Badger Orienteering Club Homepage(BGR)Badger Orienteering Club Homepage(BGR)
Results...UPDATED 11/5/11
Page...UPDATED 11/5/11
Email list, Want email reminders/updates for Badger events? Go to this link and you can click on "Join this Group".
Registration for the annual scout event is now open. Please go to the following link for more information and a registration form. The event will be held on March 24, 2012 at Lake Farm County Park near Madison, WI. Both boy and girl scouts are welcome. A regular club event will follow at noon.
1/23/11
You can now find the Badger Orienteering Club at http://badgerorienteering.org Please change your links, as the current site will be closed at some point.
1/22/11
Cathy Y. had been the treasurer for the Badger Orienteering Club for over 25 years. She decided that 2011 would be her last. Cathy has been in charge of depositing checks and the membership list as part of her duties. She also paid our taxes to the national organisation and did a number of other finance related tasks. Thank you Cathy for your many years of service. You will be missed.
1/22/11
With the addition of quite a few new maps in recent months, I have adjusted the summer schedule in order to use these new areas. Please make a note of it.
Also, we have changed the scout event to Lake Farm County Park near Madison, WI.
1/10/11
Over the past few months I have been making more small maps in the Madison area. I have created maps of Warner Park, Quarry Park, McCarthy Park, Token Creek, Lake Farm and Prairie Moraine. The first 2 are city parks and the last 4 are county parks. My hope is to use all of these areas on Monday evenings for short events.
My goal is to create 30 orienteering maps within 30 minutes of Madison. We are well on our way to achieving that objective. I'll let you know when we reach it!
1/7/11
Badger Club members from Finland have offered us a very inviting invitation. Read it below.
Greetings from Finland!The Jukola is a unique orienteering experience that is hard to put in words. You just have to do is some day. Here is a small taste of what it is all about. 1,200 7-man relay teams start at 11pm and finish sometimes the next day. 3 legs are run in the dark. All the best orienteers in the world participate on the same courses you do, so you can compare your times with the big boys. This year they will break all previous attendance records, since the race is so close to Helsinki. Over 15,000 orienteers will be camping or just hanging out waiting to race. A massive sauna will be build on site. Need I go on?Jukola relay (the biggest orienteering event in the world) is held close to Helsinki next summer and we would like to invite you all to this race and visit us here in Finland. You don’t need to have a full team (7 legs for men and 4 for women) to participate, there’s always room in our club’s teams or in some other’s. You don’t even need to be an experienced orienteer, there’s a leg to run for everyone who’s up for it. Our apartment is located quite close to Jukola event area and thus we would love to accommodate few of you in our apartment. Also we can certainly be your tour guides here in the capital area! Here’s some more information about the race: http://www1.jukola.com/2012/en/
Hope everything is well with you all. Have a great fall season orienteering! Antti & Sanni PS. Please let us know if you’re interested. You can mail to appasanen@gmail.com
12/5/11
As many of you already know, we are using an electronic punching system called Emit on the long course at our events. I want to let you know a few things about it, so that you use it properly in the future.
Two issues came up at this weekend's event. One team forgot to punch the last control. Don't forget to punch the last control when you get to the finish. We have been using #50 for that.
The second issue that has come up is punching in the wrong order. If you accidently punch out of order you won't be disqualified as long as you get to the controls in order at some point. For example, suppose you punch 1, 2, 5, 3, 4 and 5 respectively. The first 5 is out of order. But since your got the rest in order and repunched at 5 you will not be disqualified. The data collector will note the extra punch and I will eliminate it when I produce the results. So, don't think you are disqualified simply because you mispunched. Instead, continue to get the controls in the proper order.
Finally, if you choose to find the controls out of order you will be disqualified. Often, it is easier and/or quicker to find the markers out of order. This is not permitted on a point to point course(it is allowed on a score-O). The order will appear in the results on the data collector and it will disqualify you.
We hope you are enjoying getting your splits after the race and seeing them on the results page after the races.
9/25/11
Our next club event will be at Donald Park which is a few miles west of Verona, WI. This is a new map never used before. Donald Park offers some nice features, though the orienteering will not be super technical. There are spring fed ponds and impressive rock outcrops along with open fields and forest which varies from decent to unpleasant to run in. There are quite a few trails and I think this event will be a nice way to start out the fall season.
If you would like to receive event updates join our mailing list. See above for details.
8/8/11
Three Badger members were at the US Champs this past weekend in NY. Ioana, her husband Robbie and Kevin were in attendance with Ioana and Kevin taking home bronze and silver respectively. It was Robbie's first national event. He did well just finding almost all the controls. Ioana's day 1 course was thrown out due to a misplaced control, so her result was from the day 2 race only. Luckily, the Green Y course I ran was good for two days. Following is my account of my weekend.....
As usual with the U. S. champs I go with the idea to win. This year the competition in M50 wasn't great and it was pretty clear who the top 3 were going to be, barring any surprises. After day 1 those three were in 1st, 2nd and 3rd.
I was in second after a really bad race and only 2.5 minutes out of first. I certainly felt I could make up that time with a good race. That didn't happen. In fact, Tim P. the first day leader had a bad race and finished out of the medals. JJ Cote raced well and took home the gold beating my day 2 time by almost 10 minutes.
My races were very similar. On day 1 I had a nice race going through 6 controls. At the 7th I made a parallel error which led to a 5 minute mistake. Rushing rushing rushing.....If I had only been a little smarter coming across the road and verifying my position this mistake never would have happened.
The 8th control is where I lost another 6-8 minutes. Heading out I didn't have a solid plan and wasn't reading the contour detail. What am I an novice or something? Wandering in the direction of the control and hoping to pick up on something along the way was a bad decision. Actually, I did have a plan which was to overshoot the control and get cornered by marshes. From there I could go back a couple hundred meters and I would have been fine. But as I got close to the corner I got nervous about possibly missing/crossing the marsh and started a relocation plan. Ouch. The minutes went by and so did my chance of winning on day 1. I was ahead of the day 1 winner by about 9 minutes after control 6. Day 1 was a lesson in a lack of race control. That's what happens when you're rusty.
Day 2 Repeat day 1. It was another sloppy day of orienteering. After swinging around a hill and drifting into 1, I crossed a stream and was headed uphill to #2. Crossing the river I hesitated, as I didn't know exactly where I was and wasn't able to read the contours at that moment. No problem, just be patient, go to a bend in the stream, pick out a contour feature and work your way up to the control. NOT. I had a better idea. Just go up the hill blindly and hope you find the control. I lost 10 minutes on this control and the championship. I had one other sloppy control at 7 where once again I was rushing. I probably lost 3-4 minutes here, as well.
Having high expectations can be a good thing that pushes you to do better and to train harder. However, it also makes meeting those goals more difficult and that can lead to frustration. I was one frustrated puppy after this event.
The terrain, map and courses for this event were excellent. It was a really nice challenge worthy of the U.S. championships. I'm glad I went and sorry I wasn't in better form.
8/2/11
This past June I spent 17 days in Norway attending the Fjord-O Midnattsolgallopen(midnightsun run). This is a 4 day bi-annual event that occurs mid summer above the arctic circle. This year the event was held in Malangen on a world famous map made by Badger Orienteering Club's friend Ivar Helgesen. Some of you may remember that he visited us in 2008 and did fieldchecking on the Hepcat and Cat's Pajamas maps. I couldn't resist an invitation from Ivar to attend this event on the map voted the map of the century a few years back.
My trip started with a long flight to Norway that took just short of 24 hours. Upon arrival I was greeted by Ivar and Eric W., the famous American mapper. Eric had come to help set up the event and enjoy the terrain at a slower pace while not competing. 30 minutes later I was welcomed to Ivar's home where I would spend the next 2.5 weeks.
My orienteering skills were rusty as I had only orienteered twice in 2011. My plan was to practice for a few days prior to the event. I learned the event had been moved up 2 days, so that people could also attend the WMOC's in Hungary which started the next week. The next 4 days I helped set up the model event and picked up controls from a local event that had been held the day before I arrived. I learned quickly what types of mistakes I'd likely be making during the competition. The marshes were often dry and the open forest was sometimes difficult to distinguish from the fields. However, after a few days I was adjusting to the mapping style and gaining confidence, though I still knew it might be a long 4 days....
My hope was to finish in the top half while honing my skills for the U.S. Champs being held in the U.S. at the end of July. I got off to the sort of start I expected, sloppy. This pattern didn't stop, but each day I was a little less careless than the day before. My placements went from 43 to 32 to 28 to 15th. The last day was the only day I was happy with my performance. The other days had too many mistakes.
The final day was by no means perfect. I started out fairly well through the first 7 markers before getting ahead of myself(all of my mistakes on the week were from going too fast). On the way to the 8th marker I caught up to Tor M. who was just ahead of me in the standings and a pretty solid orienteer. After passing him I realized I didn't know where I was. At the top of a flattopped mountain with numerous knolls and open fields, it was tough trying to figure out where anything was. Just then Tor came by and the answer was easy, I'd just follow him in to number 8. He crisscrossed my path and on the second pass he said this isn't easy. I knew then I was lost and following someone else who was lost. This was not a good recipe for success.
I decided I had come up short of the marker and the best option was to overshoot and come back from a stream catching feature a few hundred meters past. It wasn't a good thing, but it was about all I had. Along the way I was trying to relocate with little success. There were many similar features and I was wasting quite a bit of time. However, on this day luck was with me. I spotted a control that was mine. My good day wasn't ruined. I made one little mistake the rest of the way and posted my best time of the week.
I ended up 28th in the standings out of about 60 that started. My orienteering improved greatly each day and I learned a lot about my approach to orienteering. I got physically stronger with the daily grind of orienteering. It was a good feeling getting better each day.
I was also twisting my ankles all the time. I now plan to tape them before important races in order to get them off my mind.
After the event, I helped retrieve controls from the last day. It was great walking in this fantastic terrain and trying to read all the detail. Even while walking I sometimes had trouble keeping track of where I was. The forest floor was generally soft and spongy. The forest was very runnable. It was truely a paradise for orienteering.
The last few days of my trip I was able to take a trip to Senja and hike up a mountain only to have the clouds roll in and block the view. I also went fishing and caught a whopper 3K arctic char. Ivar is probably at the lake right now trying to catch one that is bigger!
We got a bit of rain the first few days of the event, but overall the weather was nice with highs in the 60's and lows in the 50's. The 24 hour daylight didn't bother me much, but it did make it hard to know when to go to bed. In 15 days I got in 10 days of orienteering on some of the finest terrain in the world. It was splendid.
7/22/11
We recently completed a weeklong training camp with 14 courses on 6 different maps. We had great weather and very few bugs. Camping at Greenbush was a lot of fun and talking around the campfire every night was very pleasant. We made some friends and got to know some others better. Thanks to everyone who participated and I hope we can do it again some day.
6/21/11
Unfortunately, I do not have the energy to host the night rogaine event this year. I have decided it is best for me to cancel it. Instead we will open our fall schedule with an event at Donald Park. The Donald Park map is a new map completed this spring. The exact date for the replacement event is yet to be decided. It will probably be in late September.
6/4/11
As you may already know, there will be a week long training camp in the N. Kettle Moraine June 11-19th. There will be courses available to run during this time. If you'd like to get out in the woods for a course during that time, just contact me and we can work out the arrangements. kevin@chorus.net You'll need to contact me this week or else just take your chances and show up at Greenbush group campsite #9. The courses are intended for experienced orienteers, but anyone is welcome to try them.
6/4/11
The dates of the 2011 Madison area summer series are July 11, 18, 25 and August 8. The locations will be in or near Madison. We will announce them soon here on the website.
5/11/11
The spring season has just ended with a great event at Blue Mound State Park. In a few weeks we will start the second annual summer series in the Madison area. These short orienteering events will be in or very close to Madison. They will be held on Monday afternoon/evenings. The cost will be $5.
These events are a great way to introduce yourself to orienteering. They are easy and convenient to people in the Madison area. Come out and give it a try. I bet you'll like it!
5/7/11
Results are up. Splits will be delayed until later in the week.
4/30/11
I spent the past week working on a map a few miles west of Verona, WI. I have completed a map of Donald Park where we'll be able to have some nice events in the future. Donald Park is 480 acres(1.8 Sq. K). It features outcrops, springs and a couple of trout streams. It also has lots of big fields and trails. It's a good intermediate area and very convenient for people in the Madison area.
3/20/11
On Saturday, March 26th we will host our first event of 2011. The annual scout score-O will begin at 10am. We request preregistration for this. You can use the link near the top of this page to get information and register. Shortly after the scout event is over, we begin the regular club event. You don't need to preregister for the regular club event.
This event will be at Olin Park in Madison. Olin is a large city park on Lake Monona. The scout event and the regular event will be score-O's. You will have 45 minutes to find as many markers as you can. The course will be fairly easy and everyone will be doing the same course. It should be a really fun time. The cost will be $5 for adults and $5 for kids over 7.
3/13/11
We have not raised our event fees for a number of years while the national organization has raised our per start fees 400% in the past 3 years.
Our new fees for regular events will be....$10/members and $13/non-member. The cost for the short/beginner course will remain $7 for adults regardless of membership. Juniors will be charged $5 for any course.
Most of the money we raise at our events goes back into the production of more maps and updates of our old maps. You can see the results of your fees in the new High Cliff map, the expansion of the Black River SF maps and the creation of some new city park maps in Madison in 2010. Next year we will make some more maps and update some others.
The rest of the money goes for ink, paper and printing costs of the maps we use and fees for a charter with the national organization. There is a small amount that is spent on miscellaneous things like equipment, park fees, etc.
Thank you for supporting orienteering through your fees!
12/18/10
On February 20th we held a social at the Holler House. The Holler House is a neighborhood bar with the oldest bowling alleys in the country. Scoring and pinsetting is done manually. They only have two lanes and the shoes are kept in a pile behind the lanes. You find a pair that fits and select a ball from the 20 or so they have.
The 87 year old owner and other family members and friends were at the bar when we arrived. She hadn't remembered that we had made a reservation, so she didn't have a pinsetter there for us. No problem. A guy at the bar immediately volunteered. He had done the job as a kid. We waited a few minutes before the final two showed up and headed down to basement lanes.
With limited space, the walls are right next to the gutters. You have to make sure the pinsetter is out of the way before throwing your second ball. He returns your ball and then clears out all the pins you knocked down. In the end, it really wasn't all that different from using a machine. Every now and then a pin would accidently fall down and need to be reset.
Due to the threatening weather a number of people were scared away. We ended up with foursome of Kris, Cathy, Kevin and Antti. We bowled 2 games each with scores ranging from 28 to 198. There was one turkey and everyone got at least one strike.
We decided we had had enough bowling after 2 games and headed up to the bar to watch the end of the Badgers basketball game, which they won handily. Then it was time to head out into the stormy conditions for the drive home. It wasn't too bad in the neighborhood with 3-4 inches of slushy mess. And when we got the interstate going to Madison the road even better. It only took about 15 minutes longer than usual to get home. Antti had to drive up north into the heavier snow and faced more difficult conditions. He was down to one lane traffic going 20 mph at one point on his way to the Appleton area and had to drive through 1.5 foot high pile of snow blocking his path to his garage. But everyone made it home safely after a fun time at the Holler House.
Before the Holler House, I took Antti on a brief tour of Milwaukee. We started at the Safe House for lunch and then headed to the Mitchell Domes. After that we tried to locate the National Liquor Bar, which we found out was torn down and replaced by a Walgreens. Next, we went to the Holler House where this story started.
This was a fun day and I look forward to doing it again next year! Maybe I'll see you then?
2/21/11
I have made some adjustments to the spring schedule for 2011. I have eliminated the Navigator and pushed the 50/50 Rogaine back to April 2nd. I have also changed the Cat's Pajamas event from April 10 to April 9 to avoid a conflict with CAOC.
The change of the Black River event to April will help us avoid snow for that event. It was possible to do this once I decided not to host the Navigator race.
Please make a note of these changes in your calendars.
12/16/10
Last week I took a trip to Orlando and decided to try to get in some orienteering along the way. As is my way, I contacted the local club and purchased 5 of their best maps in the area. There was also a permanent course at one park southeast of Orlando.
During the week, I had 3 chances to get out in the woods. Having never orienteered in Florida, I was looking forward to seeing what their terrain was like. I envisioned thick overgrown forest with alligators and snakes hiding around waiting to eat me. There are 6 types of poisonous snakes in Florida and plenty of alligators, too. They even have Florida panthers. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see any of them.
I had a great time running on their maps and getting used to their terrain. I learned to be very precise, since their markers are hard to spot in the knee high grass. It was a good place to run fast and enjoy the solitude. I think I'll plan another trip to Orlando just to go orienteering. Maybe next winter?
12/16/10
The 2010 orienteering season has come to a close. We had good things happen this year. For starters, we've had a couple more people step up and help out. It is amazing how much just a little help can do!
The club now has another new map in the Black River State Forest and a new map of High Cliff State park. It has 3 new city park maps in Madison.
Attendance was up slightly.
Next year I plan to update the Lapham Peak map, complete another map in the Black River State Forest and make a couple more maps in the Madison area. I also hope to locate some more prime terrain somewhere in Wisconsin.
12/01/10
I have posted the 2011 TENTATIVE schedule. There may be a few changes made to the schedule, but usually the tentative schedule is very close if not exactly the schedule for the next year. If we find any conflicts or decide to make changes they will be noted on the website.
I also have some notes below the schedule explaining some of the events in the schedule. In particular, there is an event that is half rogaine and half orienteering, a long navigation race and a training camp in the summer. I have included notes about these events. More details will be given as they become available.
Want to help out? Send me an email.
11/17/10
We'll be heading back to Greenbush for our final event of the 2010 season. It promises to be a lot of fun with challenging courses. It is always nice on the cat maps!
11/6/10
The US Champs were just held in New York state this past weekend. Three Badger members competed and we got some good results. Ioana moved up 2nd after having a good run on Sunday. I was 3rd both days in my age group. Susie made good progress on her second day, after having a tough first day.
It was a great event in a lot of ways. The terrain and courses were really championship level. The new map surprised everyone with it's technical terrain and open forest. It was extremely tricky and required great concentration at all times to avoid mistakes. The fall colors were at their peak which made for a beautiful backdrop for the event.
Personally, I loved the terrain. It is what makes the traveling worth it. It is rare in this country to attend an event in great terrain. We were all pleasantly surprised when we first saw the map.
My story started with a look at the people running my course. Almost all of the top runners were there. That made for some great competition and I was looking forward to it. Unfortunately for me, at the 3rd control on day 1 I sprained my ankle. In spite of this, I managed a decent time, just 4 minutes behind the leader on Green. After the race, I immediately sought medical assistance to ice the ankle and hopefully save it for the 2nd day.
Sunday morning I had the ankle taped and it held up great. I put in a nice effort up until just at the end. I led the day 2 Green course from control 3 to 11. But after a silly 2 minute mistake at 10, I preceded to make an even sillier 5 minute mistake at 12, the last real marker on the course. I dropped to 6th overall on green and lost by 4 minutes. My good efforts went to waste at the end of my race. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
Nevertheless, 3 Badgers took home 2 medals. That's not a bad percentage of medalists! We also found a great restaurant and had fun hanging out for the weekend and socializing with other orienteers we meet along the way. If you ever get the chance to orienteer at Moreau State Park do it. It is a super place.
10/19/10
The event at High Cliff will be starting from the parking lot nearest to the lookout tower. From Fond du Lac, WI take 151 north to 55 N. 55 N joins 114. Follow 114 to Pigeon Rd. Turn left on Pigeon Rd. and go to State Park Rd. Turn left and enter the park. After entering the park go east/left on Lower Cliff Rd. and follow the road up the bluff. Turn left at the fork on High Cliff Rd. and follow it to the lookout tower which is left again at the T intersection. The park can no longer be entered from the east as Google maps suggests.
9/14/10
We've been busy this past year making a new map at High Cliff State Park. High Cliff is near Appleton, WI on the northeast corner of Lake Winnebago. The area mapped is above the cliff. Hopefully, we'll make it easier for people in the area to go orienteering!
The area is not very technical, so the courses will be relatively easy.
There is wild parsnip in the park, so you should wear clothes that covers your legs and then wash up after running. Wild parsnip has a chemical on all parts of the plant that gets on your skin and reacts with sunlight. The reaction causes burning and you get a rash, sort of like poison ivy, that lasts for a week or 2. You can have worse reactions if you get more on and have more sunlight. I think the courses I've designed avoid it for the most part. I don't think there will be any big problems with it. But I did want to remind people it's out there in many of our parks.
Also, at this event we will probably be using electronic punching on the long course.
9/14/10
The national organization has increased our taxes 400% in the past 4 years. Some of the state parks are charging us to use the parks. Our costs have gone up while our fees have stayed low. The time has come to raise event fees. I'll say more about this prior to next season.
8/30/10
I've fieldchecked another 4.5 sq. K in the Black River SF. We now have almost 9 sq. K there. This is some really nice and interesting terrain. There is pine plantation that is constantly changing alongside oak forest in the hilly areas. Next spring I am planning on holding a 50/50 event there. That event will be a 4 hour score event with roughly 2 hours for regular orienteering and 2 hours of rogaining(using a USGS topo). We will also offer the regular long and short courses for those who prefer to spend less time in the woods.
8/30/10
On July 1st we held our first event using our new emit electronic timing system. Emit is the most used system in Norway and Finland. You carry with you an Ecard which electronically records your time when you visit each control and punch in. At the end of the course you download your Ecard and get splits for all your legs and your finishing time.
While most clubs in this country use the SportIdent brand of electronic punching, I decided to try Emit because of it's ease in use for the event organiser. It is really easy to use and get results from. I was able to figure it out on my own in just an hour or two. It's as easy as turn it on and you can immediately download your splits. Plug in the USB port and you can get html files without any trouble. I like what I've seen so far. Can it really be this easy to use?! I think so.
It may be that we just held the first orienteering event ever to use Emit in the USA.
7/1/10
I just got back from 2 weeks in Finland where I went to participate in the world famous Jukola relay. The Jukola is the world's largest relay event. This year over 15,000 people participated. Following is a summary of my trip.
I arrived 2 weeks before Jukola in order to get some practice in finnish forest. Any time you go to a new area it takes some time to adjust to the forest and the way things are mapped. It makes things a lot easier when you know what to expect. For example, marshes in the states are things you generally run around. However, in Finland, you usually use marshes like trails. They tend to be spongey and not so wet. So, you can run right on top of them.
My first event was a national event. The woods were quite nice and I found the orienteering to be pretty easy. I squeaked into the top half in my age group. I was nervous before the event, since it had been a long time since I had run in Finland. It was a nice way to break the ice.
In the next couple of days I went to a couple of training events in the Helsinki area. These training events are like our club events. They offer a variety of course lengths and you just run any one you want. I ran the 5K option and finished 7th out of about 200. The big boys usually run the 7K course or longer. But still, I was surprised at finishing so high.
I took a few days off before going to Tampere for another national event in challenging terrain. The Finnish championships had been held there a few years earlier and I could tell why. I started out with a 12 minute mistake on the first control. It was just a silly thing, but sure didn't make me feel good. The rest of the race I struggled to go 12min/K. I did the same pace on day 2 without the large mistake, just a bunch of smaller ones. This weekend was great preparation for the Jukola which the word on the street had as being in a very technical area. In the end, I found these two events to be in similar terrain, and it was very tough in a good way.
The week before Jukola I did another training event in Helsinki that was mostly trail running with a few interesting controls. I also went to a World Cup event where lots of the big boys and girls showed up(for example Daniel Hubbman, Minna Kauppa and Simone Luder-Niggli). This terrain was really just lots of trails. I made a 4 minute mistake on an early control and still finished up running around 8.5min/K on this 4.6K middle distance course. That left me near the bottom of the standings. Just to make matters worse, my Emit electronic punching unit got wet and stopped working properly.
Next up was the big event, the Jukola Relay. I had contacted a friend who got me on one of the Tampere Pyrinto teams. They had 10 teams and put me on the last one. I was running the 6th leg which was 9.3K. It meant I needed good runs from the first 5 people to avoid a mass start at the end of the race for slow teams.
Well, this Jukola had lots of slow teams. Only 300 or so teams completed leg 6 by the mass start cutoff time. My team barely got leg 5 going before the cutoff and we were ahead of about 400 teams. There were lots of teams that didn't get to leg 5 even. The winning time was about 1 hour slower that anticipated. Oops!
The first leg has started in rain and that continued until about 3am. It was still cloudy and overcast when I started at 9:15am. The sun barely managed to peek out a couple of times during my run.
At 9am there was a mass start for leg 7, the longest leg. Then came the second mass start. Both of these had over 1000 people in them. The run to the start triangle was down a 6-8 inch deep muddy path about the width of a 2 lane road. It was about .5K through this before the mass of people split up. There were people everywhere and going in every direction. They formed lines and your best strategy was to get in one that was going your way. The woods were too thick to run in easily.
I got in line with everyone else and adjusted when they went somewhere other than where I needed to go. The whole race was like that. A couple times I took slower routes just to get away, so I could do some navigating on my own. My biggest mistakes on the course were route choice. Only once did I get confused around the control where I wasted a few minutes before following another stream of people to the next control. It was a lot less fun than actually being in the relay and running more on my own.
In the end I finished up 413th out of about 1263 on leg 6. I passed over 100 people on my leg. My team passed over 250 people on the last two legs to finish in 756th place out of over 1,500 teams that started the race. That's not bad for the 10th club team.
6/23/10
We have decided to hold a 4 week summer orienteering series. These events will be at parks in Madison. They will be held on Thursdays from 4-6pm. The courses will be 1.5-2K long and the cost will be $5/person with kids under 8 free. The courses will be similar to our usual short courses and suitable for beginners. If you are interested in assisting at these events, please let me know. It would be nice to get a helping hand!
The schedule is:
June 17th at Elver Park(parking lot near ball diamonds)
June 24th at Garner Park
July 1st at Olin Park(parking lot off Olin Avenue/John Nolan intersection)
July 8th at Elver Park
Please help us get the word out! If this series is successful, we'll do it again next year.
5/26/10
As has been talked about before on this website, the Jukola is a famous orienteering relay event. It may be the largest relay event of any type in the world. There are over 15,000 participants registered for the event this year which includes 1500 men's teams and 1100 women's teams. The race will start on June 19th at 4pm Wisconsin time(which is 11pm Finnish time). The race officially ends at 7am Wisconsin time(2pm Finnish time). I will be participating in this year's Jukola!
There are 2 ways to follow the action. They will do a live blog on worldofO.com until the winners finish. You can also go to the www.jukola.com website where splits are posted shortly after competitors punch at radio controls. That way you can follow any individuals you may be interested in.
I will be running for Tampereen Pyrinto. They have 10 teams entered and they haven't yet assigned people to teams. To see how I'm doing you can follow the link below to the team list and check out the TP teams. Trust me I won't be on the top few teams. I'll probably be on one of the bottom teams. You can follow individuals during the race by clicking on their name.
5/22/10
We just wrapped up our spring season and that usually means a long break in the orienteering action. However, we are working on plans for some events this summer, so keep checking in on the website for an update regarding summer events.
In particular, we are looking at a Devil's Lake weekend event for late July/early August. We are also considering a family oriented series of events in the Madison area on weeknights(ie like Wednesdays from 4-6). These events would be held on maps in or near Madison.
I have made two new maps just for this series. Garner and Olin will be used for the first time this summer.
If you're interested in helping make these events possible, please contact me at kevin@chorus.net. We need a few more people to keep the workload light for everyone!
Have a great summer!
5/8/10
Please note that the December 5th event has been changed to December 4th.
5/1/10
What do orienteers do in the winter when the woods are snowcovered? How about travelling to a warmer climate? That's just what I did a couple weeks ago. The San Diego club was putting on an event one weekend and the Tucson club organized an event the following weekend with a training camp during the week. It was a rare chance to get in 9 consecutive days of orienteering. That made it an opportunity I couldn't pass up!
The first weekend was at Anza Borrego State Park, a famous orienteering area that I had never been to. Badger club member Rich J. had told me it was interesting terrain and this was my chance to experience it for myself. They had a 2 day local event with a longer goat event on the following Monday. A goat is a long distance event with a mass start and allows skipping a few controls usually.
On Saturday, I found out what Anza was all about, desert, cacti and interesting terrain. I had trouble adjusting to the map and terrain which led to many mistakes. I had a poor run, but wasn't unhappy. Often it takes a few runs to adjust to new areas. This was no different. I went slow and still couldn't stay in contact with the map. I just couldn't match up the map with the terrain even when I just stood there for a few minutes looking out over it. I fought it the whole course.
The scenery was awesome, desert canyons and wide open areas with dry gullies everywhere. The cacti were painful and plentiful. If you stopped paying attention you'd end up with needles in your leg. And when you tried to pull them out you would have needles in your hand. It took some technique to remove them. I still have pleny of slivers in my legs and hand. (Really, it wasn't that bad).
Sunday I hit my groove. Even after a slow start when I stopped to ask where the start was(the start triangle wasn't on the right place on the map), I hammered out a fast run and was able to read the map, unlike the previous day. I had the fastest time on Green by about 7 minutes.
Monday was more of the same. I did the 7K lamb goat style event. I blasted into the lead before making a big mistake on the 5th control. A few guys caught up to me at 7, but 2 markers later on a long flat leg I simply outran them to take the lead for good. I only skipped 1 control instead of the 2 allowed and still came out on top.
The event was marred by poor organization. There were misplaced and missing controls on numerous courses. Fortunately for me, I ran late both days and never encountered any of those problems. The problems were fixed before I started, so I had a great 3 days of orienteering. There were other organizational issues that I won't discuss now. It was just a reminder of how a great weekend of orienteering can be ruined before it starts if things aren't done right.
Another bonus was that the world's #1 orienteer, Daniel Hubmann of Switzerland, participated.
Next, it was time for a trip to Tucson. I stopped by an hot spring along the way for a soak, before finishing up the 6 hour drive.
The next 4 days were training camp days. Each day we got to run on 2 maps, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. It was a lot of time on maps and the terrain was widely varied. The exercises were also different each day. Some of the terrain was flat as a pancake with scrubby cacti everywhere. Other terrain was at elevation above where cacti grow. One day we needed a 4 wheel drive shuttle to get to the start. There we saw some beautiful rock formations. Footing in the hilly areas was rocky and you had to be careful not to twist your ankle or fall into cacti. While each day was great fun, by the end of the week I was getting tired of collecting cacti needles in my body. I was all scratched up and reinjured my ankle.
Nevertheless, I was having a blast. I loved the natural beauty and the daily dose of orienteering. I found it to be at the level I wanted to train at. I enjoyed the company of the small group of people who were also there day after day. On a few occasions I left my compass in my pocket to force myself to read the map more precisely. On other days I went all out or went very slowly and carefully. Training allows you to try out new things or work on stuff you're having trouble with. It's a good time to experiment.
The Tucson club even provided housing. A couple members opened their houses which was really nice. We had a potluck on the final night with about 20 people showing up.
The final weekend was a 2 day event on a map called Ironwood. Except for a small section of rocky hills, it was a map of dryditches in a flat desert. At first this looked to be a very difficult place to orienteer. But once I was used to the map, I found it to be quite easy and fast. After making a big silly mistake on Saturday, I was determined to bang out an impressive run on Sunday. I went out almost full speed and kept pushing the whole way. I made one mistake of about 1.5 minutes and still ran under 7 min/K for the 5K course. That was the final day and a good way to leave Tucson.
I orienteered 12 times in 9 days. I was able to shake a little of the rust off from a winter of not orienteering. And I got to enjoy some warm weather in the middle of January. You might want to consider this trip if they do it again in the future. It's a very different orienteering experience from what we have in Wisconsin and a very beautiful one. I give it 2 thumbs up!
1/31/10
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send comments or suggestions to kevin at: kevin@chorus.net
