Discussion: Canadian Champs

Cdn Champs winners for men and women elite:

Sprint: Emily Kemp and Patrick Goeres
Middle: Louise Oram and Mike Smith
Long: Louise Oram and Wil Smith

Lots of dnf's and dsq's in the results.

Anybody have a copy of the sprint race map at Hopewell Rocks?

What's the story on some 'voided legs' in the Middle distance results?

What's the story on some 'voided legs' in the Middle distance results?

Mandatory road crossing with crossing guards?

valerie is correct.. you had to cross hgh 114, and there were controls on both sides of the road, and also marshalls, but you had to cross " within reasonble time= 60 sec max )..video was present too.. neat

Winning times, particularily on the long-distance, seem a little slow (i.e., Holger at 9.4 min/km, Louise at 15.7 min/km). What's the scoop?

Winning times, particularily on the long-distance, seem a little slow (i.e., Holger at 9.4 min/km, Louise at 15.7 min/km). What's the scoop?

I guess you've never "run" there. Very rough and tough terrain, at least it was in 2000.

I do have vague memories of running in 2000 and pulled out my maps again. The 'Pits of Despair' was exceptionally brutal terrain, but I didn't recall Fundy itself as being quite as slow as it was. In 2000, Valstad managed 8 min/km and Mike Smith around 9 min/km, so it seems like it was even slower this year than it was back then.

in 2000 there were some long legs which avoided that side hill with no details( and longer routes made you avoid that ).. this year there were some controls. I had a good pace for about 80 % of the race.

Tough footing and visibility were the main reasons. Not many chances to get speed when going in to controls. You had to really watch your direction and slow down in spots due to a lack or overload of catching features.

The previous writers are correct that the 2000 course setting favoured the more open terrain and a fair amount of relatively dead orienteering along the few roads, trails and power lines.
This year the course setter sent us right in to the most detailed areas with little relief. It was a great test! Emily Kemp said the F 21 E course was the toughest one she's ever been on. For her to say a course is tough is something!
Also - and this can't be overlooked - the growth and spread of young spruce trees in the last eight years is phenomenal. The new growth made for some really tough going as stands of these young trees would pop up without warning in areas marked white and light green.
Made me think that perhaps New Brunswick needs another spruce budworm infestation to make the woods more runable for orienteering.

Is this area the first to be used for three COCs? 1992, 2000, 2008

1993, I think. That's the only year I attended at Fundy.

Is there any way to see splits by course rather than by age category?

And is there any place to to see the maps/courses? (My 2000 maps/courses are on my log.)

Sunday's Long Course 9

Saturday's Middle Course 9

Friday's Sprint Course 5

Thursday's Hopewell Rocks Sprint 3 Side A
Thursday's Hopewell Rocks Sprint 3 Side B

that's all my maps...

The courses will eventually be on the Canadian Route Gadget site http://rg.orienteering.ca/cgi-bin/reitti.pl So far only the pre-championships 'Fishbones' maps and courses have been uploaded. (And too few competitors have availed themselves of the opportunity to display their routes!!)

My maps for the sprint and middle are linked from my log. Left the long at home, so that'll have to wait until later tonight.

Matthew/cedarcreek- thanks again for providing good links.

So what happened with the M21 course for the middle (Saturday)? The IOF site says the class was voided, whereas the meet site still shows results that appear to be valid (although several mp's).

bshields log for Saturday explains it pretty well. Several maps from a previous revision of the course were issued to runners. It affected 4 competitors, I think. If you look at his map, his 15 had been moved to another location.

EricW: You're welcome.

Thanks, I saw that but didn't know if there was anything else.

So were the results voided for IOF purposes but ok for COC purposes? Or is the meet website/results still in need of an update?

Yeah it looks like there was a problem that affected a few runners which is unfortunate. And similarly there was a problem at the US Champs that affected some runners. But what would make me really really happy is that the discussion on the COCs focus more on the athletic accomplishments rather than the problems that occurred organizationally with the race. So few comments in the US Champs thread focussed on the results themselves.

So here is a look at the COCs:

Patrick Goeres ran very competitively against Holger Hott in two sprints: Hopewell Rocks (which looks to have been one way cool race) and also at the COC sprints (which also looked to have a great mix of sprinting style - was Wil Smith the planner?)

Also Emily Kemp becomes the youngest Canadian Champion since Susan Budge at age 16.

Louise Oram out duels both Katarina Smith and Sandy Hott to win two golds and the brothers Smith don't disappoint their home town fans with defending their national titles in middle (Mike) and Long (Wil).

Good point Mike. The COCs were awesome. In particular, the middle was one of the most intense and challenging I have ever done. It is probably one of my top 3 of recent memory. While I had a tough time, I was thrilled about the experience immediately after finishing and now that the buzz wore off. The sprint was also very nicely done, and the long a real test.

It is hard to describe exactly why I liked the middle so much. You have to experience the terrain. But, fundamentally, it was a quite unrelenting (physically and mentally) 3.7 K. And pleasant, in a tough love kind of way.

I'll second j-man's comments on the middle; the terrain was truly awesome, definitely worth the trip. The long was a long hard fight, through some brutally thick green stuff, but I thought it was great, too. All in all, an excellent weekend.

Interestingly, I spoke with some people on the shorter courses who found Sunday's terrain to be more open and pleasant than Saturday's, while I thought the opposite was true. Any thoughts?

Giving maps with the wrong courses to the competitors was a horrible mistake that we organizers made. We all feel very badly about it and we apologize to those four runners who got the bad maps - and to all the runners who will not get to keep their hard-earned WRE points. I would also like to say that I appreciate very much the manner in which those runners dealt with our mistake - it was truly impressive and I would like to thank them for their truly graceful behavior.

One thing I thought worked really well was the "Red Group" seeding at the COC Sprint. The top seeded M21E / W21E runners were started after all the other runners and with bib numbers that revealed their start times. The other runners were able to follow the racing at a spectator leg about 1/3 of the way around the course and then again in the finish chute. Excellent spectating value, and it really showed off the speed of the top athletes.

Any idea of how many of the top 20 seeded runners ended up in the top 20?

I know Steven ended up 11th and wasn't a member of the red group.....I hoped to prove the seeder wrong but ended up 21st:)

Interestingly, I spoke with some people on the shorter courses who found Sunday's terrain to be more open and pleasant than Saturday's, while I thought the opposite was true. Any thoughts?

I'm not sure if it's me or my course (7) but I found the middle was nasty green while the long was open and fast.

Middle & Sprint are available on RouteGadget for drawing routes and watching animations. The best way to get there is via the COC web, results page http://www.orienteering.nb.ca/coc2008/

I'm waiting for the Long distance files and should have that up shortly.

"open and fast".....were you at the same map as me? Spots on the long were slightly more runnable but there were still many sections that was slow going/fight.

Compared with the embarrassing speed in my compass-school middle distance (29:52/k), my long distance was open and fast (18:25/k). It's all relative.

Any idea of how many of the top 20 seeded runners ended up in the top 20?

I don't have the Red Group list with me, but looking at the results I *think* that all of the Red Group finished in the top 20 except for 4 that didn't start and 1 that didn't punch all the controls.

I think the five unseeded finishers in the top 10 included 3 americans and 2 M17-20.

It was very cool at the COC's to see a group of M17-20 having great results. These results are a bit "hidden" since these guys decided to run in M21E. Some notable results from the 'youngsters' running in M21E:
Graham Ereaux - 5th in Middle
Eric Kemp - 7th in Middle
Matt Hyrciuk - 8th in Sprint
Darius Konotopetz - 9th in Sprint
Steve Graupner - 11th in Sprint
Graeme Rennie - 12th in Sprint
Robbie Anderson - 13th in Sprint

Darius' age class is M21. I agree....there is a good number of solid young male orienteers with the potential to be much better. Nice results by some of these individuals as well in the FB's, HR, and COC middle.

Good results by the young Canadian men.

Good reporting by the local newspaper, too -- we kept the articles from the newspapers we collected in Alma. All the articles from the Times & Transcript are presently linked from this search result page.

Does anyone know if and where the copious pictures from COC 2008 have been posted?

The Long Distance courses have been added to the COF's RouteGadget database at rg.orienteering.ca. Now all the COC & Fishbones events are available. Please take a few moments to draw on your routes.

But the Hopewell Rocks event - I can't figure out how to put a map-exchange into RouteGadget

But the Hopewell Rocks event - I can't figure out how to put a map-exchange into RouteGadget

I believe the only option is to put the whole course up as one (delete the map exchange from in the course setting file (OCAD or Condes)). Yes, a very busy map...

I was trying to put my run(if you can even call it that) on route gadget, and it says that is can't find the map for the sprint. However, 11 people have already edited their routes there. Wondering if anyone else is having this problem? The long worked fine, and I didn't run the middle so didn't check it.

PHOTOS!

Finally, I've been able to switch some time into going through the huge pile of photos that were taken by various photographers at the COC's.

Thus far, only the batch from the Hopewell Rocks event is up - the gallery is called "orienteering rocks!", and can be found at:

http://orienteering.smugmug.com

Eventually, I'll get the chance to put up galleries from the other events (COC Sprint, Middle, Long and Banquet). Hopefully within a few more days, I suppose.

If people have other photos they'd like to share, we would suggest uploading them to flickr.com (or something similar), and tagging them with two tags: "COC2008", and "orienteering".

On the Sunday long courses, did anyone else notice the large piles of droppings near Course 9 Control 2? (That's code 108.)

I described them to a hunter from work and he guessed they might be bear. There were 3 or 4 big piles. They weren't pellets.

Almost for sure it was bear scat. We organizers found a few piles & other signs of bear such as diggings & the occasional paw imprint. For all the hours in the woods though, never once an actual sighting.

Also there was one (abandoned) control site where the stand was put out well in advance. It was broken by some unknown but presumably large animal and so we replaced it. The next day the replacement stand was broken in the exactly the same fashion. Luckily we had already decided to abandon that control site.

Near control 9 -i was so dissapointed with the mapping ( the extra pile stones/small stone wall ) that instead of concentrating on the course I was wondering about how at a big event like that- a control site is chosen and then if mapping is not right -not even the minimal updates are not done by anyone..at 8th i was 3rd and not bad(after dissapointement mapping at 1st control ), then 2 extra minutes at 9 and then my mind of working in ..how to organize better event.. oh well..

Nick,
Are you saying it was your 'scat' they found near control 9?

The discussion reminds me of the story of a Swedish orienteering group on an off-day from a meet in Alberta decided to do some hiking in the Rockies. However they were concerned about bears, had heard that wearing little bells was a good way to warn the bears off so suitably equipped with bells they merrily jingled their way toward the hills.
On the way they met a local old-timer so they decided to ask him about bears.
He said, "we have two kinds of bears around here - the Black Bear and the Grizzly. They are very territorial so you won't see a black bear in grizzly territory and vice versa.
You don't have to worry about the black bears as they just eat berries and the like but you do have to watch out when you are in grizzly territory."
"Well how do you know when you are in which bear's territory?' they asked.
"By the scat," he replied. "In black bear droppings you will see berry seeds and the like."
"And in grizzly scat'?"
"Oh, there you will often find little bells."
The Swedes changed their plans and went whitewater rafting.

good one Gord.

In the version I heard, they were also carrying bear spray, so the grizzly scat contained little bells and smelled like pepper.