3 hours of winter Adventure Running!

The snow has finally arrived with a lot more still being dumped up north. So get out the snowshoes and start training for Canada's first snowshoe adventure run on February 24th at Horseshoe Resort.

Details here.

Adam van Koeverden Raids the Hammer

Adam van Koeverden was a double medallist in the Athens Olympics in 2004 winning a gold and bronze in kayaking. A McMaster student in kinesiology, van Koeverden has done some adventure racing before and last autumn took part in a few GHO sprint orienteering training nights. He teamed up with fellow McMaster students and top adventure racers, Simon Donato and Liza Pye, to race the Raid the Hammer Adventure Run in November.

We finally caught up with Adam and his busy training schedule and asked him about his Raid the Hammer experience.

GHO: Is this the first time you have raced in the Raid the Hammer and have you done any adventure racing or orienteering before?

AvK: It's the first time I've run this race, but I've done a little bit of Adventure racing in the past... but I've never been the one reading the map!

GHO: How do you find out about this race and what was it that got you
interested in doing it?

AvK: I did a couple of the short warm up orienteering races with some friends, Scott Ford and Liza Pye, and they seemed like fun, so when Liza asked me if I was interested in trying a longer one I thought I'd give it a go.

GHO: What did you think of the race? What was your favourite part? What
did like the least?

AvK: I thought it was awesome! My favourite parts were the matrices, splitting up for a little while was cool because it was a learning thing for me, I had to rely a little on my limited map reading skills, and I enjoyed that challenge. However, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy the team aspect of the event, I love the camaraderie of team events. My kayak races are short, and individual, so it was exciting to do something on a team, and of this length. What did I like the least? hmm. I don't think I have any complaints! My shoes got kind of dirty...

GHO: In preparation for your international kayak races do you ever do long endurance running?

AvK: Not really long running, no. My events take 1:40 and 3:30, similar to a 200 and 400m in the pool, or 800m and 1500m on the track. We do a lot of intervals, runs over an hour are quite rare, but I sneak a few in over the off season to make sure I can still do it. I've run a few half marathons, my best time was 1hr18min and change.

GHO: Orienteering is a physical and mentally demanding sport. Are there
any similarities with international kayaking?

AvK: Absolutely. I think every sport demands physical and mental strength. The kind of determination that one requires to finish a race like Raid the Hammer would probably come out more in the hours and hours of training that we do every week in preparation for our races, more than the actual event, since it is so brief. I could compare the last couple hundred metres of a kayak race to the type of grind you experience when running or mountain biking up a pretty long, steep hill. When the last few strides are all about how one mentally deals with the pain.

GHO: After Athens in 2004. What is your next big goal?

AvK: My goal never changes. Every time I line up, I want to have my best
possible race.

GHO: Any last comments about the Raid the Hammer?

AvK: Just a big thanks to the organisers, my team and everyone who raced for making it such a memorable experience. I don't know about everyone else, but I'm anxious to go out on the bike and find a few of those waterfalls and views that we had to so hastily take in as we ran/walked/hobbled past... one of my favourite things about adventure racing is the atmosphere, being outside and so close to nature is really a pleasure, and we'd all be remiss not to recognize how lucky we are as Canadians to have such a kick assbackyard to play around in!

GHO: Thanks for your time and good luck in your training and racing.

AvK: Take it easy Mike.

Photo credit: http://www.cyberus.ca/~turbo/images/AdamVankoeverdenAthens.gif

Dr. Tarnopolsky: The Frontier of Fit

GHO member Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky's research and adventure running lifestyle was featured in Monday's Hamilton Spectator. Click here.

Thomass Walker Woods - Jan. 7

The 3rd event in the 2006/07 Thomass winter orienteering season took place in snow-free conditions - just like the first two races. Leading Canadian adventure racer Bob Miller designed a fun race course with two Thomass Boxes, including one that began at the start line. The woods were mostly open and fast, with a few areas where logging debris made the footing treacherous.

Nick Duca won a close battle for 1st place against last year's Thomass Series Men's winner, Eugene Mlynczyk. Richard Ehrlich was the top GHO racer, finishing 7th overall. Barb Campbell was the top woman, finishing 8th, and Trudy Deumer was 10th. Barb and Trudy continue to sit 1st and 2nd in the women's division of this year's Thomass Series. The top M-Elite today was GHO's Scott Ford, who finished 13th. The top team was GHO's Silence Beckons.

Results are available here.

Orienteering At Ancaster Creek

The first session training for the year is set and ready to go. This training is part of the GHO Inter-club Weekend Training program, which means ALL members of any Ontario orienteering club are welcome to take part of this training, and the cost is FREE. E-mail Hans at hans dot fransson at cogeco dot ca if you would like a copy of the maps. The ribbons were all out as of January 1st and will remain in the woods for a few weeks, check comments for final date. See seperate entry for more information about the training program.

Special information.
Map: Ancaster Creek 1:10 000, 5m contours.
Training: Three middle distance courses 3-4km, but they can be merged in to one longer course or score format or...whatever you want. A top North American orienteer would need at least 30 min for each course, so there is plenty of orienteering to do...

The technical level is intermediate to advanced, while the physical level is mostly advanced. (There are very few trails in the area, but there are some other very distinct features, such as creeks and ridges/deep valleys that can be used, as well as a larger open field.) As mentioned, ribbons will be used, however, there is no guarantee they haven't been removed by someone or something by the time you do the training. The Ancaster Creek itself is full of water and can be very difficult to cross in certain places. Please be very careful. To the more competitive runners, I recommend not looking at the map until you start the actual training. Finding a good route choice already to the first control will be a good challenge. (When I e-mail you the map files, I will include a map with only the starts and finishes marked). Unless it gets very dry the next few days, running in anything but orienteeing shoes will be very tough, since the hillsides are steep and in places very muddy.

As of today, we also have sessions prepared on Bronte Creek, Hilton Falls (Waterloo Stars), Rockey Ridge, and Sulphur Springs.

See comments for additional information and if (and when) coaching will be offered.

Happy New Year!

/Hans

PS. Since there is no snow, we have all the chances in the world to improve our orienteering.

GHO Canada GHO presents OOA Inter-club Weekend Training

Below is an e-mail that was sent out to all orienteering clubs in southern Ontario a few weeks ago. The first session is at Ancaster Creek, see seperate entry, and we have several other training exercises ready to go within the next few weeks.
/Hans

Training is the best route to orienteering improvement!

That is the phrase that the GHO has been using the last few years since it kick started the GHO Canada GHO training group. We believe that while Southern Ontario has an active orienteering community and there are many events (B Meets, THOMASS, weeknight events, etc). We believe there is a gap to be filled when it comes to improving an individual’s technical skill. We think we do too much racing (THOMASS, B-meets), and training (weekday events) on, for many, familiar maps, in comparison to how much we practice orienteering. If you go overseas, the situation is the reverse. And, overseas runners still race much more than us.

This is why GHO has hosted informal weeknight and weekend training off and on the last few years. Many of you have joined us for these training sessions with the big camp in January last year as the best example.

GHO would like to expand these training opportunities to the entire Orienteering Ontario community this winter. In return for running in GHO’s weekend training sessions we are suggesting that each club, set up a training session(s) that runners from the other clubs can run. The organizing club will decide where and what exercise they will put on, but our coach, Hans Fransson, will be more than happy to assist with some suggestions of different types of training. Again, this idea is to keep this very low-key, no pressure whatsoever to organize this. We don’t want volunteers already doing tonnes of work feel that this is another thing they must do.

To accommodate people’s already busy schedule, we suggest that we have a “window” where the training will be accessible. For example, checkpoint are placed on out one weekend and not picked up until the following weekend. The organizer also determines if they want to use flags, ribbons, permanent controls, SI, etc. Pre-printed maps would be considered a luxury and not necessary.

The visiting clubs will decide whether they want to go at a specific time, within the window, or just let their members know there is a training available, and/or to use these sessions to coach their runners (this is something that has been asked for) on their own.

To advertise where the training is and when, and other information, we will use ghocanadagho.blogspot.com, which is a web site that is very easy to update, and it has comment function. The organizer would e-mail the info, and Hans Fransson will post it shortly after he received it.

When it comes to distributing the maps, we suggest that the organizer e-mails Jpeg version, or similar file format, to the contact persons for each club. That delegates the job to all clubs. When it comes to the cost, we would like to see this be free for all who are full members of a club in Orienteering Ontario.

Suggested schedule:
There are six clubs in Southern Ontario, if all clubs find this a good idea, and are willing to set up a training session; that would mean a minimum of six sessions, GHO will host more than one, and if we start in January, we could have this going on until April/May, before the “summer break”.