The last days of Junior Camp were held at Tangoio Forest, just off to the North of the Napier end of the Napier-Taupo Highway. This forest is plantation pine, steep and scattered with cliff and rock detail. The physical nature of the terrain adds to the challenge of the navigation by adding the pressure of lactic acid to the decision making process.
Tangoio from the air
Our first day at Tangoio included training focused on traffic lighting and short legs. These techniques fit in higher in the hierarchy of orienteering skills we were teaching for the week. Traffic lighting relates to speed control and needs to be build on top of planning for each leg as well as fundamentals of navigation. Short legs, or control picking, is all about gaining flow through the terrain so is naturally left to later in a camp.
A sunny day to complete the training with a group of increasingly tired kids (and coaches) was followed by an evening of rain before camp champs. We wanted to up the pressure and the prestige of camp champs this year. The night before we had a startlist drawn up, instructions all ready organised and in a new precedent for NZ junior camps, a warm up map with sample controls to really amp up the nerves.
The low mist sitting across the top of the forest and persistent soaking rain combined to create challenging conditions for all. Matt and I took positions at the start. We kept things like a real orienteering event with a call up and pre-start. While we took time to offer advice, we kept it to a minimum to try and recreate a race and keep nerves high. We were stoked to see focussed faces, with nervous energy all through the air. As we worked our way through the start list I couldn’t wait to get down the bottom to see some finish times and hear about route choices (especially start to 1 on course 1 below).
NZOF Junior Camp Champs 2011 - Powered by Vitasport
We boosted down to the finish after the last starter. The rest of the coaching team had done an awesome job of setting up the event center with a long run in, a spectator control and Sportident timing all working smoothly. The other thing I noticed in the event center was what really made me smile. The finishers were all keenly sharing route choices and discussing their races. It was awesome over the next hour to float around hearing stories from exploits in the forest. Kids that had been just starting out on red courses at the start of the week were now talking about how they had read subtly small pieces of contour detail on the way into controls. Others, who would have clung to tracks in the past were running straight through vauge areas of forest. The enthusiasm was awesome. Coaches are only part of the equation, standing at the finished I realised how lucky we had been to have a receptive group of juniors to teach. I hope that the enthusiasm in the clearing after camp champs will continue and push the next crop of juniors to keep training hard.
I had an awesome week at Junior Camp, and I am gutted that I will almost certainly be working next year and unable to coach again. I’m sure someone else will step up and continue this essential part of the NZOF Calendar.
During the week we were videoing some of the training as practice for videos which are in the pipeline. Matt produced it into a sweet short video of orienteering in Tangoio – check it out on Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHj5zMdIFoA
Winsplits results for the camp champs are available at: http://obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/default.asp?page=classes&databaseId=19519&ct=true
Route gadget to come, keep an eye on www.routechoice.co.nz
Vitasport support my racing, and have just stepped up to sponsor National Orienteering Championships 2012. They kept the coaches hydrated at Junior Camp. Check out www.facebook.com/teamvitasport and become a fan on facebook.
