was no longer attached to his compass.


The "Please Help Me I’m Falling Award” or “I’ve Fallen and I can’t get up award”
To Trudy, Sue and Marianna

Trudy is ineligible
a) because she already won an award
b) because she really did fall and hurt herself and that’s not funny

To Sue,
Who fell during the World Rogaine Champs. While we proceeded across a very large field at night, we came across a fence. Sue is not one for leaping fences in a single bound. She has trouble with fences in the best of times. Now this was no ordinary fence either. She couldn’t use her “gracefully roll on the ground and squeeze under the damn thing” technique because the bottom of this fence was buried into the ground. She couldn’t use her “gracefully climb the damn thing and despite her bad hip get her leg over the top” technique. The top row of the fence was barbed and the one below that one was electrified. So after considering for some time how to get over, I more or less threw her over.

Needless to say I was not in Sue’s good books. However she just lay on the ground. She had dislocated her hip! After laying on her back and swinging her leg around in the air for I while she suddenly gave a big sigh and everything was all right again

To Marianna,
who had a rather spectacular fall during the spring GIANT”S RIB RAID. Nina will describe it.

New Record

With the snow that came today, the winter rally season is officially open. And a new record was immediately set. The new WR can be found here.

Canadian Ranking

The November ranking lists have been posted on the COF web site (under info for athletes). All A-meets one year back in time are eligible as ranking races, and the the runner's top four results are calculated. Among the men, Mike Smith from Falcons is the top Canadian, but not far behind, despite six months of injury and counting is Mike Waddington. Some strong performances in Florida and Ohio in the spring, and his middle distance result at the COC, have earned him that spot. Second GHOer and 9th on the list is Hans Fransson, but only 10-20 seconds from 6th spot, while Mark Adams is number 12. Our man in Edmonton, Nev French is 31st, and 5th GHOer is Tim Grant, who currently is ranked 37th in Canada. Among the women, not surprisingly, Katta Smith, also from Falcons, is ranked first. Best GHOer is Barb Campbell, who presently is number 25. GHOer number two is Laura Kitowski, ranked 27th.