I’m finding it hard to believe that here we are talking about our North West end of year celebration/prize giving for 2018 – it seems no time at all since last year’s event.  I hope many of you will join us on Sunday 2 December for what is always a wonderful friendly gathering. 

A special note to new members; please don’t think this prize-giving isn’t for you – it definitely is!  At forest events, there aren't so many opportunities to mix with other Club members, so this gathering is a great way to meet members socially. Formalities are a small part of the evening and we encourage you to come along and get to know us all. Details about the event are later in the newsletter.

Having hosted our last Club event for 2018, our focus now shifts to planning for next year.  As well as the usual forest events and the rogaine series, there’s some new activities being planned. We’ll publish the calendar as soon as possible. Being involved in setting the annual calendar is a first for me and I’m learning that there is a bit to do in sorting out the dates, format and venues for Auckland club events plus there are new maps to make and old ones to update! As always all of this will only be possible if as many members as possible volunteer to help organise events. Again this is a great way to get involved with the Club - we'll be asking for volunteers soon. 

Meanwhile there’s the inaugural North West course setting competition to keep you busy.  Course setting is such an integral part of orienteering events and we’re keen for more members to have a taste of what’s involved.  Details about the competition are also later in the newsletter.

I look forward to seeing many of you on Sunday 2 December. 

Regards
Jenny Cade
President

In this issue:

1. End of Year Function/Prizegiving
2. Welcome to new members
3. Club Trip to CD Champs
4. Coaching Corner - Reminder about Course Setting Competition
5. Club Member Profile - Mark Lawson
6. NWOC members Northern Hemisphere Adventures Part 2
7. NZSS Team and NZ Invitational Team - Australia
8. Fundraising - support our Diocesan members fundraising

End of Year Function/AGM/NWOC Prizegiving - Sunday 2 December, Coatesville Hall

The NW Social Event of the Year is fast approaching. AGM 5:00pm followed by Dinner/Prizegiving. 

This is a great opportunity to socialise with club members.

We plan to use the same format as last year - Pot Luck Main Course and NWOC will supply the dessert.

Details here.

Please ensure you RSVP so we have an indication of numbers.

The AGM, includes the election of the exec committee for the upcoming year. If any current members are interested in becoming part of the exec committee and would like to know more about what this entails, please feel free to contact our president Jenny Cade on presidentnorthwestorienteering@gmail.com

Welcome to New Northwest Members

Welcome to the following:

Signe Solvang
Beth Spence
Charli Spence
James Christie
Robert Christie

We hope to see you at the end of year function.

Club Trip to CD Champs in Rotorua

If you are part of the group travelling to Rotorua for this, make sure you have entered to compete via the link http://www.obop.org.nz/cd-champs-2018.html

Any questions, email Kaye on kaye@griffiths.gen.nz

Coaching Corner

A reminder about the inaugural North West Orienteering Club course setting competition.

The aim of this competition is to get as many club members as possible involved in the course setting process. It will be a fun exercise for first time course setters as well as those more experienced to put their knowledge into practice. We encourage everyone to give it a go! It is a great way to improve your orienteering outside of races. 

All details can be found here. Please submit entries to mogd001@gmail.com by the end of October in JPEG or PDF format, keeping the files to an appropriate size. 

Club Member Profile - Mark Lawson

Mark is a long time and very valued NW member - he is a stalwart volunteer at events - always putting his hand up to help out - often one of the first to arrive and one of the last to leave! As a coach, his patient approach and vast knowledge is always appreciated. 

Number of years orienteering?
I started Orienteering when I was at secondary school in about 1977. 

How were you introduced to orienteering?
There was an event on at a friend’s farm at Woodhill so I went along and was immediately hooked.

Key orienteering achievements to date?
Represented NZ at a World Cup round in Australia in 2000 and the World Champs in Finland in 2001, been on the podium a few times at Elite level domestically. Won Auckland M21e OY competition for 11 consecutive years. Coached NZ JWOC teams in Australia and Italy and survived! 

Claim to fame?  
At about 20km into the Colville Connection MTB endurance race the bolt holding the seat on my bike broke so I did what I thought any other mountain biker would do (this was my first MTB race) put the broken seat in my backpack, put the seat post down and ride the rest of the race (52km) standing. This was one of the hardest things I have ever done and could hardly walk the next day. (But I still beat Rob Garden to the finish hahahaha)

Current orienteering project or goal?
My current Orienteering project is to get fit again.

Favourite map and why?
It’s hard to pin down a favourite map, probably my favourite terrain type is big hilly terrain like Turkey Ridge, Kariotahi and Huriwai where you can charge the terrain.

Event you are keen to experience?
The event I haven't been to but am keen to go to is the Arctic Midnight Sun event in Greenland.

Orienteering heroes? 
Ross Brighouse is a superb orienteer and has had some great results in NZ and overseas and probably hasn't had the recognition he really deserves.
Rob Jessop, another superb orienteer, also great friend, fierce rival, fountain of knowledge and all round good guy.

Day job?
Truck Mechanic.

Other interests?
My other all time consuming interest is Motorsport. I am a flag marshal for The Motorsport Club http://www.themotorsportclub.com/

NZ relay champs 2008 third leg running in to finish for victory. Photo credit Nic Gorman.

NWOC Members’ Northern Hemisphere Adventures Part 2

In the last newsletter we heard from a few members who had competed in the Northern Hemisphere over their summer - too many for one newsletter, here is the second installment.

Pip Poole and Marquita Gelderman - North American Orienteering Championships - August

Yukon Gold 

The week of 17^th-24^th August found Pip Poole and Marquita Gelderman based in Whitehorse in the Yukon for the North American and Canadian Orienteering Championships. Fellow NZ competitors were Greg and Claire Flynn and the Peat family, and we caught up with several Aussies. For Marquita it was a welcome cool change after her European sojourn. 

An attraction was the ’kettle and kame’ terrain (hollows and humps) formed as glaciers retreat. The hollows are due to blocks of ice in the moraine melting. This complex terrain was covered in pines and undergrowth, windfall and mossy banks so it was pretty hard to get through in parts, even when mapped as white. The contours were 5m so the hollows were deep and figuring out what was up and what was down was a challenge. Good map contact was essential as following a bearing was hard in the terrain, in part because compasses took a while to settle. We are still not sure if this was the effect of being so near the magnetic pole or the aurora. 

The sprint was a mixed town/ forest sprint held in First Nations town, Carcross, (short for Caribou Crossing) adjacent to the world’s smallest desert. We ran past totems, a paddle steamer, railways (with compulsory crossing points) and historic buildings. For more maps see website http://yukonorienteering.ca/naoc2018.  

The fields were not as strong as at Oceania, with many of the winners coming from outside North America. Further, there were some very long times with people eliminated for being over time. Marquita did exceptionally well being 1st or 2^nd in all her races (W45-54). Pip managed a first and a third in field of 42 (W55-64.) Note the 10 year age groups beginning from a year ending in 5 – this might make more sense in terms of physiology as one ages. 

Those with the fastest times who were not eligible for a NAOC medal received a little gift. One day Marquita won a square loaf of bread decorated like an O flag! Another nice touch was having a quote or poem on each map such as, “I am told there are people who do not care for maps and I find it hard to believe” (Robert Louis Stevenson). O-Lynx had its first North American outing as one of the organisers had helped Philip Herries at the World Masters Games in Auckland in 2017. We came away thinking how strong NZ is in orienteering: competitively; numbers-wise; and in event organisation. 

The Yukon is a vast expanse with heaps to do and see in terms of scenery and wildlife. In addition to the fabulous maps, we got to see the Northern Lights and the biggest salmon ladder in the world for fish that had come 3,000km up the Yukon to spawn. Put the Yukon on your bucket list.

Tegan Knightbridge - JWMTBOC - Austria 

Having spent 3 weeks off the bike it was a bit of a shock to the legs when I was reunited with my bike in Austria 2 days out from the Austrian MTBO Championships. I managed to have a good race in the long distance and I really enjoyed the complexity of the maps which is something we don't get too often in NZ and AUS and the terrain was quite fast which suited me well. After a surprising 2nd placing considering I was just focusing on navigating well, I had a bit more confidence going into the Junior World Champs (Looking back now, I think I had a little too much confidence!)

I spent the few days before the World Champs  getting used to the increased complexity of the maps and how the track ride ability was mapped and practising smashing out a leg or two on the training maps. 

Race One of the WMTBO Champs was a Mass start. In my mind I was a little weary of the start, as I had never done one of these before! The M20 grade started before us and it was a good chance to watch how they did it, which happened to involve a nice pile up 10 metres out of the start line!! Mass starts in foot orienteering are definitely a lot easier as some of the corners were a little hairy with bikes either side of you.  I was already pretty nervous and the pile up definitely heightened those already present nerves! The concept of the mass start was that you had 3 maps stapled together, in a way it is basically a one man relay. Coming off a good Austrian Champs I set some expectations that I now realise were not very realistic. After a pretty horrible Mass Start where I messed up the second loop quite badly and then topped it off with being too far away from the spectator control/pivot for it to register therefore ending up with a DNF, I was feeling pretty down, annoyed at myself and I was trying my hardest to block it out of my mind. 

Mass Start map with all 3 loops

Mentally I felt better than I did after the previous day’s race and even though the middle was the steepest race, I felt that I had prepared well.  The middle was also as technical as the mass start however the hills were definitely more brutal! Some of my route choices weren't so ideal, as I tried to take a few of the difficult "dotty" tracks as short cuts to route choices, however, I often lost time as they were very rough and hard to see on the ground. 

Due to having no relay team we ended up with a 2 day 'rest day', although we tried to squeeze a last minute entry into W21 with Marquita! We still went out to the event and supported the Aussies who we were travelling with. 

I was feeling well rested after the 2 day rest and was really looking forward to the long distance as it seems to be one of my better distances. It also had less climb so I was looking forward to being able to get a bit more speed up on the tracks. The long distance started fairly well for me, I was navigating well and felt quite strong riding, however I mucked it up by taking a wrong track only for it to disappear and end up with me roaming around the forest trying to find a way back out! Nevertheless I still improved on the previous races so that's always a plus! 

The sprint was definitely my best in terms of navigating as it was fairly clean. Racing around a military area was also quite different, it was a very fast paced course with a lot of variability from forest to bunkers to buildings. 

Sprint Map 

Overall, I well and truly enjoyed my experience in Austria at the JWMTBOC, it definitely gave me a better understanding of how much more prepared I need to be next time. So I am very keen to give it another shot and do a lot better next time around. 

Cameron de L’Isle - Junior European Cup - Switzerland - October

Last weekend I made a last-minute decision to travel to Switzerland and compete in possibly the second most prestigious junior orienteering event in the world (after JWOC), the Junior European Cup (JEC). This year JEC consisted of 3 races, a sprint relay, middle distance and an unusual format called a one-man relay.

The sprint relay was held in the town of Villars sur Ollon, high on the side of a mountain near Lake Geneva. The terrain was characteristic of Swiss sprints – a mixture of parks, winding alleyways and residential areas on steep slopes which maximised routechoice. I ran an alright race technically, picking most of the major routechoices although I struggled with the physicality of the course with not a lot of hillwork preparation before these races.

The middle was held in a green forest on a very steep slope on the valley below. In New Zealand we would probably consider areas like this marginal for orienteering – although I enjoyed running in this terrain a lot. In this type of terrain, any small miss of a control can result in a lot of extra climb and time lost. I made several small and basic errors which you can see from my GPS (see the DOMA links below) – in a race like this any mistakes are costly, and I was disappointed to have made so many.

The final race was an unusual format popular 20-30 years ago, and one I have never tried before, the one-man relay. The idea of this race is that it is a mass start race like a relay except every time you complete a ‘leg’ you exchange for a new map and continue. The terrain chosen by the organisers for this race was the famous Bretaye map from Swiss O-Week 2014, known as the toughest Swiss terrain from the last decade.

The terrain was a mixture of subtle and tricky stony glacial areas, open hills and some less detailed but often low vis patches of forest. I found the orienteering quite challenging with people going in all directions especially during the start of the race. Unfortunately, the physicality and high altitude hit me after the second loop and I was left to slog through the remainder of the course. This was one of the best maps I have ever orienteered on and is an area I want to come back and conquer one day.

 JEC Sprint

 JEC Middle

 JEC Long

Matt Ogden and Gene Beveridge - WOC - Latvia

If you have not already checked out their blogs, you can reference them here:

Matt https://mogd001.wordpress.com/2018/08/14/woc-2018/

Gene https://genebeveridge.nz/woc-reflection/ 

NZSS Representatives at the Australian Schools Championships

Congratulations to Jessica Sewell and Liam Stolberger who travelled to South Australia recently to compete as part of the NZ Schools Team to challenge for (and win) the Southern Cross Challenge.

Results:
Sprint Jessica 2nd, Liam 18th
Long Jessica 6th, Liam 20th

Congratulations also to Olivia Collins, Sophie Ryan and Cameron Bonar who were named in the NZ Schools Invitational Team and competed in the Australian Championships.

Support Dio Orienteers - and sort Christmas presents out! Orders close soon so don't delay!

Support NW Orienteers from Diocesan School for Girls as they fundraise to attend World Schools next year in Estonia

Four of our NWOC members are part of the Dio Senior Orienteering Team who have been selected to represent NZ at the World Schools Championships in Estonia in April 2019.

The team are fundraising and selling Onya Produce Bags. With plastic bags being banned from supermarkets soon this is a great solution and by purchasing the ONYA re-usable vegetable bags and/or lunch wraps help the environment. They make great Xmas pressies too!

Deposit the total into ‘Dio Orienteering Fundraising Account’: BNZ 02-0536-0417146-02 Please include your name and phone number as a reference.
E-mail your order form to: DioOrienteering@gmail.com
Orders close on 25th October 2018. Deliveries will be made early November.

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