The Newsletter of Orienteering New Brunswick
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Rob Hughes in Upper Kingsclear
This is the post-COC 2000 edition. Included are results of spring events, plus some highlights of the COC results. I hope to include more accounts of COC fun, ordeals and commentaries in the next issue, around year-end (this is an exhortation for everyone to send in material).
By all accounts the season's events were extremely successful. At the wrap-up of the COC week in Fundy Park, the prevailing mood was apparently one of tired satisfaction. The efforts in planning and organising the COC events were self evident in the smooth running of the proceedings. No-one could say they did not get some challenges, and significant competition was present in virtually all age classes. This was especially true at the elite levels, where our local elite had the rare chance to race on home terrain against some of the world's best.
Full COC results are not included in this issue, due to their length. They will appear in your next issue of COF News. Publishing full results here would be unnecessary duplication and a waste of paper, time, electrons, ink, etc, creating emissions of greenhouse gases and other assaults on the environment which are best avoided. If you cannot wait until your COF newsletter arrives, you can browse up your results on-line on the COC web site: http://www.fan.nb.ca/fan/info/ip_info/onb/coc2000/results.html
Full credit for speed and efficiency to ONB's results supremo Don Heron and webmaestro Dave Fellows. All the results are there, even the FUNdraiser events.
My normal reminder....the email address for all submissions to ONB Notes is rustics@brunnet.net. Contributions in any format gladly accepted.
Have fun at the remaining autumn events.
by Heather McBriarity
(Ed's note: this actually decribes events in 1999, however this has apparently become an annual fixture in Saint John and the article was too good to pass over).
"Orienteering? That involves compasses and running about in the woods, doesn't it?" I was a novice Beaver Leader for St. Mark's United church in Saint John, NB, when Ray Quan, then our Scout master asked if I was interested in having my Beavers participate in the First Annual St. Mark's Orienteering Challenge. On a cold and wild day in April of 1997, I was handed my first map - a simple course appropriate for Beavers and the directionally challenged like myself. With confidence in ourselves, and the knowledge that hot chocolate awaited us at the end, we charged from flag to flag, finishing with a respectable second place. This orienteering stuff was a lot of fun!
Ray, with the help and expertise of Don Heron of Orienteering New Brunswick, had laid out a series of Orienteering courses in the sprawling trails and woods of Rockwood Park in Saint John. There were four levels of increasing difficulty, so that all the section levels could participate. An invitation was extended to all Scouting groups in New Brunswick and to the Girl Guides, many of whom took part. About 100 youth came that first year, despite cold, wind and rain that threatened, although a group from Grand Manan island had to cancel when the ferry couldn't cross the rough seas to the mainland!
Two years later, the St. Mark's Orienteering Challenge, organized by our now Venturer Advisor, Ray Quan, has evolved into an all day event, featuring orienteering, but also offering many activities for all age levels. The 1999 Challenge began with the orienteering run. 145 youth representing 20 groups from Guiding and Scouting started out, some at a run, professionally attired; some with more enthusiasm than expertise. Within a half hour, the first groups returned and over the next hour and a half the rest trickled in. Many made a dash for the finish line; some ruefully admitted they hadn't found all of the ten or more flags. All wore proud, if tired, grins that they had made it back. There was much cheering and patting of backs in celebration as each group crossed the finish.
After a rest and a big mug of hot chocolate, the extra activities began. St. Mark's Venturers set up a rope bridge, over which many Beavers (Scouts, Guides, and Brownies, too) eagerly made their way, coached and guided by those great big Venturers. The Scouts lashed together tripods to make catapults. A few bungee cords and a couple of plastic containers later and soon long lines formed to shoot tennis balls into the lake. The older Scouts practiced their canoeing skills, paddling about, retrieving balls. St. Mark's Cubs had made rockets out of pop bottles at their meeting the week before, and their Leaders set up the rocket launchers Ray had constructed. The Cubs got a refresher lesson on "sharing, sharing, sharing" as they passed their rockets on for all the others to try! There was also a rope climb, manned by our Scout leaders. The youth were happily oblivious to the alternating rain, snow, sun and hail. A final event for the Venturers was a mountain bike trek - somebody had to bring in all the orienteering flags!
This event incorporates the best of Scouting, adults working with youth, youth working with youth, all sections playing and learning together, all in the great outdoors.
by the Ed.
Eco-Challenge....mountain marathon...Rogaine....RAID...the number of versions of long-distance outdoor events involving navigation keeps growing. These events are clearly not "traditional" orienteering, although standard orienteering controls are often used as waypoint markers. Although non-traditional, long-distance orienteering can be lots of fun, and there are a number of advantages these kinds of events have over "classic" meets.
Value for money: you generally get many more hours of outdoor navigation challenge for a given cost. A long drive has a better pay off at the end. More challenge: map quality and type is variable. You have to readjust your map reading and landscape interpreting skills, making you overall a better navigator. New areas: long-distance events usually take place in areas you won't have been in before. More and better food: typically at our standard meets there is little or no food anyway! More opportunities to socialise: long-distance events have a relatively extended finish and awards period, usually over and following food...you get more time to meet new people and compare experiences. More publicity and public interest: this applies especially to adventure races of the "eco-challenge" type. There is more likelihood of media and other promotional coverage. If you are good you might even get sponsored...or....snakes alive...win a cash prize!!
Probably $$ winnings are unlikely to be the prime motivation for regular members, but the "hype" factor associated with adventure racing, and the greater suitability for creating exciting spectator or TV coverage, mean that these sports are probably here to stay, and grow in popularity.
Orienteers, with their fitness level and and mental abilities, seem to make top notch adventure racers.
For example the relatively new "Skreemin' Fury" team, which includes well-known orienteers Mike Waddington and Doug Mahoney, has won every race they have entered so far (5), against some well-established and funded rivals such as team Subaru Outback (who describe themselves as "Canada's top adventure racing team"). Orienteers are tough to beat! The debate over how and if orienteering should go to the Olympics grinds on...maybe some form of adventure racing would be a serious contender.
Ray St-Laurent
Well, New Brunswick lost their vote on the COF board. The president does not get to vote unless there is a tie.
The best place to see COF activity is the website, www.orienteering.ca. The COF newsletter Orienteering Canada also has information. An electronic version is available at the website.
A new feature at the website will be a summary of the motions presented at the agm held in Fundy. The intent is to maintain records of motions for upcoming years too. This will provide a background for those contemplating new motions.
As always, feel free to contact me if there is something you would like to complain about, if you have an idea, or if you want to participate in a committee, e.g. high tech or fund-raising.
They say power tends to corrupt. But what if you are already corrupt? When I told Mike Fellows about my new position, he immediately responded, "Oh god". That certainly appears to be misplaced fealty, and a somewhat exaggerated view of my abilities, but if everyone shows a fraction of that reverence, we'll get along just fine. Hmmm, apparently there is room for more corruption.
Stig Skarborn
From a New Brunswick meet organizers viewpoint the entry list was a dream. World number one ranked Norwegian Bjornar Valstad and Hanne Staff, supplemented by other year 2000 Norwegian national team members Tore Sandvik, Bernt Bjornsgard, Oystein Kristiansen and Holger Hott Johanson. Valstad won the 1999 World Championships at Inverness, Scotland, with Staff winning at the 1997 World Championships in Norway, and finishing second in Inverness. Staff, Valstad, Bjornsgard and Sandvik were also members of the Norwegian relay teams that won the relay gold medals at Inverness.
How do you get quality participants like these to come to New Brunswick? You start training young orienteers as part of a school activity in Hillsborough, New Brunswick, on a rough, technically and physically challenging map when they are in their early teens. You then organize out-of-province trips for the New Brunswick orienteering team to New England, New York, Quebec and Ontario at least twice per year, and do everything possible to get them to regularly participate in Canadian Orienteering Championships, wherever they are in Canada. Somehow you then manage to retain a few girls when they discover boys. You have also managed to retain the volunteer meet organizers and have parents willing to drive long distances. 10 to 15 years later you have a strong orienteering team. You now add in a substantial dose of personality and charm, no doubt obtained from parents, and encourage your young men and women to compete in Europe. Here they will meet good looking European elite orienteers, one of which will propose marriage, and the ceremony is conveniently located in New Brunswick.
One cannot overlook the need to have foreseen the above marriage three years in advance so that the COC's could be planned to coincide with the happy event. It is taken for granted that the wedding party will include some of the worlds best orienteers. Congratulations Sandy Smith of Waterside and Holger Hott Johanson (presently ranked 11:th in the World) of Baekkelagets SPK.
As an organizer it was gratifying to see so many other very good orienteers participate from both within and outside the country. The results at the end of ONA speak for themselves, but many participants are especially noteworthy (check their times):
Three major events were held in the Bay of Fundy area of New Brunswick; the 2-day Eastern Canadian Orienteering Championships in Hillsborough (201 competitors) , the Canadian Orienteering Short Distance Championships in Saint John (193 competitors), and the 2-day Canadian Orienteering Championship Classical event in Fundy National Park (314 competitors). In addition to these, Mike Fellows, one of our New Brunswick elite, organized a junior training camp (a COF requirement) running from Sunday night to Thursday morning. The Canadian National team bolstered by the COF Board also ran a fundraising event during the week in Saint John.
The maps used in Saint John were made in 1994 by two Swedish mappers, Kjell Melander and Lars Arnesson. The map in Fundy National Park was made in 1999 by Canadian Bryan Chubb. Having spent a considerable amount of time vetting both courses and block vetting the morning of the events, I feel that both of these maps are of exceptional quality and have very good accuracy. In the case of Fundy this is no mean feat, since the terrain is very challenging, even from a mapper's perspective. Thank you, Bryan.
As overall coordinator and as Meet Director for the Classical event, I had an easy time. When our small organization (less than 50 active people in the province) called for volunteers, every single person asked agreed to do something, and many volunteered without being asked. Thank you for a job well done. In addition, at the COF AGM, New Brunswicker Ray St-Laurent has taken on the task of COF President.
How did the European international competitors compare with the North Americans? In F13-14 Ruth Holmes of Quantock, England, consistently ran at least 40 percent faster than the best North Americans. Her sister, Rachel Holmes was approximately 10 percent faster than the best North American in F17-19 in the Classic event. These results show considerable prowess for athletes with limited exposure to the dense and rough New Brunswick forests often lacking many detailed features. No other comparisons could be made at the junior level, unless an analogy is made with Thomas Nipen, a M15-16 runner who although living in Canada started his orienteering career in Norway. He ranged between 20 and 33 percent faster than the best North Americans. The above results indicate that even as juniors, the Europeans are fast runners and have adapted well to varying technical demands.
For the international elite the COC Classical event is the best yardstick. Although six Canadian F20-34 competitors finished at the top, the results are strongly influenced by the difficulties many seem to have encountered on Day 1, where even Hanne Staff recorded a DNF. She had difficulty interpreting some of the vegetation boundaries and spent an inordinate amount of time on some of the early controls, before having had enough. Bjornar Valstad on the men's side had no such difficulties, however, adapting to the technically challenging vegetation features in this part of the map and course. On the second day Hanne completed the course in 74:29 beating out Erin Olafsen of the U.S.A. and Eva Stalstad of Sweden who had times of 95:14 and 95:18 respectively. Former repeat Canadian champion Pam James finished with the 4th fastest time of 95:20. This made Hanne approximately 28 percent faster than the best North Americans.
Both days of the Classical Championship provided very close competition with Bjornar Valstad winning on Day 1 with a comfortable margin over second place Tore Sandvik with times of 70:24 and 80:26. Both Mike Waddington and Mike Smith had very respectable times of 82:48 and 82:55 respectively, finishing 18 percent slower than Bjornar. On Day 2 the four fastest times were recorded by Norwegians; Tore Sandvik 71:04, Bjornar Valstad 71:19, Oystein Kristiansen 72:48 and Bernt Bjornsgard 76:28. Mike Smith had the fastest North American time in 80:00, making him 12 percent slower than Tore. Not too far behind we had Mike Waddington in 82:18 and Mike Fellows in 83:07. Congratulations guys, you did well, and keep up the good work.
I have requested that a few of the competitors mark their maps with their route choices, and hope to present these in a future issue of ONA.
Two men and two women were selected to represent Canada at the World Championships, to be held in Finland next year, based on results from the Short and Classical Distance events. Selected were Mike and Sandy Smith from Waterside, Mike Fellows from Fredericton, and Cherie Mahoney from Hillsborough (now Ottawa), all New Brunswick athletes. Additional team members are to be selected at an event to be held in the spring or early summer. Congratulations.
The Short and Day 1 of the Classical distances were designated as World Ranking Events. At the time this article was written, the web site http://www.n3sport.com/orienteering/index.htm had not yet reflected the COC's. [It has now. - webmaster] It was hoped that the COC's could provide an opportunity for North American athletes to start accumulating WRE points, as this would enable an ongoing comparison with international athletes.
Ray St-Laurent
As you may recall, course 4 of the NB Champs (June 4) was thrown out because I hung a control in the wrong place, a very wrong place. If a control is stolen: how unfortunate. If a control is hung in the wrong place: how careless. How could this have happened? Yes, of course it was due to my usual incompetence, but how did that manifest itself in this case?
There are a number of checks in the meet-organizing manual designed to prevent this from happening. Although the manual was followed quite closely, misery resulted.
This article is not a recounting of that went wrong. The incident got me thinking how easy it is to really screw-up a course. It is difficult finding enough personnel to put on 'A' meets, especially in Fredericton. (A phrase you will never hear at a Foxes meeting is, "We need to put on more 'A' meets to have something for all our officials to do".) There are always last minute surprises that tend to result in short cuts being taken. I wondered if it were possible to establish a simple mechanism that added no burden but could guarantee all controls were hung in the right places. I thought that would make a more useful article then yet another story about my incompetence.
I believe there is a mechanism that if followed, even if short cuts are taken, will assure that the controls are all hanging in the right locations. Please, do not take this as a recommendation to take short cuts. It's like driving a car. I never plan to drive into a ditch but if I do, I will be glad if I am wearing a seat belt. Consider this a seat belt for course setting.
The key is to establish a consistent procedure, understood by both setter and controller, that is rigorously followed. Each ribbon hung should have three identifying marks, the initials of the hanger, the event or date, and the number of the control from the master control list.
If the same person hanging the ribbons hangs the controls, there is really no possibility of missing a control. On the other hand the integrity of the control site itself becomes questionable if not visited by the controller. If a person other than the ribbon hanger hangs the flags, they must confirm that every ribbon was properly marked.
It is important that this ribbon identification/confirmation procedure is always followed.
What if it can't be followed in every case? Perhaps the ribboner discovers he lost his marker after he gets to the feature. Then the ribbon should be uniquely identified by another manner, say by tying a particular knot pattern in the ribbon. Remember the pattern and tell the control hanger the details. The ribboner should obtain a marker as soon as possible to minimize the number of special cases.
It is the control hanger's job to confirm all ribbons are as expected, and the controls are hung according to the ribbons. The control hanger must confirm that all special ribbons were found as advertised. Any discrepancies must be reported to the ribbon hanger. If the ribboner recalls that the control hanger is correct, all is well. Where doubt remains, the one contesting, or preferably both parties must revisit the control.
The increased burden on organizers should be minuscule. Typically the only variation from previous practice might be to positively and uniquely identify any ribboning exceptions, and to always confirm any non-standard ribbon/control. A small price to pay to avoid the orienteering lynch mob.
Rob Hughes
We decided to take a break and go south to this event, held near Milford, New Hampshire on May 6. Deciding to go was the easy part in comparison to deciding teams. We all know that rogaine team members should have similar expectations for the event, should be able to work well together...and should have similar levels of fitness and competitiveness...not forgetting complementary navigation skills. On top of that, previous rogaine experiences enter the picture and there are declarations such as :
"Next time I think you'd better go with ***** and ***** instead",
"You didn't have a dog to worry about",
"I don't want to go with ****",
"Last time we went with *** we only got x controls",
" **** wants to come"
...and so on. Despite all this on May 5 we found ourselves with a loaded car and 5 team members heading south on I-95. From overcast skies and 13C in New Brunswick we encountered sun and 22C at Bangor and by the time we reached southern Maine we were sweating in temperatures of 28C. Spring had sprung in New Hampshire. We camped at the meet site in a rough meadow complete with poison ivy patches. Mass start was at 10 am next day. We had half an hour after map hand-out to plan our routes...which flashed by and seemed very inadequate! This was an 8-h event, ending at 6 pm. Our two teams, which fell out as Lucy, Daven and I in team 1 and Jenny and Alex Whaley in team two, set off..most teams chose the same first control, but after that people rapidly spread out on different route choices. The map was good, a modified USGS at 1:30 000, but took a bit of getting used to. Estimating the total distance you expect to cover is critical in rogaining. The critical point comes when about half your time has elapsed: are we on track? How much further can we go....can we take a chance on one extra control? Things can go wrong close to the end, so you need to plan an easy finish leg if possible. My team had trouble in a logged area within 2 km of the finish, as it happened, but we got back with 10 minutes to spare after some nail-biting moments. We all had fun. Our team came in third of 10 in the co-generational category and Jenny and Alex 7th out of 14 in the mixed category.
This just in...Cherie Mahoney plus an anonymous partner came first in the 8-h Laurentian Rogaine on Sep 30.
By Fraser and Carol Ross
by the Ed.
(For this you will have to refer to the hard copy version of ONB notes.....!)
A prize of having your name included in the next ONB Notes (with a cash value of absolutely nothing) will be awarded to every reader who provides a correct answer...email your entries to the Editor.
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