Sprint Final

SILVER for Jamie Stevenson

Jamie came away from the European Champs Sprint race with a silver medal today, closely behind Emil Wingstedt. The race was fantastically close - every second really did count. There were 36 men within one minute of the lead so small mistakes were really punished. Jon Duncan managed 38th place, and I was 43rd. Jon was losing a little bit of time on every control and I blew numbers 2 and 4 to lose the best part of a minute. After 4 I had a really good race but the damage was done.

Girls did well too, Sarah was 18th, Jenny 37th, Rachel 39th and Helen 44th. Sarah was really happy with her run - no mistakes, just a little off the pace, and the others lost some time in places. Pippa won the b final comfortably.

The non - runners enjoyed the sunshine, the opening ceremony and some ice creams.

Results here
Splits here

My Race

Quick summary of my race. Took it steady to number 1, looking ahead for the route choice to 2. See the OOB area, think to myself, OK left or right - right looks nicer way in to control. Start running right. BALLS ! no way through where I thought there was. Panic - mustn't stop running - OK take left route - haven't planned that route - aaah where am I ok relocated on the road, have to climb up to control. Lose 20-25 seconds. Number 3 fine - OK 50-50 route choice again left or right of the building. Choose left. DAMN NO GAP THROUGH FENCE - panic (should stop realise route still viable, go down to road, under bridge etc...) - ok keep running, every second counts - up the massive bank, ok i'm on the bridges - want to be down there, back down massive bank, across the parkland and into the control. Lose 20 - 25 seconds. Leave number 4, see my 1 minute man running towards control. Have almost been caught - ARSE. OK get it together. Spike 5, 6 (route to the left better in retrospect?), 7, big climb to 8, Latvian Sirmais right behind me. Clean through 8, 9, 10, 11. Number 12 Sirmais takes route through the church and just gets ahead of me for the first time. Punch 12 just behind him. 13 he runs down to the road, under the bridge and round to the left. I chose a straighter route and get to the control with him. Race across to the spectator control but am tired and lacking motivation. Try to stay with him round last easy section of course but don't quite have the legs or motivation. Cross the line 80ish seconds down.

Could have been very good. From 4 onwards was very happy - comes down to 2 critical bad decisions leaving 1 and leaving 3. This could be down to rushing - built up pressure, expectation, nerves - or maybe not looking closely enough at the map and making assumptions and taking risks. Essentially though I didn't deal with the mistakes well enough - i should have remained calm, taken my time and stopped to look at the map and analyse my options instead of headless-chicken mode.

Lot of positives despite this. Two poor decisions - 50-50 calls which didnt pay off. Apart from that a really good race technically and was strong physically, even if I was struggling on the climbs. Was 46 seconds down on Emil Wingstedt at number 4, and finished 76 seconds behind, so was only 30 seconds down over the rest of the course which I am happy with.

Middle qualifiers tomorrow - and there is a lot of confidence in the team. Hopefully all 12 to do well.

Sprint Qualifier

A mixed morning for the British team with 7 of the 10 athletes qualifying for this afternoon's final.

The terrain was very hilly and fast, and with relatively little route choice it was all about hitting the controls cleanly and quickly, and running very quickly when possible. Starting in the town, the first 2 or 3 controls were like an urban sprint, and then it moved into some marshy hilly edge of town parkland. One massive climb on all the courses around 1/3 of the way really sorted the men from the boys (have to admit i was reduced to a walk by the top), and the rest of the course was no let up to reduce the lactate levels with short sharp climb after short sharp climb. The thick forest was runnable but tricky, and there was a plethora of paths and fields in between offering good runnability but possiblities for parallel errors.

The finish was in a ski-stadium.

Pippa was the unlucky girl, missing out narrowly in heat 3. Jenny was also living dangerously, qualifying in 17th spot. The others, Sarah, Helen and Rachel qualified more comfortably.

In the guys, comfortable qualifying spots for Jamie (8th), JD (7th) and myself (7th). Craney and Rob missed out, but not by a lot. Craney was only 61 seconds down on the heat winner but down in 20th place which really shows the quality of this European Championships field.

We are all back at the hotel recovering, stretching and eating before driving up to Tartu for this afternoons race.

Results here

Thanks to Liba Sheeran for the pics

One day to go to the European Champs

The opening ceremony and opening races of the European Championships are tomorrow, and all the teams today took a look at the model areas. These are the final preparation for the competition, allowing the athletes a final training session using the most relevant areas and the most up to date (and similar to the race) maps.

This morning we went to the middle model area, a mixed forest with lots of blocks of woodland with variable runnability separated by marshes, open areas and tracks. This afternoon was the sprint model, with mostly open parkland and white woodland on the edge of the town Ottepaa.

Tomorrow sees the sprint race qualifier in the morning, held in and around Ottepaa, and the sprint race final in the afternoon, which is being held in a park in the centre of Tartu (the largest town in this part of Estonia).

The qualifier race will see 3 heats of men and 3 heats of women, and the best 17 from each heat will go through to the A final in the afternoon (and then the next runners to the B final if they chose to run). The top 40 in the final will score World Cup points.

Start lists are up here for the men and here for the women

Oli Johnson and Claire Ward will not start the races tomorrow. Oli is resting for the middle and Claire is looking after a possible injury and doesn't want to race on a hard surface at this time.

European Championships, 2 days to go

The British team arrived in Puhajarve last night in time for a quick run/swim before dinner. We flew into Tallinn, and then drove for about 3 hours to our hotel, which is near Tartu in the South Eastern part of Estonia (quite close to Polva where JWOC was a couple of years ago).
We are staying in a very modern looking Spa Hotel, with internet access and everything. I will try and give updates most days about what is going on in the British team.

This morning we went for our first team training, and this afternoon we walked around Tartu, and had a look at the area for the sprint final (which will be on Sunday).

In terms of the terrain, the forest we ran in this morning was rough, green, marshy and hard to run in a straight line. There is thick vegetation and low visibility, but despite all these bad points, it is actually really enjoyable and challenging to orienteer in.

The sprint race is in an urban park area, with very steep banks and high visibility. The race will be very fast, with route choice paramount.

Some old maps of the areas are available here

Some photos from the sprint area

Website for EOC is here

Program for the week

Saturday - Model event for sprint and middle races
Sunday - Opening ceremony, sprint qualifier, sprint final
Monday - Middle qualifier
Tuesday - Middle final
Wednesday - Rest day, model for long distance and relay
Thursday - Long qualifier
Friday - Long final
Saturday - Relay and banquet
Sunday - Travel home

Mixed 10mila

This is the first chance I have had since Tiomila to write anything about it, I have had a really busy week with travelling back from Sweden, catching up with Liis, catching up with sleep, and then preparing for Estonia.

Tiomila was an awesome experience, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has not been. I watched the junior and women's races on the internet from the hotel, and then fell asleep before the start of the mens relay. The original plan called for me to run leg 9 for my club, IL Tyrving. Unfortunately our best runner, Audun Weltzein, had to pull out at the last minute with a cold, so it was all change. That meant I now was running leg 10, and due to television committments, I wouldn't know how far I would be running until the morning itself. I was woken at 4.30 to be driven to the event in time to warm up, check out the layout and run, with a little time to spare. Unfortunately our leg 2 runner had had a bit of a disaster, and had lost quite a lot of time, and despite some good runs by our other legs, we were well behind our estimated times. Therefore I only started running at about 9am.

The course was set at 14km, and I was fairly nervous. I started just behind Halden 2nd team, and caught them up on the way to the first control. I really enjoyed the fast open forest, and the more technical areas broke it up nicely. I was running very well, and had even pulled away from the Halden runner slightly when Mattias Merz caught us both up. Both of us tried to stay with the flying Merz, and I managed for about 3km before I had to give up. That took me round to the spectator control, and I was still running well. After that though, I started to tire, I wasn't running with anybody any more, and worst of all, I started to get stomach cramps. I simultaneously wanted to throw up and empty my bowels. I kept going, but I was losing concentration and made a stupid 2 minute mistake, and my speed was dropping off too. I managed to pull it together by the end to beat in a couple more teams, but the splits show that at the spectator control Merz had caught me by just over a minute, but after that he took another 6 minutes out of me over 5km.

After the race I still felt awful and it took about an hour for my stomach to settle down. We finished in 48th place, and I pulled up 7 places, taking 35th best time on last leg.

Pleasing performance up to a point, but ultimately quite disappointing, both for myself and the team as we know that both could have done better.

Results here

Leg by leg analysis of the Tyrving team here (to be completed)