Discussion: That forest

did not look nice at all. Hmm, quite a few 'do I fight through the impenetrable for 200m or do I swim through a marsh for 300m followed with a bash through some mid-green?' route choices - never fun.

I remember a 100 control course at tallinn O week which had nipple high marshes mapped as passable. Vietnam war film style holding map above head. At the end we were sent into a contour-only section, the reason being, we think, because the cost of all the green ink would have been too high

Seems to be a baltic state thing. I remember running a Latvian multiday around 10 years ago (the week before JWOC in Lithuania) where the final day area was a 50/50 split between lovely runnable pine moraine and mid-green marshes. Did we get a nice fast course with the odd foray into the crap to catch us out? Did we hell...at most 5 of our 30 controls were in the white - the rest of the 11 km was spent ploughing/swimming through grot, looking for tiny knolls or rootstocks (yes, really!) in a flat green swamp. Rather worryingly, the WOC 2018 areas are close to where this took place...

I was surprised at the IOF Advisors (all of them) enthusiasm for taking WOC courses through the grot (and televising them there too!). Especially in the middle. Attitude is that it's meant to be challenging, not fun so I wouldn't expect anything too nice... Premana may be better :)

I thought it might have been nicer. The EOC 2006 races were held in this year's WOC embargo areas. Interesting contour detail in utter shite grotty forest. David Rollins has a legendary photo of Craney at the end of the long race, his o bottoms in tatters around his ankles as the forest was such a kit-ripper. Maybe the green has grown into white...

Maybe Craney will be back for another go this year....

I think he was so pissed off by the kit degrading on him when he was having an ok run he won't be back.

If (and that's a big if) he came back he'd be running for Australia. He won WMOC under their banner...

Australian WOC team due to be announced tomorrow....

Look at Timo Sild's routes - I think he's hinting at what might work for WOC......
Not that he can beat TG on any route.....

Yep we were looking at them in the accommodation....Estonians often going out of their way to avoid the big marshes. Seemed also on GPS as though Thierry was deliberately choosing straight line routes on everything to test times for that versus others.

And when is the GB team announced Jon? Is this the last set of races? I don't fancy murray's chances much in the long☹️

https://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/news/374

No, I have no idea either why that news item currently only appears if you are logged in. Publication is supposed to be the time when it stops being a secret!

I can't say I have ever logged into the BOF website, and have no intention of starting any time soon. Fortunately I don't think I am going to miss much.

Haha just found this thread. What have I done?! Those Estonian forests at EOC 2006 were horrible! I must have completely erased the memories of effectively losing my trousers at the start kite of a classic race from my mind. Well, at least this time round can't be any worse...

Murray and Hector still in the frame for the relay then.

http://orienteering.asn.au/index.php/2017/05/16/wo...
I am sure you will love it this time Craney...
I hear you have other news too - congrats to you and Grace!

Craney - you do realise that Minna won't be there to be serenaded this year?

The forests may have been shit but the après-orienteering more than made up for it.