Bridget
Bridget Place of Birth: Adelaide
 Hometown: Adelaide
 Nicknames: Biddy, chops, stumps, Bridgeydidge
 Attackpoint name: Biddy
Coke or Pepsi? Coke
Drive or Ride? Drive
Nike or Asics? Nike
 Mountains or Beach? Mountains
Coffee or Tea? Coffee
 Toast or Cereal? Cereal
Abbott or Gillard? Gillard
 Public or Private? Public
 City or Country? Country
 Sprint or Long? Sprint
 Long Run or Intervals? Intervals

Team profiles

Aislinn
 Place of Birth: Ballarat
 Hometown: Ballarat
 Nicknames: Ais
 Attackpoint name: kido
 Coke or Pepsi? Coke Zero!
 Drive or Ride? Ride. Unless the hills are really big.
 Nike or Asics? Asics
 Mountains or Beach? A little of both!
 Coffee or Tea? Hot Chocolate
 Toast or Cereal? Cereal
 Abbott or Gillard? Ugh! Neither!
 Public or Private? Private
 City or Country? Country
 Sprint or Long? Long
 Long Run or Intervals? Long run, but only if it's somewhere nice.

All you need to know...for AUS WOC 2012

With WOC 2012 fast approaching it is time to give all our fans (you) a run-down of the week ahead. All the information you need to follow the Australian team at WOC 2012.

First of all who is running the show for the Australian team this year...our dedicated and hard working coaches are Wendy Read and Tom Quayle. Read on to find out their intimate secrets..

Wendy in action

Wendy Read
Place of Birth: Brisbane
Hometown: Brisbane (geez I get around)
Nicknames: Weed / Weedy
Attack point name: pipsqueak – after a particular brand of cider






Coke or Pepsi? Coke
Drive or Ride? Ride
Nike or Asics? Asics
Mountains or Beach? Beach
Coffee or Tea? Tea
Toast or Cereal? Cereal
Abbott or Gillard? Gillard
Public or Private? Private
City or Country? City
Sprint or Long? Long
Long Run or Intervals? Intervals are long runs these days!

TQ back in the day, as he says...

Tom Quayle

Place of Birth: Canberra
Hometown: Örnsköldsvik
Nicknames: TQ
Attackpoint name: TommyQ





Coke or Pepsi? Coke
Drive or Ride? Ride
Nike or Asics? Nike
Mountains or Beach? Australia - Beach, Sweden - Mountains
Coffee or Tea? Coffee morning, tea evening
Toast or Cereal? Cereal
Abbott or Gillard? Gillard - go the carbon tax!
Public or Private? Public!
City or Country? Country
Sprint or Long? They go hand in hand, good at long = good at sprint. Nothing more satisfying than a good result in a long race though.
Long Run or Intervals? These days don't do either but back in the day I loved my long runs and feared my intervals.

What to expect in the coming days...

Thursday 12 July - Model events and accreditation
The team will move into our WOC accommodation at Lausanne youth hostel and return to civilisation with internet access. Today will be spent on reconnaissance in the Sprint Qual area before it is embargoed at 18.00 and some final touch-up training sessions around the Middle and Long model maps.

Friday 13 July - Model Events

Another relaxed preparation day with the sprint runners checking out the Sprint model in the afternoon just across the road from our hostel in Lausanne-Vidy. Start lists for sprint qualification will be published around 3am AEST Saturday.

Saturday 14 July - Sprint Qualification and Final

Women: Rachel Effeney, Bridget Anderson, Susanne Casanova
Men: David Brickhill-Jones, Julian Dent, Simon Uppill

Women start from: 09:00 (17.00AEST) 3.4km 10m climb
Men start from: 10:00 (18:00 AEST) 4.0km 10m climb

A complex university campus for the qualification will provide flat fast running but could also through up some surprise complexity amongst the buildings.

Google Earth of the sprint qual..

This wavey funky building is in the embargoed area...

Top 15 in each heat through to final.

Sprint Final


Women start from: 16:01 (00:01AEST) 3.0km 60m climb
Men start from: 17:11 (01:11 AEST) 4.2km 80m climb

Arena placed on Lake Geneva and the competition taking place in the sloping city streets of Lausanne. Expect some park orienteering, maybe through the Olympic Museum, typical European city streets and some complex buildings with underpasses.

Sunday 15 July - Long Qualification 


Women: Rachel Effeney, Vanessa Round, Aislinn Prendergast
Men: Julian Dent


Women start from: 13:02 (21:02EST) 8.3km 160m climb
Men start from: 13:01 (21:01 AEST) 12.2km 280m climb

Swiss middle-land terrain. Very flat (for Switzerland) typical track network and lots of forested green areas. Track routes and vague controls will be the order of the day.

Long Qual old map

Top 15 in each heat through to final. 

Monday 16 July - Middle Qualification


Women: Vanessa Round, Susanne Casanova, Aislinn PrendergastMen: Murray Scown, Simon Uppill

Women start from: 13:01 (21.01 AEST) 4.2km 130m climb
Men start from: 14:01 (22:01 AEST) 4.9km 170m climb

Run on the slopes of the Jura mountain range at around 1000m, expect some vague controls and downhill courses. Contour shapes similar to back down under!

Middle Qual - old map

Top 15 in each heat through to final.


Tuesday 17 July - Middle Final


Women start from: 12:01 (20.01AEST) 5.5km 170m climb
Men start from: 13:41 (21:41 AEST) 6.5km 240m climb

Run on the plateau of the Jura mountain range at around 1200m, tough going underfoot with limited visibility and some contour detail.

Across the road from the Middle Final

Wednesday 18 July - Rest day

 Recovery swim in Lake Geneva will be on the cards.

Thursday 19 July - Long Final


Women start from: 11:31 (19.31AEST) 12.4km 370m climb
Men start from: 12:02 (20:02 AEST) 18.3km 450m climb

Large forest on the outskirts of Lausanne. A complex track network and vegetation which varies from head high nettles to fast running forest. Expect fast running track routes and vague controls to be decisive.

Long Final and Relay old map jigsaw

Friday 20 July - Rest day

Another recovery swim in Lake Geneva and team meeting for the Relays.




Saturday 21 July - Relay

Women: Vanessa Round, Rachel Effeney, Aislinn Prendergast
Men: David Brickhill-Jones, Julian Dent, Simon Uppill


Women start from: 11:30 (19.30AEST) 5.9km 140m climb
Men start from: 13:30 (21:30 AEST) 6.9km 180m climb


Same forest and arena as the Long Final. It will be a fast and close relay!




We hope you enjoy the action back home and are able to fill in all those quiet hours watching Le Tour with live results and hopefully some live video and GPS from the WOC 2012 webpage.

Support messages for all the team can be sent via the comments section on this blog.

Hello everyone again. Sorry we havn't been posting much we are having difficulty getting internet in the middle of the country. We have just been training, sleeping, eating and preparing for our races strating on saturday with the sprint. Here are some more photos of our accomodation in Dizy and training. 

pictures of Lausanne and below of the view from our accomodation in Dizy

The Australian team has arrived to Switzerland!

Hello everyone! most of the team has arrived at our training camp in the very small town of Dizy, outside of Lausanne. Our accommodation is very laid back and we are enjoying the country atmosphere. So far we have been out to 3 different maps consisting of long training, middle training and sprint training in the city centre. We will be adding team profiles throughout the week so you can get to know our amazing team alot better!
Bridget

Tips for making the most of your Easter Experience- from Boomerangs coach Wendy Read

Tips for making the most of your Easter Experience – from a few of the locals…

After many years of drought, SEQ has now had two very wet summers, and plenty of rain in the seasons in between.  We have only just had a hint of autumn in the last few days when the humidity has dropped below intensely sticky and there has been a sense of freshness in the air – but you have to be up early to notice.  Hence vegetation is lush, creek lines actually contain water (sometimes even flowing), and wildlife/ insect life is abundant. Your week of orienteering in SE Queensland will guarantee you 3 things for sure:

A great variety of terrain – from complex, granite rock detail to deeply,  eroded creek systems
 Lantana  and
Spiders!

Don’t be put off though – there are plenty of ways to successfully navigate your way through the carnival.
Let’s deal first with the events located in and around Stanthorpe where granite boulders dominate the landscape.  (Prologue, Day 1 & Day 3) Although patches of very complex rock will require intense concentration, much of the terrain is pleasant running forest, with hill sides of moderate rock detail. Being able to ‘look through’ the scattering of black dots and read the contours can help simplify the navigation.  Use the large, obvious features in the rock or other distinctive features for attack points. Sometimes areas of ‘nothing’ are a useful feature to use. Also look for the handrails, like creeks, ridgelines or bands of rock, that show the ‘lines’ through the complexity.  It’s worthwhile checking that you know the difference between what is a boulder, a mound, rocky ground and boulder cluster, both on the legend on your control descriptions.

The event at Shanty Gully (west of Warwick) provides a great contrast to the granite rock areas.  Apparently it is fairly featureless and steep. There are small areas of erosion and old, gold mining but not highly technical like the Victorian gold fields. Route choice and careful, speedy execution of it will be the key.

The events following the Easter Carnival also provide good variety:
Cascades – an iconic granite map, its reputation precedes it – enter at your peril! Not really – it’s one of those great challenging maps where you’ll need all your navigational tools working for you.  Map contact, map contact, map contact!
Hardings Paddock – an area typical of outer Brisbane, our orienteering bread and butter.  Hilly, well vegetated, some interesting rocky sections, but you’ll enjoy the experience a whole lot more if you wear full body protection and avoid the lantana. (More about lantana later)
QUT (Kelvin Grove Campus) & UQ (St Lucia Campus) – classic, university style, sprint maps and courses. If you’re really serious, get onto NearMap & do your homework.


Collins Creek – a few notes from the course setter, Geoff Peck who has a favourite wisdom, “Contours are for navigating, vegetation is for route choice!”:  The terrain at Collins Ck is undulating spur-gully with some detailed erosion, and a LOT of lantana. Most of the lantana is in small patches which are quite 'passable' and have reasonable visibility (hence the use of green stripes), but it's not easy to keep 'straight'. As the terrain is quite 'vague' it's easy to get well off line, and difficult to relocate. The classic 'aiming off' works well in these areas. It is mostly fast running, but some denser areas of lantana need to be avoided; it's not a pleasant experience to get stuck in it! The fact that it's a looping race means that relay 'tactics' are important. Runners can get a considerable advantage by 'slipstreaming' as long as they are sure they are on the same split! (Is that split-streaming? – a new O term?)

Coach Read in action

Since it has featured a bit in these notes - a word about lantana (an invasive, woody  plant with a pretty, dainty flower).  Don’t try and run through solid clumps of it – you won’t win. When in areas where it is extensive, keep your head up, look for clearer sections and you can usually avoid the worst of it. If you do get into thicker sections, look for small animal paths (on ground level), put map in mouth and scurry through on hands and knees.

A final note about the local wildlife – especially spiders.  Golden orb spiders and their sticky webs are still prolific in some patches of forest.  Whilst the females are big and scary, the smaller males won’t present any problems. On a recent training weekend, Queensland Cyclones practised the following technique (the three Ds:
             1. Duck under the web – does require you to look ahead and not only at the map.
             2. Adopt the defensive position – arms and map in front of face to fend off spidery tangle.
Failing steps 1 & 2

3. De-web one’s body – running hands spread wide from chest, up neck, over face and through hair, flinging spider and web far away.

It’s a good tip to quickly check you still have some idea where you are going after such an encounter, as all the head and body shaking can be dis-orienteering. (Oh – also check you actually got rid of the sticky little sucker!)

On a positive note regarding wildlife, there are plenty of beautiful wallabies and kangaroos in the forest making the most of the good conditions and, families of wedge tail eagles have been seen frequently near some of the Stanthorpe maps.

Hopefully these tips will keep you navigating cleaning at all the events over Easter.  We look forward to seeing you soon!

Wendy Read,
Australian Boomerangs Coach and Queensland Cyclones team member.