Our final event of the season is coming up(read below for details). Other clubs have already shut down for the season(like CAOC). So what do orienteers do to pass the time all winter? Travel to warmer climates.
For a mere 160 Euros you can do a week of training in Portugal. Add a few more Euros and you'll be registered for the 4 day Portugal "O" Meeting. Now this is my idea of a good orienteering opportunity! For a little over $1000, I'll get 10 days of orienteering and get a chance to experience the life and culture of Portugal for a couple weeks. Based out of an aparthotel on the Atlantic coast, I'll be eating seafood, drinking the local wine and listening to the enchanting sounds of fado music. This offseason isn't going to be so bad after all!
Are you ready for the Cat's Meow? Don't miss the unveiling of this new map in the Northern Kettle Moraine State Forest. I doubt you'll see any cats out there(except cool orienteering cats), but you may find plenty of bad luck trying to locate controls in this highly technical terrain. Let's see...250+ depression and 1 sq. K humm....that's 250 depressions per K if my math is correct. Is that even possible? You'd better show up and count them yourself!
We will have the usual long and short courses, suitable for advanced and beginners, respectively. More info on the event is below.
Controls will be picked up at 3pm.
Directions: This map is near Greenbush, WI. Take Hwy 23 towards Greenbush. Take Hwy A into Greenbush and procede straight on Hwy T in the center of Greenbush. Follow T a short distance until the road forks. Then veer left on Kettle Moraine Dr. We will be on the left about 1.5 miles up the road on Kettle Moraine Dr.
In just over a month we will hold our annual state championship event. This event is like any of our other events, so don't be scared away by the championship title. However, the winner will be declared the state champion for 2005. There will be a long course and a short course. The long course will most likely be two loops and roughly 5K.
The map we will be using for this event is new. I'm calling it the Cat's Meow. It is a work in progress. So, while I believe you will find the map to be sufficient, it isn't perfect. You may find some mistakes, especially in the mapping of vegetation. The map is about 1.1 sq. K. In this area there are over 250 depressions. The area is about 50% runnable woods, 25% slow run, and 25% difficult to run. There are few trails, fields or rock features. There are no water features. The woods are mainly sugar maple and oak. In short, this small map is our club's best, in my opinion. This year's state championship course will be the most challenging course we have ever offered.
Directions: Go to Greenbush, WI. This is between Fond du Lac and Sheboygan just off of highway 23. From hwy 23 take hwy A into Greenbush, then continue straight(don't stay on A). This is Kettle Moraine Dr(and may also be hwy T). Follow Kettle Moraine Dr. about 1.5 miles to the start area. We will be on the east side of Kettle Moraine Dr.
I just returned from a trip to Oregon and Washington for the U.S. Championships in Bend, OR. Here is this year's story....
This year's national championships were held in Oregon in a beautiful setting. I made a 2 week vacation out of it and competed right in the middle of my travels. One reason I wanted to get out there early is so that I could acclimate for the altitude, since the event was taking place at between 6 and 7,000 feet above sea level. I hoped to spend a few days at Crater Lake National Park at that altitude and then a few days in Bend, OR at 4,000 feet. I figured this would give me a edge over those who weren't able to come out early. As it turned out, I was in and out of high altitude so much I probably got half acclimated. But I think I did enough, since it didn't seem to bother me.
I had checked out the competition and knew in my age group I would have a good chance of getting a medal, and a tough time repeating my win of last year. There were a few entrants from each coast that were capable of beating me if they ran well or if I messed up. Peter Gagarin was again running M45, as was Alar Ruutopold. Ted de la Croix was also competing in the category, but was ineligible being Canadian. These guys would be tough to beat, though I had the feeling from an event last year that Alar wasn't as fit as he has been in the past. Peter Gagarin had an injury last year and would be much stronger this time around. I figured Ted de la Croix would make us all look really bad. There were also a few other guys that could grab a medal spot if they had good runs both days.
My attitude going in was that I really wasn't as fit as I wanted. I hadn't trained hard all summer, just maintained a reasonable level of fitness. I had a few minor pains that I didn't want to stress by training hard. To make matters worse, I got nailed in the knee with a softball the week before the event and had pain whenever I straightened my leg all the way. I also hadn't participated in any other national events in 2005. In fact, my last national was the U. S. champs the year before. It's pretty tough to put together two good races when you haven't been on any new maps recently.
But that said, I still felt I could get on the podium. And with a little luck, who knows. : ) I decided I was just going to enjoy the weekend, try to have 2 clean steady runs and see how the cards fell....
Model event....Prior the many big events they have a small portion of the map available so you can experience the map and get a feel for how things are mapped. Usually, I don't find these particularly helpful. They sound really good, but often are just an opportunity for a little warm up run. But this year's model event was different. I felt like I learned a lot in the 45 minutes I spent on the 2.5K course. One important thing I noticed is it was difficult to see through the pines. This meant you needed to always keep in contact with the map(i.e. know where you are). I also could tell that estimated times for the course were going to be way off. To get the predicted course time one would have had to have run 7 minutes per K. This would be very difficult for Americans. While the forest was reasonably open, there was a lot of fallen timber that you need to go over or around. Times were going to be slow. Finally, I could tell that it would be pretty challenging technically. Once again, that means you must not make mistakes. Anyone with a clean run, even if it were slow, would finish high in the standings. While these were guesses prior to the event, they all turned out to be true. I was happy I had made it to the model event this time!
Day 1....I felt this day I did okay, nothing special, kind of a routine mediocre run. I made a couple of mistakes where I lost a few minutes, and I wasn't particularly fast around the course. I was careful of my knee, not wanting to tweek it, but except for some downhills, it seemed to be fine. In fact, on day 2 it felt completely healed. The run on day 1 seemed to help loosen the nerve up or something. I got lucky at a couple of markers, but overall I was able to keep track of where I was on the map on day 1.
After finishing I checked the results, and as I had expected people were making big mistakes. My so so run had me in 3rd, just 3 minutes out of first and 1 minute from second. 4th place was 12 minutes behind me. Whew! That felt good. It looked like a medal was all but wrapped up. I had a chance to catch Alar, but Peter G. was probably out of reach.
Day 2....This day was for some reason extra long. Day 1 was supposed to be a green course, but was actually a perfect red course. But today was supposed to be a blue course(if anyone knows why they did this I'd love to know). I had predicted that a 10K course would take well over the 70 minutes winning time they had predicted. And that meant I was going to be around 90 minutes. I don't like 90 minute runs, they are too long for me! : )
I started my course and made a huge mistake at the first marker. It turned out to be about an 8 minute error. I took a compass bearing to the marker a short distance up the trail. I had misread the map and was convinced the marker was on the east side of a ridge. It was on the west side. I missed on the first try as I drifted to the right(ie the wrong side of the ridge). I came back tried again from a large reentrant. But once again I was forcing myself east instead of straight north on the west side of the ridge. I then hit a trail with a hairpin turn and couldn't find it on the map(it was on the map, I just couldn't see it)! I bailed back to the start and went a little further up the trail. I followed the reentrant again and barely trusted my compass to pull me in the right direction. There was the marker.
My chances of winning were gone, and second place, too, I figured. Good thing I had 12 minutes to play with to get the bronze. The mistake didn't phase me at all. I just continued around the course and only made one more 4 minute mistake navigating. I also made a route choice error that cost me about 4 minutes. I finally felt in a groove the last few markers, which were all going downhill towards the finish. Luckily, I held on to 3rd place and bronze by 1 minute!
Looking back, even though I felt I hadn't put out my best performance I really enjoyed the map. It reminded me of Finnish orienteering, where you often times can run, but can't see far through all the pine bushes/trees. It was a lot of fun.
One of the premier orienteering events in the world is the Jukola relay, which takes place in Finland each Summer. This year's Jukola is tomorrow! You can follow the race on the internet at www.jukola.com. Click on the british flag for the english version.
The Jukola is a seven man race that starts at 11pm at night, when it is perhaps a bit light. The race winners finish about 8 hours later at 7am the next day. The women run the Venla relay in the afternoon. It is a 4 woman race that takes the winners about 2 hours to complete. This year's Jukola has over 1300 teams and the Venla has something like 800 teams. This makes the event one of the largest orienteering events in the world. One thing that makes the race special is it a race where you run on the same courses as the world class orienteers. And make no mistake about it, most of them are there.
The Jukola is based on a classic Finnish story about 7 brothers who go from being barbaric to being civilised. Venla is the girl in the story which one of the brothers finally marries in the end. Jukola is their family name.
Of particular interest for us Badger Club members is Tampereen Pyrinto. Former club members Heidi Haapasola and Janne Markola will be running the race for that club. Heidi is running on Pyrinto's 3rd Venla team and Janne is probably on their 1st or 2nd team in the Jukola. Team Attackpoint is a collection of Americans who have put together a team the past few years.
I ran the Jukola a couple years ago for Tampereen Pyrinto's 7th team. Heidi's team won the Venla that year! It was her second victory in the Venla relay. My team was in the top 600 until our anchor leg lost 300 places! It took him 4 hours to complete the final leg. But hey, my team completed the rae and that's all that matters. : ) I hope to return to the Jukola in 2007. Maybe I'll see you there?
We have added an event to our schedule. We will hold the Eagle Nights orienteering event June 11th on our Eagle Heights/Picnic Point map. You will need to check back here for more details when we get them(such as starting point, time, etc.). This event will likely be a mass start and about 5K for the long course. There will also be a short course. Put this date on your calendars and watch here for more details. It is less than 4 weeks from now!
Well, the spring season is winding down. We'll have one more event before our summer hiatus. But keep watching the website, as we have on occasion added a summer event.
But now it is time for our annual first Saturday in May West Bend event. Glacial Blue Hills is a city park that is lacking in some areas, like water and real bathrooms. But the park is very nice. While small, it offers some interesting terrain with quite a few hills and depressions. There are areas of prickly ash and other unwanted green stuff. But overall, it's a fun place for orienteering.
You can find directions on the schedule page and I hope we'll see you there!
April 9th is our second event of the year. It will be at Devil's Lake on one of our best maps. This will be our 7th Annual Scout Orienteering Event and a regular club event. I'll describe each below. The start area will be the Steimke Basin parking lot off DL on the north side of the park. You will need a park sticker for your car.
Those of you who are interested in the scout event should contact JohnStolzenberg@charter.net The scout event is a score event where you have specified time(usually 45-60 mins) to find as many markers as possible. It is a mass start event, and everyone will finish at about the same time. Preregistration for the scout event is recommended, so we can be sure to have enough maps printed. If you don't preregister, you may still participate. The cost is $3/scout.
The regular event will feature an 1 hour score event for the short course and a regular course for the long. The long course will be quite challenging, both physically and navigationally. As usual, expect a winning time around 1 hour. The short course will have a mix of easy and intermediate difficulty markers.
Anyone looking to volunteer can show up early to help with registration, or stay late to help with control pickup. There will be a few more controls than usual, so extra help will be appreciated. I hope we see you there!
Hey orienteering starved people. Our first club event is just around the corner! Sunday March 6th at Bong State Recreation Area we will open the season. Please don't show up on Saturday!
Charlie S. has designed the courses and the maps are ready to go. It looks like we'll have some fast orienteering again there. The park has plenty of trails and fields, which makes the orienteering fairly easy. So, speed will be the order of the day for those hoping to notch a high place in the standings. Courses will be longer than usual distancewise and the winning time on the long will probably be over 1 hour.
The long course will be 10.6K and will cover both the north and south sides of the park. The green course will be 5.3K on the south side of the map. The shortest and easiest course will be 5.1K(about 3 miles). This course will take longer than our usual short courses which are usually around 2K. However, Bong is pretty flat, so it should be managable. I'd estimate a 2 hour walk for beginners on that course, though it can be done in much less time.
The first event is a good time to renew your membership. Bring a few extra bucks for membership to show the club you appreciate the efforts it has made to bring you a fun orienteering experience. And bring along a friend, too! We'll see you out there!
It's been an interesting winter weatherwise, and we've been hibernating from orienteering for quite a while. But now the time is near when we will once again make our presence known in the woods. Our first event is less than a month away. Yes, our opening day is Sunday, March 6th, just 3 weeks away. We'll be at Bong State Rec Area, which is near Kenosha in the southeastern corner of the state. There may be a price increase this year to $10 and $7, from $9 and $6 respectively.
And while you're waiting check out the history page. Hank K. sent me some additional information, so I was able to make some improvements in the information there. Hopefully, other former members will fill in a few more blanks from our past. Last year, we unceremoniously eclipsed the 20 year mark in our history.
In other news, we'll be working on some more major mapping projects again this year. We may not produce a map, but we'll lay the groundwork for maps to be made in the future. And hopefully, we'll be able to push our influence future north. Efforts to land a fieldchecker failed because we couldn't afford to pay his fees.
Our final event of the 2004 season is the State Championship this Sunday at Mauthe Lake in the Northern Kettle Moraine State Forest. We hold it this day to avoid the deer gun hunting season, which ends the first Saturday in December.
We haven't been to Mauthe Lake in two years and it is quite possible that we won't be using this map much more in the future. So, don't miss out! It should be a fun day in the woods. Also, this event is open to everyone. The only difference from other events is that the winner is crowned the state champ for the year. Directions are in the schedule section on the website.
The start for the next event will be at the Steinke Basin parking lot. This is the same place as day 1 of the national event. It is on Hwy DL on the north side of the park. Take Hwy 12 and follow signs to the north entrance of the park, but don't enter the park. Instead take DL east about 1 mile and turn right into the parking area in the big field.
Dmitry P. will be the meet director for our next event. He has designed a course of clusters. Each cluster has 3 markers in it which you may find in any order. Once you find all three in cluster A, you continue on to cluster B, etc. He has made an attempt to avoid the worst of the thorny areas and rocky ground, and anticipates an enjoyable, though slightly demanding training run. There will also be a regular short course and a short cluster course, where you only find 2 of the three markers in each cluster. Sounds like fun to me! I hope to see you all there!
Also, we have been getting some nice turnouts for our events this fall. We rely on volunteers to help us out when we get busy. If you would like to help us out at registration or with control retrieval please just ask at the event. It's a good way to get to know other club members better and do a good deed at the same time! As we grow, we'll need our volunteer numbers to grow, too. HELP! : )
The Badger Orienteering Club sent only a handful of competitors to the national championships in Telemark, WI, Oct 16, 17, but posted some fine results. In the elite category, Michael E. finished 5th on day 1 and then moved up to 3rd after day 2. Kevin took a 2.5 minute lead in M45 on day 1 and then just managed to hold off U.S. orienteering icon Peter Gagarin by 30 seconds. Ioanna S. finished in the top 10 in F21.
Mikell Platt, Michael, Eric Bone
Other club members weren't as successful. One accidently went off the map and didn't find his next checkpoint until an hour later. Another lost his electronic punch and was disqualified after day 1. So goes it in the world of orienteer!
Boyko, Kevin, Michael
On a sadder note, the club said goodbye to Boyko R. of Bulgaria, who will be returning home after an extended stay in Wisconsin. Boyko attended many of our club events and organized an event at Kellings Lakes this summer. His enthusiasm and love of orienteering will be missed.
Note: F21 means female over age 20. M45 means male over 44.
Brian May, Kevin, Ian Harding
This past weekend the 2004 national championships were held in Telemark, WI. I attended that event and the follow is my story....
In 2002, I won the M40 category at the U.S. Championships. That victory was quite unexpected. Last year, I was nursing an injury and performed miserably in California. I was hoping this year I could return to form and have get a good result in my home state.
Prior to the event I checked the M45 participants and was happy to see that Bruce Wolfe(multiple time US champ) was "feeling old" and decided to run green(one course down). That increased my chances of another victory. Scrolling up further though I was shocked to see that Peter Gagarin( another multiple US champ winner) had decided to run red, instead of green. That really decrease the odds of me winning. Peter G. has been one of the best orienteers in the country for many years. And dispite his age( now 60!) continues to run fast and navigate flawlessly.
I checked the rest of the participants and decided that with a good event I would likely finish 3rd. And with a little luck, I might finish 2nd. And with lots of luck, I might have a chance to win. To me it looked like 1. Peter G. 2. John Campbell(usually runs blue) 3. me. There were a couple other guys that I thought could be dark horses, Tom Strat and Tim Good. Both have had good results in the past, but I have beaten them recently. The only good thing about having Peter in there was if I did win, the victory would be that much sweeter!
I knew from competing in Maine a couple weeks ago that Peter had pulled his hamstring. I also knew that my min/K were faster than John C. had done on blue courses out in New York(Harriman). I had also beaten Peter for the first time ever in Missouri earlier in the year. Anything was possible.
In my favor was the event was being held in Wisconsin. I didn't have the travel issues that most others were likely to face. I am also comfortable in the terrain we were likely to encounter. The terrain was tricky kettle moraine with lots of small depressions and hills, area that is easy to get confused in. It seemed likely that Peter with his vast experience would run clean, and that most others(myself included) were likely to make a few mistakes. That made Peter the clear favorite...
Well, enough of prerace predicting. While it's fun, what really matters is how you perform. I decided after racing in Maine and New York a few weeks before the event that I would rest up the two weeks prior to the event. At most events I find that after one day of racing I am tired and don't perform as well on day 2. I backed off of my long run training and did just short and medium runs(2-5 miles). The week before I barely did any running at all, just a little to keep fresh. I also took the day off of work on Friday, so I could drive up and be relaxed the day before the big show. I walked the model event just to get an idea of what the woods were like. They were okay, but pretty brushy, lots of little saplings.
At this point in time I was just hoping to medal. Anything less than that and I would have been disappointed. I could beat most of these guys, most of the time. The US Champs weren't the place to screw it up and miss out. Prior to the race I was nervous. I knew the key for me was to run within myself. If I didn't rush and get out of control I would be fine. But if I hurried myself, I was likely to make a mistake or two.
When I compete, I try not to think about the other competitors. I know what they do is out of my control. And I feel the key to orienteering is running at your own pace and let the cards fall where they may. Well....off to the start, let's get it on!
Oops...forgot my gaiters! I had to buy a pair just before starting.
On the way to the first control, I made my first bad route choice. The trails were mapped in a way that confused me, and instead of staying on the trail I cut through the woods and probably lost a minute or two. Oh well....on to number 2...which is where I made my second mistake of the day. Once again, the way the trails were mapped confused me and I stopped short, ran around a bit and then collected my thoughts and figured out where the control was. Another bad route choice, another 2 minutes blown, not a good start, but it was still early.
My next two mistakes were on 3 and 4. I chose to stay in the woods, when trails were clearly the better option. This mistake was because I thought the woods would be faster to run in. In fact, the woods were generally slow. After 4 I came to the conclusion that the trails were the place to be. The rest of the race was a lot of trail running.
I did not find the course hard. There were so many trails that any advantage Peter G. had from his superior navigational skills were pretty much negated. This day was a runners course.
After such a sloppy start of the race(I ran clean the rest of the way), I didn't figure I'd be too close to the leaders. I had an early start and would have to wait to find out. I went back to my motel room, cleaned up, had a lefse cod wrap for lunch and headed back. I had control pickup duty(the Minnesota club had helped us out with our event and I was returning the favor). I also picked up a pie, since I had bet someone that Michael would finish in the top 5 at the US Champs months earlier. I didn't know how he would finish, but figured I'd better be prepared to pay up(Michael was 5th on day 1 and finished 3rd. Now someone owes me a pie!).
Returning to Telemark Lodge my jaw dropped when I saw the results. Some foreign guy had kicked our butts, but he didn't matter. Peter G. was third and John C. fourth. Somehow I had taken 2nd, which was 1st overall American! I had a 2.5 minute lead on Peter and John was 5 minutes behind.
That was a great start, but the second day was longer and I suspected would be harder. Day 2 had less elevation and lots more detail. I was happy the rest of the day. I picked up the controls and went out to dinner with Michael, Boyko and Dawn at the Turk's Inn. I was nervous the rest of the time until I started on day 2. The Turk's Inn was quite an experience. I haven't paid for tap water in a long time. But it was a very pleasant evening thanks to the company.
I got to bed early and just wanted to get day 2 over with. In orienteering there is always the chance to mess up and give away a race. I didn't want this to happen. If I had a good race and lost I would be content. If I had a bad race and won I would be elated. But if I lost the race because of some silly mistake, I would be irritated for a long time! Waiting was hard, but I didn't lose any sleep over it.
As the weekend went by, I couldn't help but make comparisons to my victory in 2002. Back then I had won day 1 and only had a minute lead. This year I had 2.5 minutes, but a better orienteer just behind me. I also had the same philosophy both years, I just had to take care of business. There was nothing I could do but have a good race and check the results afterwards. I also didn't want to lose after leading on day 1. Both times I was pretty much a lock for some medal, as 4rd place was 7 minutes behind.
After the start on day 2 in 2002, I had an early chance to look over the course(while running). I determined that I was unlikely to get caught except by the guy just behind me. This year the same thing happened. On the way to 1, I was able to plan out the route to 3, which was very long. Then on the way to 3, I looked over the rest of the course and decided there was nothing difficult to contend with. All I had to do was run fast and not rush....
There were so many trails that the technical terrain didn't phase me. It was trail run city with a short legs in the woods after leaving the trails. This was easy. I didn't know how fast John C. was, but I didn't think he could make up 5 minutes on me. I did think Peter could make up 2.5 minutes. I banged off 1, 2 and 3 before getting sloppy at 4 and losing a couple minutes. Rushing, I didn't stay on my compass bearing and let a depression pull me to the right. I quickly decided to bail out to a nearby trail to relocate. On the way I thought I recognized a large depression. But on closer inspection it wasn't the one I thought. However, I then noticed it was the one the control was near, and then spotted it. Whew! It was a mistake, but not big enough to kill me. I took off to get the rest. Next, I knocked off 5, 6 and 7. I started rushing and on the way to 8 didn't take time to get my exact location when leaving a trail. I missed. Once again, I decide to immediately get back to the trail. I couldn't afford to lose any more time to errors. But I was careless once again and went on the wrong bearing to the trail. I curled around to try and correct, still desperately looking for the small, leaf covered trail. I never did find it. After curving around and going a few meters, I spotted a control that might be it. I ran over and punched without even taking time to check the code. The controls don't beep if it's not the right one. I stuck it in and time stood still....finally the little red light came on and I let out an "alright!" I cursed myself for being so sloppy and knew the race was getting tight....
From there to the finish I gave it all I had. Fast on the trails, slower when leaving them for short distances and then the afterburners were on getting back to the trails and lots of concentration. Day 2 was once again a runner's course and certainly I was faster than a 60 year old! I finished pretty clean and fast. I felt I had a good chance to hold on to my lead. I had run almost 1 minute per K faster than the day before, and this course was longer.
But I had opened the door for Peter. My run was good, but not great. I had just too many little mistakes. I guessed my chances were 60%, 40% in my favor. If Peter had a good run, he would beat me.
Later I talked with Peter who said he was hurting and had gone slow on day 1. On day 2 he figured a time of 60 minutes would be enough to catch me. He didn't know that I had posted a 62 minute time. He had a clean run and was moving faster than day 1.
Once again, I had started early and went back to my motel room to freshen up before any results were posted. I watched some Packer football and headed back for judgement day. Was my race good enough, or would I be mad at myself for those silly mistakes I made? As I was parking Rich J. came by and said good job. I said, thanks, but was it good enough for first. He said, yes, I think so. Just that foreign guy was ahead of you. For about a minute I was elated. Then someone else I knew said I had finished 3rd(2nd American). I got nervous again. It turned out that I was 3rd on day 2, but still 1st American overall. I checked the results and everyone was finished and behind me. I had pulled off the unlikely victory.
I finished the day by picking up more controls and driving 4.5 hours home. I was a pleasant drive.
Our first event of the year is at Blue Mound this weekend. Expect some great courses on one of our best maps. But just two weeks later is our Lapham Peak event which should also be fun.
I will be orienteering in Maine and New York, so won't have a chance to update this page before then. Here are some of the details of that event...
The park entry fee is waived until noon. The start area will be at the lower shelter(Evergreen). After entering the park take the first right turn and look east of the shelter for the start area.
The long course will be 6.1K, 230M climb, 19 markers; the Intermediate course will be 3.9K, 140M climb, 10 markers; the short course will be 2.3K, 40M climb and 7 markers.
Someone suggested I make a list of Badger members who are going to the championships. This may facilitate ridesharing or socializing at the event. If you're going, let me know and I'll add your name to the list. Let's get a lot of badgers up there to support the Minnesota club the way they supported us at our national event! You can also see who is attending by checking the registration or start list at the MNOC website. At least, there is usually a list of participants put online. Following is the Badger participant list:
kevin, Alan H., Rich J., Cathy Y., Michael E.
Our first event of the fall season is this Saturday at Blue Mound State Park. The start will be at the top of the hill not far from the west observation tower. The start is at noon, but as you may already know, we are usually ready to go a little before noon.
Blue Mound is one of our nicest maps. There is a lot of challenge for advanced(7.5K, 220M) orienteers. There will also be short and medium(4.5K, 160M) courses available. The short course is suitable for beginners. Michael Eglin is the meet director for this event. I hope you will be able to make it!
The World Orienteering Championships began a few days ago with qualifying for the long and middle distances. Tomorrow will be both qualifying and finals for the Sprints. Check out the website for updates and live feeds. http://www.woc2004.com
To date, no Americans have qualified for any finals. The usual cast of characters have. Simone Niggli-Luder(Switzerland), Thierry Gueorgiou(France) and numerous Norwegians, Swedes and Finns. Brian May, Mikell Platt, Eddie Bergeron and Joe Scarborough are the our men's team and Pavlina Brautigam, Erin Olafsen, Karen Williams and Sandra Zurcher are our women's team.
The Championship will run through the end of this week, so take a moment and check it out!
For those of you who don't already know, the U.S. Orienteering Championships being held at Telemark Resort in Cable, Wisconsin this year. You might think this is really cool, but not for an inexperienced or recreational orienteer like yourself. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
While you will be competing with most of the best orienteers in the country, you will also be treated to some of the best terrain and courses. You will get preprinted maps, prescheduled start times and electronic punching(you will know your splits between controls). It's a great chance to compare yourself with others, and perhaps surprise yourself by how good you are, or by how bad you are!
I would especially encourage juniors(under 21) to attend. There are very few juniors that attend national events and if you have a good day, you might just pick up a medal. Age groups are every 2 years, so there are lots of opportunities to win, place or show. You could make a weekend out of it, and no matter what the results, you'll have a great time up in northern Wisconsin.
So, put October 16, 17 on your calendar, find a few friends and come up for a rare opportunity to go to the national championships in the midwest! Preregistration is required and can be done online at the Minnesota Orienteering Club website. Check the links on the Badger Club website to get more information or email me if you have any questions(kevin@chorus.net).
I've been told a number of times by different people that articles on orienteering abroad are not something that local club members would be interested in. But I've always thought that if you don't know anything about it you are really missing out on a lot of what orienteering is all about. And if you never hear stories, you'll never know what you're missing. So, I have written a short article on Finland's Jukola Relay. Let me know what you think.
In the USA, the major event I have always heard about was the O-Ringen, the Swedish 5-day event that draws over 10,000 participants each year. Then we had a Finnish couple spend two years in Wisconsin and I learned about the Jukola.
The Jukola is a 7 man relay race that starts at 11pm at night and finishes up, for the winners at least, about 7 hours later. The first three legs are fairly long and go out at twilight/ night. The 4th and 5th legs are shorter and in daylight. And the 6th and 7th are longer day legs. This year's Jukola had over 1,200 teams(about 9,000 participants). It has a mass start with all the competitors wearing large headlamps and charging for a quickly narrowing passage from the starting area. It is a very dramatic beginning.
One thing that makes the Jukola special is that participants all run the same courses. That is, if you run leg 7 and the world champ is running leg 7, you could run the exact same course as him. There are forks along the way, so courses are slightly different. But the length and difficulty are the same for everyone on leg 7 or whichever leg you are running. In most events, you wouldn't be permitted to run the elite course with all the stars of our sport(that may be a good thing, since elite courses are extremely demanding).
Another thing that is special about Jukola is that everyone good in the world is there. Many foreigners join finnish or swedish clubs just so they can participate with a chance to win the race. When I ran the Jukola I was part of Tampereen Pyrinto. They had 9 teams in the race and I was placed by the coach on team 7. If you wait at the finish line, you will see a who's who of orienteering. For Americans that means we are saying, "Who's that guy?". And someone else is answering, " That's the world champion." Of course, a big scandinavian race has the 30 foot TV screen on site, full television coverage (headline news in Finland), nationwide radio broadcast throughout the event and opportunities to bet on your favorite teams at the local betting establishment. Everything you need is on site. All the orienteering stores set up shop. A big sauna tent is set up to handle thousands of tired racers after the race. Results are put up as quickly as possible, though if you're running in 500th place don't expect to see your results in a timely fashion.
This year's race had Halden 1(Norway) as one of the favorites. They had won the race the year before, and after the 2nd leg were running in front again. Soon their lead had increased to over 2 minutes. It looked like a repeat of 2003, when they built a big lead of 3-4 minutes and never looked back in winning easily.
However, Kestavan 1(Finland) was hoping for an upset. After trailing by 2 minutes they had begun to nibble away at the lead. They had finished 3rd in 2003. A few mistakes on one leg and Halden had given back 2 minutes. 24 seconds separated the top two teams with all the other teams still well back. The top french orienteer was running the anchor leg for Kestavan. With 15 kilometers still left in the race, there was still hope for the upset. The Frenchman was having a great race and after a few controls had caught up to Halden. One second, the time it takes to punch in, was all that separated the two. A few more kilometers past and Halden had reclaimed the lead by 23 seconds. Only a few more markers remained. Had Kestavan come up short once again? Had the Frenchman put in too much effort making up the time he had trailed and was now running out of gas? Everyone had to wait to see who would come into view first at the last control....
Finally, the team to appear was Kestavan 1. The Frenchman had run the fastest time of the day on leg 7. Three of the last 3 controls he had the fastest time of the day. But the Halden runner then appeared just seconds behind. Unfortunately for him, there was not enough distance left to make up the time. Kestavan 1 won by 13 seconds after 6 hours and 51 minutes of racing.
Former Badger club member Janne Markala had run for Tampereen Pyrinto 2 and had the 34th fastest time out of about 1250 runners. And what about his wife, Heidi Haapasalo? The Jukola is a men's only race. But there is the Venla Relay earlier in the day with teams of 4 women each. Heidi was on Tampereen Pyrinto's number 1 team. They had won the race in 2003, beating a team with the top two women in the world on it(Simone Luder and Vroni Salmi-Konig). This year's Venla had over 800 women's teams. Tampereen Pyrinto 1 took the lead on the 3rd leg of the race, but their anchor had some trouble and they dropped to 7th. Simone Luder, women's world champion, was running with a swedish team this year and they won the title. Heidi ran the 2nd leg and was 2 minutes behind the fastest time.
I was able to follow the race this past weekend on the internet. Splits for all the teams would be posted almost in real time. The USA had two teams entered. One failed to make it to the starting line, as only 1 of 7 team members made the trip. The other team had a good run, but was disqualified after the 6th leg runner failed to punch at one of the controls. OUCH. And they were in a good position to finish in the top 500 or so. Last year, an american team made the same mistake.
With over 1200 men's teams and over 800 women's team this year's Venla/Jukola Relays had over 12,000 participants. Most of these people spend the night right on site, getting sleep before they run and watching the race when they can. It is really a Finnish cultural experience.
So, why 7 legs? The race got it's name from a classic Finnish book called Seven Brothers. It's a story of 7 brothers who are rather uncivilized at the start, but through their lives learn to live in a civilized way. They are the Jukola brothers. Venla is one of the townspeople's daughters who almost all the brothers want to marry.
6/22/4
Four weeks ago the Badger Orienteering Club hosted its first national orienteering event in over 10 years. It marked the 20th anniversary of the club. Following you will read a short history of some of the events leading up to this event and about the event itself.
About 10 years ago when I started running the club I set forth some objectives that I wanted to achieve in order to be able to evaluate my progress as president and the progress of the club as a whole. These objectives included increasing attendance at events to an average of 50, doubling the number of color maps the club had and hosting a national event at Devil's Lake. The plan was to complete all of these objectives in a 5 year period.
The first two we did achieve quite quickly, but the third was much more difficult. Producing a map at Devil's Lake would be costly, and the manpower and expertise needed to run a quality event were lacking. Hosting a national event became a low priority for me, since I view the strength of the club as coming from local events. Past history seemed to show a pattern of dropoff in club activities after hosting national events. The effort required apparently would wear down club members who for the most part would ultimately disappear completely from the orienteering scene. I concentrated my efforts on continuing to uake mnd higher quality maps and on increasing club revenues to be able to pay for them.
Over the years dues were raised and attendance continued to increase. Money was coming in but at a rate that would require patience in order for the club to afford to pay upfront for the new maps it needed. I decided it was in the best interests of the club to go in debt to get new maps as soon as possible. Without these maps, the bloodlines of the club, I felt enthusiasm would dissipate. I knew mine would. I also felt strongly that the club would continue to generate funds necessary to pay back the loans used for making new maps. Starting a couple of years ago, the club went heavily into debt.
In the meantime, I was scouting out possible new orienteering venues. This work had been done in the past by people like Alan Oprsal and others when the club had virtually no money, and when making maps was not computer aided. After looking around and asking others I ended up deciding to procede with three new areas, Blue Mound SP, Bong SRA and Devil's Lake SP. Together these three areas offered a lot. Devil's Lake and Blue Mound were technically difficult enough to satisfy advanced orienteers, but also offered areas for beginners. Bong gave us a presence in the southeast corner of the state.
Finding fieldcheckers to make the maps became a problem and delayed the start of the projects. Then when I finally found a fieldchecker a few more were interested. I decided to invite them all over to get them while we could. That meant going even deeper in debt. But waiting would have meant possibly not getting some of the maps made for another few years. It was risky, but I felt worth it.
As the basemaps appeared and the maps were being made, it was apparent to me that we had some very special orienteering areas. My first thought was to put in a request for the U.S. Championships. That would ensure a great turnout and would have guaranteed the greatest number of people seeing the maps. However, given our lack of experience and personnel it didn't seem like a good idea.
But the time had come for us to give back to the Midwest orienteering community by hosting a quality national event. I asked around and tried to pick a date that wouldn't interfere with any other national events. I even asked the Chicago club to hold off hosting an event, so we wouldn't have a ton of events all at one time and none at later dates. We put in a request with the national organization(USOF) and got permission.
What followed was very disappointing to me. Shortly thereafter, I found out that OCIN had moved their annual event from late march to the weekend before our event. Next, I heard that SLOC had postponed their national event from the fall of 2003 to the spring of 2004, just a month before our event. I learned MNOC was hosting the US Champs in Wisconsin in the fall of 2004. And finally, I got an email from an organizer of the Billygoat that they planned to hold their event on the same date as our event.
The combination of these events gave me second thoughts about even hosting the event. The combination certainly wasn't going to bring additional people to our event, and it was likely to draw people away. In fact, this is exactly what happened. A group from Canada chose to attend the US Champs instead of our event, since they only had money to travel to one event. Only one person from OCIN attended our event. Virtually no one from Canada came(many went to the Billygoat). It seemed we might get a very low turnout.
However, a few things went in our favor. The midwest community really came through. MNOC and CAOC came in much larger numbers than expected. Perhaps the MNOC people were hoping to gain experience before their national event this fall. Other people I talked with attended to show their support for our efforts. All of this seemed to compensate for the lost attendance due to other events. A month before our event we had about 30 people signed up. By the time the event happened we had 150 participants, the high end of my own estimates. Everything was falling into place.....
The map was drafted, but needed to have a border added and a legend, etc. As it worked out I did not receive the completed version until about 1 week before the actual event. Also, it was accidently converted to Ocad8, a version of software we don't have. We downloaded a demo version and worked around some limitations we had there. In the end, we got the clue sheets and courses ready for printing with just a few days to go. We had printed the maps on a laser printer with good results and went in to do the whole job. Michael took the file to the printer and contacted me later in the day to pick them up. Everything was set with just 4 days to spare....
Oops. Not quite. When I got home and took a closer look it was clear that the fine detailed rocky areas were running together. The black ink was too heavy. For the most part the maps were usable if necessary. But in some cases it wasn't very good, and we wanted the best possible maps. Michael also noted the poor quality and we decided to print them all over again. The trouble was we didn't know why they came out bad, so we didn't know how to make them come out better. In the end they printed them with everything the same and they came out much better. Don't ask me why. They were done just a day and a half before the event.
The weekend before the event Tim G. had volunteered to hang markers, since he would be unable to attend the event. He spent a day in the woods getting a large number of them hung. He stopped by afterwards and told me he thought it was going to be good. That was the way I had felt the first time I went out in the park. It reminded me that we had a special area, and I was excited about the possibility of us putting on an awesome event.
The rest of the markers would be left until the night before the event. Then we would double check them all Saturday morning a couple hours prior to the event. This all went according to plan.
Showtime. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place. Not only were numbers of participants growing, we had attracted arguably the best orienteer in North America, Brian May, along with a few other top U.S. orienteers. We had the best people in the Midwest. Now we needed to do our part by running a great event.
The top priority was having the best possible courses. Our venue was great and so was the map. But all it takes is one misplaced marker or any of a number of small errors to turn a great event into a day to forget. In steps Michael E. By pure luck, just a few months before our event a couple of high quality orienteers had joined the club. Both Michael and Dmitry P. agreed to help out wherever they were needed. I put Michael in charge of designing the Day 2 courses and running sportident electronic punching. Later we wisely opted not to use sportident. After cancelling sportident, Michael agreed to take charge of making sure all of the courses got set up properly for both days. Dmitry helped him on both days. Both did a fantasic job.
While courses are the most important aspect of any orienteering event, you still have to have all the other areas run well. Registration was handled by Cathy Y. who also ran checkin on Friday night and Saturday morning. She was assisted by Dawn D. and Wendy W. Charlie S. took charge of the start area and was assisted by a few MNOC clubmembers. The finish line crew was headed by Alan H. with sidekick Dick B. There were a number of people that helped them including Rich G., Carl L., Lee T. and some MNOC people. Rick S. and Dawn D. helped with parking on Day 1. Bob F. was in charge of results and was assisted by his wife Pat and Cathy. Dawn D. bought the food for the social, cooked food and got the building ready. Jessica R. took care of babysitting, including the family that showed up with 3 extra kids("Oh, didn't we tell you we were coming?") Every area took care of its tasks and got the job done well. Congratulations!
My weekend went as follows....
I took the day off work on Friday to make sure I had enough time to get everything done that I needed. I stopped by the Wollersheim Winery to get the case of wine for first place prizes. I bought a few blue ribbons to attach to them. I met Cathy at the Best Western to make sure everything was on track for registration at 5pm. At that point I didn't have anything to do. I had assigned all the work to others, so I just needed to oversee the operation and respond in the event of a problem. Michael was due to hang the last few markers just before dark on Friday.
People started arriving and I decide to hop in the whirlpool. I had only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before and was very tense. I soaked for a bit and talked with a few of the participants in the pool area. I ran through the things I would need to do in the morning to get things going smoothly. I socialized with some MNOC people at Bonzo's before trying to get some sleep. That was a joke. I was too stressed. I lay in bed awake for most of the night, once again getting only a few hours of sleep.
I woke up early and had nothing to do but wait. I decided to go to the start area around 6:30 and check that some of the visible markers were still hanging. I found one marker just slightly off and repositioned it. When I returned the crew was ready to go out and check all of the day 1 markers. Alan, Bob, Dmitry and Michael checked about 43 markers. Alan and his crew were setting up the finish and Charlie arrived ready to go at the start.
Michael and Dmitry returned with all set reports. We were all set with an hour or so to spare. The only thing left to do was wait for people to arrive and to place some water at one of the markers in the middle of the course. I snagged Dawn and Rick for the parking lot duty, while Michael ran off to deliver 5 gallons of water in his backpack. Lee T. had brought a nice big clock, as had Charlie and the MNOC club. These worked very nicely, as people could see what time it was instead of having to ask.
I was starting to relax. The hard work was done. Now all that was left was to wait for the start and then hear what the racers thought of the courses when they finished. I passed the time by chatting with the many regulars I know. I took a few pictures and kept myself available in the event of a problem. I didn't have to wait long for one to occur.....
Not long before the start of the event Lee T. came charging over to me telling me that one of the vetters was requesting the event be delayed because markers were missing. This made no sense at all, since we didn't have any vetters out on course. We had already finished vetting and everything was fine. He told me to talk with Michael. I was thoroughly confused. Moments later I talked with Michael. He said while delivering the water he spotted three markers that had been moved. This had happened less than an hour after we had verified their positions. I asked him how he thought we should procede He suggested rechecking all the markers in the area around the moved markers and delaying the event 1 hour, which we did. We grabbed the same people that had been out in the morning and began the recheck. In about 30 minutes we felt that the problem had been resolved. Moved markers were put back, and the other markers were still in place. We stuck to our 1 hour delayed start.
About this time, I was notified that the babysitting building was without heat and the sitter wasn't there yet. I assigned someone to check at the ranger station about getting the heat turned on and I knew the person had missed the babysitter by a matter of minutes. That fire was put out. I was also told that the rangers were charging full price for car stickers. Apparently, we had a misunderstanding on this issue. I asked someone to go see if they could resolve the issue. In the end a few cars got stuck paying $10 instead of $3 on day 1. On day 2 we resolved this issue.
Finally, the event began. First reports were good and soon many racers were coming in happy with the courses. I heard numerous comments about how unique the area was and how challenging the courses were. There were a few who noticed the abundance of rocks. But given the high standard expected by many orienteers, I knew we had a good event going.
My other concern on Day 1 was the length of courses. I had designed the 5 shortest courses and was hoping they would fall within the recommended targets. There were a couple courses in particular that I was concerned with. The orange course had a few markers that could be quite problematic. They were pushing the upper limits of intermediate difficulty. As it turned out, the winning time on orange was within the 50-60 minute window we were aiming for. The other courses came in in good shape, too. The stress of being a course designer was leaving.
The final challenge of Day 1 was getting everyone back in. Due to the late start the event went well into the afternoon. A few inexperienced orienteers came in overtime, but we didn't need any search and rescue operations to get them back. We also didn't have any protests lodged.
I headed over to the evening social, arriving around 5:30pm. People were just hanging out and Dawn was cooking up food as fast as possible. I think that it went well early on. But as the evening wore on the party fizzled out. I left about 7pm to attend a concert in Madison.
Michael and Dmitry were out in the woods hanging markers for Day 2. All told Michael ran about 4.5 hours on Saturday. He put in a few more hours of running on Sunday.
Saturday night I was finally able to get a little more sleep. The stress of Day 1 was behind me. With one great day under our belts, we didn't have to worry about a complete disaster happening. Now we just had to hold it all together and have one more great day. And that we did....
I woke up early again and headed down to the park. I hung 3 markers and made myself available to troubleshoot. The crews all arrived on time, set up and took care of business. It was fantastic. The only problem was the park hadn't opened the building we rented, and hadn't cleaned the bathrooms. In fact, there was no park staff to open the building until a little later. Fortunately, this didn't effect things much.
While Day 1 weather had been perfect, Day 2 weather was wet, making conditions in the woods a bit more dangerous. While hanging markers in the morning there was a fog over the whole park. I couldn't see across the lake, and visibility in the woods was less than 100 meters. It was really cool.
We started on time and soon after started getting good reports back from the racers. We finished the weekend without having any misplaced markers and with most people loving the courses and the map. I had many people thank me and the club for putting on such a good event. We gave out awards, sent out people to get markers and closed the book on our first national event in a decade.
But wait.....Dmitry was talking to me in the parking lot reminding me that my work wasn't done. We still needed to get results up and as fast as possible. Michael and I went out to dinner and I somehow got him to help me get results up that night. Working for about an hour, we entered the data. Afterwards, Michael prettied it up and emailed it to me. I went home and got it online. By 11pm we had the unofficial results up. It was a great feeling!
The stress of the event had taken its toll on me. I was sick for 3 weeks following the event. I'm just now feeling better. The thrill of a national event is now behind us, and the grind of local events is ahead. I love orienteering....
I have posted the official results from the Badger Classic National Orienteering Event at Badger Classic Results
We will be adding another event to the club schedule this summer. We will hold an event at Kellings Lakes June 12th. This event may also be used to crown a Wisconsin Junior Champion(18 and under). There will be three courses designed for this event. We'll have the usual short and long courses. But the Junior Championship will have it's own course.
Alot of you already know that we are hosting a national event the last weekend in April(see link above). National events differ from local events in a number of ways. One way they differ is you need to pre- register. After April 15th a late fee kicks in as well. The event is a 2 day event, but you may participate in just 1 of the days.
We also offer recreation courses for white, yellow and orange courses. These are beginner to intermediate courses only. These you may register for the day of the event and we will register people from 12:00 -12:30pm on Saturday and 10-10:30am on Sunday. The cost for recreational courses will be the usual club prices.
If you choose to participate, you will be assigned a start time for each day. Awards will be given to the best 2 day total time.
National events are nothing to be afraid of. While there are a number of very good orienteers that will come to the event, there are still courses for all ability levels. It is a good chance to see how you compare with some of the best orienteers in the midwest.
If you have any questions, first check the National event website(the link is above), and then email me if you still have questions. I hope you'll come out to participate, volunteer or just to a spectator.
This past year we made a new map at Bong State Recreation Area. While this park is not ideal orienteering terrain, it should be a pleasant day in the park. The park has large areas of prairie and is relatively flat(not surprising given it was once an airfield). I think the park will offer fast orienteering without a lot of technical difficulty. This will be your last chance to practice before our national event the last weekend in April.
Traditionally, the last weekend in March is first event of the year, and also our Scout event. The scouts start a couple hours before the regular club event which begins at noon. The current forecast is for 60 degree temperatures and overcast skies.
This year's event will be a score O for both the long and short courses. Participants will have one hour to find as many markers as possible. If you return late, you will be penalized. The person with the most controls in the least amount of time will be declared the winner.
Orienteering at Kegonsa does not require advanced skills. Orienteering will be fast and I fully expect a number of competitors to find all the markers in well under the time limit. I would estimate the winning time to be under 40 minutes.
We already have 130 scouts and leaders signed up for this event. With regulars coming later we could surpass the 200 participant mark for the first time in club history. I hope you'll show up and be a part of it!
3/26/4
The Badger Orienteering Club will host it's first national event in over 10 years on April 24, 25, 2004. This event will take place at Devil's Lake State Park near Baraboo, WI. The event will feature 2 days of standard length courses in the setting of Wisconsin's most popular state park. The new map has generally open woods, numerous rock features and 300 foot talus slopes. The mapped area is over 10 square kilometers. The courses will offer a unique midwest orienteering experience.
We will have our headquarters for the event at the Best Western Motel in Baraboo, WI just 5 miles from the park. Saturday from 4-10pm there will be a free social in the Red Oak enclosed shelter on the south shore of Devil's Lake.
Anyone interested in volunteering to assist us with this event please email me at kevin@chorus.net There are quite a few jobs that don't require any prior skills, such as helping at the start or finish lines, helping with registration friday night and saturday morning, etc.
This event is open to everyone from beginners to advanced orienteers. Come out and discover for yourself what a national orienteering event is all about!
2/7/4
May 20, 2004 will mark twenty years of Badger Club orienteering. The club certainly has had it's ups and downs over the years. Hopefully the enthusiasm and excitement in the club now can continue to grow! Next year's national event will be a nice way for us to mark the occasion. In addition, we are already planning to expand the area we currently have mapped at Devil's Lake to include another 10 square kilometers. WOW! I'm sure there will be more exciting developments in the near future.
I have posted the 2004 tentative schedule. Usually, we don't make any changes, but just in case I call it tentative. : )
12/8/3
Kevin ran away with the Wisconsin State Orienteering Championship this weekend with an impressive run at Kellings Lakes. His time of 68:00(8:15 min/K), bested Mikhail P. by almost 6 minutes. The area featured a variety of terrain from open fields and runnable oak forest, to marshes and steep kettles. The forest seemed fast, but steep slopes covered with leaves and bumpy marshes did slow competitors down quite alot.
The event went on without a hitch. All the markers were correctly placed, the weather was cool, yet pleasant and the participants seemed to have a great time. We hope to see you all next year!
The courses for the Wisconsin State Championship event have been designed. This event is open to everyone and is similar to all of our other events, except the winner will be crowned state champion for 2003. The map will be printed at a scale of 1-10,000.
For this event the long course will be a lengthy 8K with 16 markers. We expect the winning time to be at least 60 minutes. And due to the length and difficulty of the course, we have added a middle distance course of 5.5K. This would be similar to our usual long course. I highly recommend only confident orienteers attempting the long course. We will begin picking up controls by 3pm. The courses should be set up by 11am.
Parking will be along a dirt road. I ask that everyone try to park on one side of the road, in order to leave enough room for vehicles to drive through. Thanks. 11/19/3
I attended the United States Championships as the defending M40 winner. This year I moved up to the M45 class with little expectation of doing well. I've been nursing a pulled muscle and wasn't planning on reinjuring it during the event. I had also not run for about 2 months prior to the event while resting it, as well.
Last year when I arrived I felt I had a great chance to get on the podium. And as luck would have it, I earned the gold medal. This year my attitude was completely different. My head was not in the game. Not only hadn't I been running, I hadn't orienteered since June in Finland. Needless to say, the layoff did not help my performance.
I camped right on the map that was used for the event. On day one I got a very late start time, 1pm or so. That gave me a chance to walk on the practice course. I found out right away that the map was going to be troublesome. Many features were hard to distinquish, such as clearings and slow run/good visibility areas. Others I talked to had mentioned the same thing. Often times slow run areas were very slow, whereas other areas with slow run were okay. Then again, some white areas should have been mapped as slow run, since they had the same fallen trees, etc. as the other areas. It also seemed to me that the mapping of rocks was spotty. Some were on, some not. Unfortunately, it seemed that this was the way the whole map was.
On with the race! Day 1 turned out to be grueling. Not only was navigation difficult, it was often impossible to run. I spent most of the day stepping over and on bushes and fallen trees. Rocks and the bark of dead trees looked a similar gray which made looking for rock features all the more difficult. My navigation was terrible. Time and again I wasn't selecting attack points, but just drifting towards markers. I found a powerline that wasn't mapped along the way. Nothing was going right. I hacked my way to a 13th place finish in about 2:20:00.
Day 2 was a significant improvement. There were more areas of runnable woods, though there were still plenty of slow areas. There were more readable contours which is what I was using to get close to the markers. Overall, people were much more satisfied with the course on Sunday. Nevertheless, times for both days were way over the 60-65 minute targets. The fastest time on day 1 was 96 minutes and on day 2 it was 78 minutes. Almost half of the participants in my category were unable to get a 2 day total time. 13 of 28 didn't finish both days. The elite category also had about half the participants not completing both courses.
I ended up 10th in M45 and not very satisfied with the event as a whole. I didn't expect to finish even as high as 10th, but I was hoping for some beautiful open high sierra woods to run in. Instead I spent the weekend thrashing around in bushes and fallen trees. It was still a good learning experience though. With good navigating, I could very well have medaled by walking the course. Instead I rushed, made mistakes and wasted a lot of energy going the wrong way. And it will help me do better in Bay Area events in the future having seen some more of the terrain out there.
9/22/3
Our next club event will be September 20th at Elver Park in Madison. This park is a large city park, but small by orienteering standards. If you are looking for a long advanced course you will not get it at this event. The long course is 3.7K and relatively easy. The short course is 2K.
The map needs updating. There are a few places that may cause some confusion on the long course, but I don't think there will be any big problems. There is wild parsnip on the east side of the large hill with open area on the top. I hope you will be able to avoid it. I wrote on the map where it is.
I am meet director for this event and have designed the courses and preprinted maps. I will be in Tahoe for the U.S. championships and will be returning Saturday morning just in time for the event. Since there is a chance of flight delays or other problems, I have a couple people helping set up the course and handling registration. The start area will be near the softball diamonds on the west end of the park by the parking lot. I hope to see you there!
I'm still planning on getting results posted for the Goose Lake event. I'm not sure if I will get a fall newsletter out. If I do, it won't be until October. If anyone is interested in being in charge of the newsletter, please let me know. I've been doing it the past 8 years...
9/6/3
The Minnesota Orienteering Club is hosting a 6 hour rogaine near Telemark, WI. A rogaine usually uses a USGS topo map to find as many points as you can in the alloted time. This area could be quite technical and interesting. If you are interested in this event visit the MNOC website listed in the links section. 7/20/3
Well I had planned the courses and just went out for a double check this weekend. Turns out they stopped mowing about half the trails! Good thing I took the day to look around. I'll make a few course changes and think it will be a really fun event. It's a lot of fields, but portions of them have very high grass. I'll try to indicate that on the map by green lines. It's passable, but just remember it will be slower.
I also noticed some areas of wild parsnip. This nasty weed can get on your skin and cause burns IF sunlight hits your skin, too. So no worries about night orienteering. But I would highly recommend washing off yourself and your clothes before going out in the sun, just to be on the safe side.
The map has never been used before. I fieldchecked it a bit. It's not perfect, but should be good enough for a great event.
When you enter the park procede to the beach. I think that's the third left. It's one road after the boat landing. We'll have to be out of the park by 11pm and will start around 9:30pm. So, watch the time when you're out there and get back in on time. We will probably start picking up markers around 10:30pm, beginning with the early ones and working our way around the course. If you're afraid of the dark, come early and I might let you go out before it's completely black.
Bring insect repellent. There's alot of water/marshy areas. So if the wind isn't blowing there will probably be bugs.
Afterwards I hope to get the results up for both the night orienteering event and the Goose Lake event. Sorry for the delay. It's been a busy summer!
In case you hadn't noticed I was missing at the last Badger Club event. I took a trip to Finland for some rest and relaxation and a whole lot of orienteering! In two weeks I participated in 8 orienteering events including the famous Juloka Relay. For those of you who don't know, the Jukola is the world's largest orienteering relay event where the best orienteers compete side by side with the rest of us. You get to go on exactly the same courses as the big boys.
My trip started out with me participating in a Monday night local event. I felt good ran pretty fast and made a mental mistake that cost me 7 minutes. I still finished 57 out of about 80. On Wednesday night I helped set up the start area for a national event that weekend and then ran a 7K course. I was sloppy at the start and then felt good the rest of the course, but was still slow.
Thursday I went to a national short course event, the Phone Games. It was a three loop course and I made about 10 loops looking for the second marker. Once again, other than that I ran well and felt good about the race. That weekend I ran at the Suunto Games in Helsinki. I put together my best race so far. But it was still not a good race for me. The second day I almost broke 10min/K, but made too many mistakes along the way.
Well now my vacation was half over and I hadn't put together a good run yet. Monday night I did the 7K local event on the map I had been on the Wednesday before. It was a great map with incredible detail. I improved my time by about ten minutes over the previous week, but my friend Janne who walked the course due to a foot problem had a faster min/K on the 5K course. That sure didn't make me feel very good.
I had another chance on Thursday at a national sprint event. When I got the map I was very confident. I could see it would be relatively easy compared to the other places I had been. After 8 good controls I blew it on the 9th with a 6-7 minute error and finished 17 minutes behind the winner. I had almost had my good run....
Now it was down to the Jukola. This race is a 7 man race that starts at 11pm at night. Janne had registered me with Tampereen Pyrinto. They put me on their 7th team out of 9. I was just hoping I wouldn't do terrible and really mess up the team's results. I was aiming at going under 10min/K, though this is considered slow over there. This race and it's sister event the Venla had almost 12,000 participants.
Before the Juloka, which is all men, is the Venla, a 4 woman relay event. Former Badger Orienteering Club member Heidi Haapasola was competing on the Pyrinto's #1 team and they were picked to finish 2nd overall. Their team was loaded with Finnish Team members. The favored team was also from Finland and included the top two women in the world(from Switzerland). Heidi figured they had a good chance to win, since a few weeks earlier they had lost to that team by 6 seconds in a sprint to the finish. The stage was set for a very exciting race. I wanted to place a bet, but didn't know that was possible until just before the race. And didn't have time to get to a bookie.
Both favored teams were a few places back after the first leg. Other teams can run their best runner first just to get their name on the leader board. The favored teams save their best for the final legs. After the second leg, which Heidi ran, Pyrinto was 2 seconds behind. But after the short run to the map exchange Heidi had put Pyrinto in the lead. This leg proved critical since the favored team's runner had made a big mistake and after the third leg Pyrinto was in the lead by 3 minutes. But with the world's #1 running the last leg for the Turku team, it wasn't a sure thing. Any mistake by Pyrinto at this point could cost them the race. Lisa Anttila was running that leg for Pyrinto. She is one of the best in Finland. The splits were announced over the loud speakers(in Finnish and Swedish), but I could understand the Swedish numbers enough to hear that Lisa was holding on to the 3 minute lead. Finally, she came into sight and the team joined her for a victory lap.
Now it was time for my first Jukola race. I would be the 6th leg going 10.2K. My team included a couple guys that were pretty good, a couple of juniors and a couple of guys I didn't know much about, one of whom I wouldn't meet until I handed him his map. My hope was to get my map before the mass start and to get to the finish before the mass start began. I would get my wish.
The race started at 11:05 with a mass start. Over 1100 men with headlamps raced to the narrow shoot and the race was on. Each leg takes about an hour with the winners finishing at 7am or so the next morning. Now there was nothing to do except wait. I had no idea when the 5th leg would get in and I would get my chance. It turned out it was very difficult to keep track of where my team was. Everything was in Finnish and the results after the 3rd leg were pretty slow in getting posted. I didn't know when the 4th leg finished and didn't know how fast the 5th leg would be. So I walked around worrying. Finally, I entered the warmup/map exchange area to wait. I just kept looking and looking for team 682 to come down to the exchange bar. After almost an hour(I think) my teammate came down and handed me the map. Off I went!
Up until now our team had been doing better than I had expected. Our first runner put in a good time finishing only 20 minutes behind the leaders. Our second leg runner, in the dark, was able to maintain our position in the top 500. Legs 3 and 4 dropped some spots and going into leg 5 we were about 680th. Leg 5 picked up 50 places and now it was my turn to do well or blow it....
I had learned alot in the past two weeks and had built up a lot of confidence. I had overcome my fear of Finnish terrain. I was learning how to properly orienteer in the Finnish forest. I still wasn't fast by any means, but at least I wasn't making 1 hour mistakes and finishing at the bottom of the heap. In fact, I was making plenty of mistakes, but they were of the 5 minute variety. And my confidence was allowing me to run faster without worrying so much. Basically, I had become a middle of pack orienteer. Not bad for american standards!
The most important lesson I learned was that white woods are runnable, but the features are still hard to see. Often you get right by the control and still can't see it. That means you must not only be confident you are in the right spot, but once you get there you may have to look around a little bit. A couple times I was right on and wasted a few seconds because I didn't see the marker behind the tree. It was all great practice and lots of fun!
I headed out and was smoking(by my standards), almost in the top third of people running the 6th leg for the first 3K of my leg. Then I made a few mistakes that slowed me down. In spite of that, I somehow managed to pass 57 racers on my leg and our team was 585th when I finished. I was just over 9min/K and still hadn't had a great run. Still I felt really good about the progress I had made over the course of 2 weeks and feel I'll do even better the next time I go over there. I'm really starting to like those Finnish woods, saunas and long summer days! I hope to back in two more years.... I also got my wish of avoiding the mass start. I got my map about 7:30am and finished the race in 94 minutes, about 20 minutes before the mass start.
But wait, what happened on the 7th and final leg? I handed off the map to him and my ride was leaving. By the time he finished, I was probably sitting in a Finnish sauna and taking a dip in the lake every now and then. We checked the results on the internet to find that he had taken 4 hours and dropped almost 300 places. We were 880th out of about 1100 teams that finished the race. Well, not very impressive, but a completed Jukola nevertheless! The rank didn't matter to me. I had my sub 10min/K run(about 9:15min/K). I had held up my end for the team. And I partici pated on a team that successfully completed the Jukola Relay! Good job team!(who were those guys anyway?)
One of the benefits of a trip like this it gauging how good you are at orienteering. In the States, it is very easy to think you are good when in fact you aren't. I am one of the best M40's in the country, but over there I would have a hard time finishing in the top 25%. The amount of experience that they have is far greater than what we get. But by competing there I have learned a great deal and that should allow me to post even faster times here in the States. When you are used to finishing at or near the top and then are lucky to be in the top half, it is a very humbling experience. It has made me want to get even better. My goal next trip over there will be to get in the top 25% and run sub 8min/K. The competition there pushes you much more than it does here.
6/30/3
I hope you are all planning on attending our next club event at Goose Lake. We'll be starting from the parking lot on the west side of the wildlife area. This means taking I-94 east from Madison to Hwy 73. Then going south to hwy BB and going east to Missouri Rd. Missouri Rd. is the first left, about 1.5 miles east of 73. Then go north on Missouri about 2 miles to the parking/start area. Joe W. will have the usual two courses set up.
5/27/3
Good news from the club! Thanks to two additional volunteers stepping up to organise events, this year we will be offering 9 events instead of 7. There will be one additional event in both the spring and fall sessions. These events will probably be on smaller maps in the Madison area. The two volunteers are from that area. We have some nice small maps, but they haven't been getting used much as we start using our brand new larger maps. Check out the 2003 Schedule now online. Just click on the Schedule link in the toolbar. Happy orienteering!
1/12/3
As always, the Badger Orienteering Club has hosted high quality inexpensive events. This year will be no exception. However, the cost this year will be $6/member and $9/nonmember. Juniors will stay at $3/each.
There are a number of reasons for the increases. The largest cost to the club is new maps. Last year, we completed work on two very impressive maps completely done by professionals. This has left the club with a large debt that needs to be paid off. Increased revenues will help to do that.
Another reason is we want to continue making new maps and updating old ones. What makes orienteering fun is high quality maps and exciting new parks to run in. If we don't continue upgrading and producing maps club interest will wane.
A third reason for increasing fees is the cost of insurance has doubled this year alone. We need to respond to that issue now.
And finally, in an effort to increase club membership, we raised the non member price by $2 to encourage more people to become members.
The money the club takes in has been well spent. We have provided a service to scouts earning their merit badges. We have given military groups and adventure racers the opportunity to improve their navigational skills. And most importantly, we have provided orienteers with the opportunity to have a challenging run in the woods. We have and will continue to provide events of a very high quality.
1/12/3
Our traditional last Saturday in March scout event will be held at Blue Mound State Park this year. If you are involved in scouts and are interested in having your troop or some members participate, contact kevin@chorus.net for more details.
1/12/3
This past weekend I finished designing the courses for the Dec 8th event. The short course will be a bit longer than usual, but enjoyable. The long course will be shorter than usual, but quite challenging. We've had an inch or two of snow, and we may get a little bit more. I don't think that will effect our event. We will start the event at the north end of the park. Enter, cross the railroad tracks and turn right. I think we'll be about the only people in the park. So, we should be easy to find. A park sticker is required.
12/2/2
I'll be setting the courses for the Devil's Lake event. I was up there this past Sunday and the map is GREAT! The woods are very nice and there are plenty of rock features on the map. The ground is quite rocky in places, but these area are mapped. I plan to use a 1-7,500 scale for this event.
11/19/2
The December 8th event will be held at Devil's Lake. Enter the park on the north side(main entrance)and follow the orienteering signs or ask the ranger. There will be gun deer hunting in the park, but NOT in the area we will be orienteering in. I contacted the park administrator regarding the hunting. He doesn't expect many hunters since it will be late in the season. He suggested wearing bright colors(blaze orange/red) as a precaution. I will be designing the courses, and the long course will be at least 200 meters away from the trail that divides the hunted area from the not hunted area. A very clear north/south trail is the dividing line. The short course will be no closer than about 500 meters to the hunted area. While there are no guarantees in life, I feel it is very unlikely that we will have any problems with hunters. It is more likely we won't even know they are there. If you are really worried about it, don't attend. But I will be out there hanging markers, taking them down and checking out the same area you will be in.
Okay, that's the bad part. The good part is the map is great! It should make for a very challenging Wisconsin State Championship event.
More news....I(kevin) went to Virginia, November 2nd and 3rd, to compete in the United States Orienteering Championships. I won M40(men's 40 and over class). I believe that's the first National Championship ever won by a Badger Club member. I was second in M40 at the night-O Championships this summer.......Former club member Heidi Haapasalo won gold at the Finnish Night-O Championships. She took silver in the long-O Championships, was 6th in the classic distance and 10th on the short course. That ALMOST got her on the national team. Almost? That gives you an idea of how tough the competition is over there. Nice job, Heidi. Make the team next year and I'll travel to Switzerland to cheer you on at the World Championships!...
It seems there is some confusion about where our website is. This is the official site. The old address(orienteering.sen.com) got hacked, and we moved to a safer location.
Results from the Nov 2, 2002 event have been posted. Sorry for the delay. I was tired after returning from my vacation.
11/11/2
The November 2nd event is being moved to Lake Kegonsa State Park.
We just found out that there will be hunting at Blue Mound State Park the weekend of our event, November 2, 2002. Therefore we are changing the location of the event to Lake Kegonsa State Park to avoid being in the woods with gun hunting going on.
This was caused by the DNR's attempt to erradicate the entire population of deer in a large area of southern Wisconsin. The reason for this is CWD, or chronic wasting disease. They believe that they will be able to kill all the deer, and therefore save the deer population of Wisconsin from this fatal disease. Then deer hunters can kill them at a later date.
This may also affect our December 8th state championship. Check the homepage for an update before heading out to Devil's Lake, too.
We are very sorry for the inconvenience. We hope you get this message and don't go to the wrong park!
9/24/2
A couple weeks after Petr finished fieldchecking Blue Mound State Park, Sebesta and Evzen arrived to finish fieldchecking Devil's Lake State Park. This work has now been completed. By the end of October they will finish drafting the map, in plenty of time for our state championship event in December.
This map is approximately 10.5 square kilometers, making it twice as large as any of our other maps. There is some beautiful scenery out there, and some very nice woods. There are also some areas that aren't so nice. But overall it should be a fine location.
9/24/2
After months of struggling to get aerials flown, get a basemap made and find a fieldchecker, the map of Blue Mound State Park is nearly done. All fieldchecking has been completed. In two weeks we should have printed copies of the map. Petr Junek of the Czech Republic did the fieldchecking.
After just two days in the forest Petr found himself face to face with a 250 pound black bear. After sitting down near a trail junction, he looked up and just 10 meters away was a wild bear! A few days later an article in the local newspaper said a stray bear was shot by law enforcement personnal. Apparently the bear had traveled many miles and ended up in a residential area in Madison, WI.
There was a lot challenging fieldchecking at the park. Petr thinks it will be a very good place for orienteering. I have seen some of the fieldchecking and can tell you it will be the most detailed map the club owns. This place is about 5 km2 and features sinkholes and countless rocks. You won't want to miss our November event at this park. 7/14/2
This event will happen this Saturday night! Our 8th annual night orienteering event will be held on July 13th this year. It will be held at Glacial Blue Hills in West Bend, WI. I'm planning on making this year's event a score event with an one hour time limit.
In case you don't know, night orienteering is just like regular orienteering only it's done at night. Bring a headlamp or flashlight and hunt for those markers with the lights out. It's scary the first couple times you try it, but after a few times you'll get to love it. Hope to see you there! 6/9/2
As you probably know our orienteering spring season is complete. We had record numbers of participants, and I know some of you are wishing there were more opportunities to get out in the woods. Well, there is one more chance to do it this spring with the Badger Club.
A single advanced course will be set up at Devil's Lake sometime on Saturday(hopefully in the morning or early afternoon). The map will not be perfect, but it is quite nice. On Sunday, we will be set up on the east side of the south shore of Devil's Lake from 9am to mid afternoon. For our usual prices you can get a copy of the map and get out in the woods! There won't be any signs posted, so you'll just have to find me or another volunteer in the area. It shouldn't be hard to find us. If you think you may be going to the event, please send me an email so I have a rough estimate of how many maps to print for this impromptu event. Hope to see you there! 5/5/2
On May 19th and August 17th the Badger Orienteering Club will sponsor two adventure races. For more information on these events go to Adventure Races 5/3/2
I am still waiting for a fieldchecker to get a visa. Hopefully we will have Blue Mound and Devil's Lake maps completed by November.
I have received the basemap from Norway. It is even better than I expected. The map is big (10 sq K), has good runnability and has technical areas, as well. It will be a gem once it gets fieldchecked properly. And it will become one of our favorite places to orienteer.
The April 20th event will be a special event. We guarantee that no one will get lost. The entire course of both long and short will be streamered. What could be easier? Just follow the streamers and find the markers along the way. Now wait one minute. That's not orienteering. What's the catch? Oh, did I forget to mention that your map won't have the position of the controls marked on it? You'll have to do that yourself as you go around the course. And if you don't mark the position correctly you will not receive credit for having found it. The winner will be the person who correctly marks the position of the most markers. Ties will be broken by fastest time. So, you won't be lost, but will you know where you are?
I was comparing how much money we spent on ink for printing maps in the past versus now. It appears that we have been able to cut our ink costs approximately in half, while attendance has nearly doubled. I'm really glad my old printer died and I got a new one. The new one also prints about 3 times faster(1 per minute vs. 3 per minute. Think about that when 180 maps are needed.
If you are interested in participating in the scout event contact me ahead of time, since we do preregistration for that. The scout event is an one hour score-O, meaning you find as many markers as you can in one hour.
The regular event will have the usual short course and long course, but they will not be the normal courses. The short course will be a score-O like the scouts are doing. You will have one hour to find as many markers as you can.
The long course will be 3.4K long and I have taken the trails and fields off the map. Other than that it will be just like a regular event. The distance is shorter, since it will take longer than usual because you don't know where the trails are. 3/27/2
I just attended their first event of the year at Waterfall Glen and had the fastest time on the red(longest) course with a time of 53:13 for 7.25K, or 7:20 min/K. I made two significant errors that probably cost me over 5 minutes. I also lost time on a control that was misplaced(the cardinal sin of orienteering).3/27/2
I have moved our homepage back to its original site. The other site was raided by some hacker, and I don't have much control over that site. In the future, if you ever have trouble finding the site remember that the first place I update the link is on the United States Orienteering Federation site. Sorry for the inconvenience.
The life blood of any orienteering club is its maps. We have produced about 1 new map per year the last 6 years. We have not been able to keep our old maps updated. Most of our maps are relatively small areas, less than 5 square kilometers. In the past couple of years I have been looking for larger parks with open forest and more technical terrain. The two latest finds have been Blue Mound State Park and Devil's Lake SP.
We paid a lot of money to have aerials flown and a basemap made of Blue Mound. The terrain is quite interesting with lots of rocks and a number of depressions. I was fieldchecking it, but just don't have the time/energy to do the high quality of job that I expect from our club.
So, I have been searching for a fieldchecker to do that project. Of course, who wants to travel all the way to Wisconsin to do 5 square kilometers of mapping? Mappers prefer to do larger jobs that make them more money. Enter the Devil's Lake project. Aerials were available from the state for a couple hundred dollars. I purchased them and sent them off to Norway to be made into a basemap of 10 square kilometers. That would be the club's largest map ever. And even though it is farther away from our usual membership than our other maps, it is a very appealing park due to it's name recognition.
So, where do we get a mapper? Good question. Most mappers in the USA are booked up, or don't travel far from home. Hopefully we can find someone to come over from Europe who is interested in a vacation in the States. At this time i'm still looking. I have some leads, but nothing absolutely for sure yet. Hopefully, we will get some good news soon! 2/2/2
We just completed our most successful year in my tenure. We averaged 60 participants per event this year. Our smallest crowd this fall was 38. This increased demand has made it more difficult for one person to handle registration. If you are interested in helping us out let me know.
I have been working on producing two more high quality maps. I've been trying to complete the Blue Mound map, and think by next fall we should have the park completely fieldchecked. I have purchased dipositives of Devil's Lake State Park. These will be used by Helgeson of Norway to make a basemap of part of the park. I hope to have this fieldchecked as well by fall. Cost for these projects will be thousands of dollars.
Unfortunately, I have not had the time/energy to finish mapping Blue Mound State Park. We will be having an event there on the partially complete map. If you come to this event you will have a good time, but don't expect the map to be in great shape. I will design the courses so that I think they are fair. The contours are good and most trails will be on the map. But there will be many rock features that are not. And there will be sections of forest that I have haven't been able to determine the running conditions of. Though much of the forest is nice.
If you are new to orienteering, I don't think you will even notice. The short/beginner course will be designed to avoid confusing areas. I don't think beginners will have any trouble with the map.
The Devil's Challenge Orienteering Adventure race turned out to be a fun time. There were 28 teams of 2 that participated, and the feedback was very positive. The event consisted of canoe orienteering, bike orienteering and foot orienteering. The winning team completed the 40 mile course in just under 6 hours. After 10 hours all but the last few teams were in.
Highlights of the event included a beautiful section of canoeing on the Wisconsin river, a climb to the top of Ferry's Bluff, a very hilly bike through serene farmland, a 1.3 mile long hill time trial, an orienteering section that got progressively more difficult, a puzzle solving section that led to the final control, a climb to the top of a 60 foot tower and a corn roast picnic at the finish line. There were very tight races within the big race. The first two teams finished less than 2 minutes apart and were close the entire race. The third and fourth place teams also were neck and neck at the end of the event.
There is a poisonous plant that has been taking over disturbed open areas throughout the country. It has long divided leaves and in mid summer, sends up a flower stalk with large yellow umbrella-like flower clusters. The leaves are only a few inches high, but the flowers generally reach 2-5 feet.
When bare skin comes into contact with any part of the parsnip, it can be 'burned'. skin will redden, and in sever cases, blisters will form 1-2 days after exposure. Brown scarring can last for several years.
I ran into some of this and got some very bad blistering. I found that it growns in open areas that have been disturbed. I have seen it growing along most highways, and the word is it is spreading and here to stay. The juice reacts with UV rays from the sun. The plants do not grow in the forest, since they don't like shade. To avoid burns, stay on established trails(yeah, right), learn to identify the plant, avoid it if possible, and don't go near it unless your skin is covered. It is often misdiagnosed as poison ivy. My nurse and doctor at first thought it was a burn. My experience was that the blisters were larger than poison ivy. It itched like poison ivy and looked like it in areas that weren't as severe. But the itching went away quicker than poison ivy.
Pass the word about this nasty non-native plant. Ask me and I will point some out to you at our next event.
I will be hosting an orienteering adventure race on August 18, 2001 in the Madison area. For more information on this race visit The Devil's Challenge
Due to popular demand, I have finally put the 2001 schedule on line. I'm hoping I will be able to complete a couple of new maps to use for this year. Hope to see you out there!
I just returned from a trip to the North American Champs and the U.S. champs in New York and Pennsylvania. Both events were quite fun and technically challenging. I was the only person who represented the Badger Club at this event. Both events had large numbers of the best U.S. orienteers, and therefore it was quite difficult to place high. I finished 8th at the North American champs and 7th in the U.S. champs in M40.
These two events were my first experience with the new electronic punching system. Instead of punching at each control, one used an electronic device which was strapped to your finger. At each location was a machine that you put your "key" into in order to record the time you arrived. Then after finishing, you downloaded the information from your key and received splits and total time. It made for some interesting comparisons of times, and made very clear how big your mistakes were at each control. It was much easier than punching a card. But the setup and other costs involved make in impractical for local events.
There was also a mid week training event, night-O, pizza party and two national events. I attended all but the second short course national event. The weather for all of these events was nice. The fall scenery was beautiful, too.
This fall we are increasing our incredibly low event fees $1. This is the first increase in about 3 years. So members will pay $5 and non-members will pay $7. Juniors will remain $3. And it's $2 for each additional person on the same map.
Virtually all of our money goes back into our maps, so consider it an investment in the club.
You may have read that I had hired Plamen D. to do the fieldwork at Blue Mound SP. Unfortunately for us the drive is too far, and the project too time consuming for him. That means I get to map the park.
I am making progress and with luck will be able to finish the map by the end of the year. I feel confident that the club will be happy with the final product. There is a lot of open forest with boulders and rootstocks aplenty. There are also some nice pits, little marshes and open fields. The basemap is very good. I am gaining confidence that I will be able to produce the club's best map yet. When finished, this map should provide us with years of fun orienteering before we learn where every rock and pit is.
I have learned that the mountain bike trail has received approval. I'm assuming they will build the trail before we are able to hold an A-meet at the park. It will be interesting to see the damage or lack of it(as they claim) that is caused by this "environmently responsible" group's project.
To help make this project go smoothly, I also ordered the latest version of ocad, Ocad7. This should simplify the drafting process that will be taking place at the same time the fieldchecking. Cathy should be happy with the colors on the maps now. I've noticed the contour lines are brown, instead of pink.
Also, since my printer died while attempting to print Mirror Lake SP maps I purchased a new computer for the club. This should actually save the club money, since it has separate ink cartridges. We spent quite a lot of money on small ink cartridges since the yellow would always run out. Now we should be able to eliminate the majority of that cost. I think by the end of the year the new printer will have paid for itself and then some. It will also save me a few hours of time each event, since it prints a lot faster than the old one. All that for a mere $90. I should have thought of this a long time ago!
I was also going to purchase a scanner for the club, since about a half dozen times each year I need the use of one for making maps. I bought one for $50, but returned it after my brother said he had one he wasn't using. So the club will get the free use of a scanner for the time being.
The completion of the Blue Mound SP map happening in the next few months will put us in a position to host a fine national event, possibly as soon as next spring. However, there are a number of things that still need to fall in place. First we need the map to be completed. I also want to get the fieldchecker's expert opinion on the quality of the area. Once those two things have occured, we can work on getting park approval. I have talked with the ranger who was excited about the prospect of us holding a national event in the park. We will need to get USOF approval. As an associate club, we may not officially be able to host an event. We should be able to find a way around this problem using some creativity. We would need to do some serious planning beforehand to get the USOF okay. That would include getting a list of the tasks and who is going to be responsible for them. I will be requesting the help of a number of clubs in the midwest to help us make this event possible. Our small numbers would make it difficult to run the event smoothly, and to get USOF's approval. I think accommodations in the area would be sufficient, but we would have to make arrangements for food, refreshments, banquet, etc.
As you can see there is still a lot to be done to make this a reality. I think the next few months will tell us if or when this event will take place. But I wanted to let people know it is in the works....
The following is a personal account of what night orienteering is all about.
A Night Orienteering Experience
Another night orienteer didn't make it to the event last Saturday. Alan had van trouble on the Merrimac ferry. Some people helped him push it off the ferry(onto land I assume). So, what was your excuse for not attending this year's Main Event?
Weather is supposed to be warm and dry for the night orienteering event. The maps have been fieldchecked and printed. This is going to be a great event. If you are unable to find camping, I have access to land you can camp on about 25 mins drive from the mapped area.
Directions: Follow signs to Mirror Lake State Park, but don't enter it. It's I-90/94 to Hwy 12 east. Then go 1/2 mile to the lights and turn right on Fern Dell Rd. Go a 50 meters past the park entrance to Hastings Rd. and turn left. The start area will be along the side of the road about 1/4 mile up. I will put a sign up at Hastings Rd. If there are some of you that are afraid of orienteering at night, but would like to get some orienteering in, show up a little early and go out before it gets dark. I would recommend against this however, since night orienteering is so much fun!!! This is the 6th annual night event and I think it will be the best one ever. Hope to see you there. More information just below in previous article.
Well here's the latest word on the night-O. I've finished my fieldchecking and will complete drafting the map tomorrow. The courses are designed to be challenging, but fair. The long course won't be a trail run at night, I promise. I ran half of the long course and found the forest to be very good along most of the route I selected. For the most part it will be possible to do at least a slow run. Markers will have reflective tape, and some will have glow sticks. Directions: Follow signs to Mirror Lake State Park, but don't enter it. It's I-90/94 to Hwy 12 east. Then go 1/2 mile to the lights and turn right on Fern Dell Rd. Go a 50 meters past the park entrance to Hastings Rd. and turn left. The start area will be along the side of the road about 1/4 mile up. I will put a sign up at Hastings Rd. If there are some of you that are afraid of orienteering at night, but would like to get some orienteering in, show up a little early and go out before it gets dark. I would recommend against this however, since night orienteering is so much fun!!! This is the 6th annual night event and I think it will be the best one ever. Hope to see you there.
If you haven't heard by now, May 6th is National Orienteering Day(NOD). The national organization is trying to promote orienteering by this method. As a part of it they have convinced Brunton to help with sponsorship. They have provided us with 5 compasses to give away at our May 6th event. In addition to this, our event organizer Cathy is planning to have beginner's clinics from 10am to 4pm. If you know someone who is interested in orienteering, this would be a good time for them to learn how. We will have the usual long and short courses set, but the emphasis for this day will be beginner's and promotion. So, show up and have a chance at coming home with a new compass free of charge!
By pure chance, it looks as though at this time next year we will have 3 new maps. I was planning on making a map of Blue Mound State Park the last couple of years. Then the city of West Bend purchased land to increase the park area at Glacial Blue Hills. And then just recently I went for a run in Mirror Lake State Park and found some really enjoyable forest. Also, while doing some research, I found that there are aerial photos of Devil's Lake State Park that are the perfect scale for having a basemap made. Well, the Devil's Lake option will just have to wait. But I think it is possible to complete other three maps by spring of 2001. Read the following articles to hear more.
The 6th Annual Badger Night Orienteering Event has a home. When I scheduled this event, I did not know what location would be used. I have made a tradition of trying to hold it in areas that previously haven't been used for night orienteering. I am happy to announce that I expect it to be held on a completely new map this year! I have found a very enjoyable area with extremely runnable woods and nice open fields. The place is Mirror Lake State Park near Wisconsin Dells. I anticipate this being the finest night event yet.
The event has been scheduled for July 15th, 2000. This date does not conflict with the Colorado event, Canadian Champs or any other published national event. I do not anticipate having to change the date of this event. The park is located just a couple miles off I-94 about 40 miles northwest of Madison.
The city of West Bend has made some land acquisitions that include the area directly south of our Glacial Blue Hills map. This will allow us to almost double the size of the original map. The topographical map provided to us by the city of West Bend is more accurate than the map we currently use. I plan to redraft the entire area, including both the new area and the previously mapped area. With some fresh fieldchecking, this will be another opportunity for some good orienteering. Unfortunately, work will probably not be completed by our May 6th, National Orienteering Day event.
I have been informed that aerials have been flown of Blue Mound State Park today. At a scale of 1-12,000 we should be able to produce a high quality map. The basemap maker has contacted me and anticipates that they will be able to complete the project quickly at the moment. This is probably because they still have a lot of snow in Norway. All of this could lead to another new map ready for next Spring or even this fall! Good news indeed!
The Badger club has decided to invest in a new map at Blue Mound State Park. Unfortunately, there is no good basemap available which means we will have to spend a lot of money to have one made. I have scouted out the park over the last couple of years and have found that it is the only state park I know of in southern Wisconsin that offers the following favorable features:
1. The majority of the park has open forest.
2. A large portion of the forest does not have trails.
3. The park is 1200 acres.
4. There are parking and camping facilities available year round.
5. There are some interesting features in the park, mainly rock features.
Sounds almost too good to be true,doesn't it? A park that has actually been cared for and not destroyed by the very people put in charge of it, the DNR. Well, maybe it is. This month I learned that the ranger and regional planner are strongly in favor of opening this park to many new miles of off-road bike trails. This proposal means that trails will be run through many of the areas that are now open forest without trails. Even if these new trails are "sustainable" (i.e. don't cost the DNR much to maintain), it will promote the introduction of exotics into the area. As we orienteers know all too well, the availability of woods free of garlic mustard, honeysuckle, brambles and buckthorn is virtually nonexistant. It is sad to think that with many state parks in southern Wisconsin, the one chosen for additional bike trails is the only one offering uninfested woods.
So why should we procede? The addition of many miles of trails to the park will reduce the orienteering value of the park from great to not so great. Unfortunately, as I have stated earlier there are NO other state park areas that offer such open forest. I feel that even after this area is hit hard with a large dose of trails, it will still offer us the best area for orienteering in the Madison area. The quality of the orienteering and the orienteering experience will be greatly diminished with the new trails. But we are not aware of any other areas nearby that are better. Hopefully, the spread of exotics will be slow enough to allow us a few years of runnable woods.
My first opportunity was in Ireland at a local event. I showed up at 9am when it was supposed to start and learned that controls were still being hung. As is common at our events, one guy had designed the courses, hung the controls and afterwards, picked them all up! Before it was over they had about 50 participants. The area was just a big hill and the orienteering wasn't particularly challenging. But I had a lot of fun running in some very lush forest and through heather for the first time. There were re-entrants with trees covered with moss, grazed fields that were fun to run through, and some great views from the top of the hill.
My next events were in England. Each weekend there I was able to participate in an event. Two of these were badge events, which are one step below a national event. Unfortunately, there were no national events being held when I was there. The terrain varied greatly. My first event was in the London area and therefore drew a crowd around 1000. There were over 50 men in my 5 year age group. A typical map in the London area is covered with trails. This one was no exception. There is also very little climb. I was on course 3(for M40 long only) which was 10.5K and 125M climb. 17 courses were offered. I then ran on some permanent courses and maps that my friend had. In general the woods were open, and many times there are grazed areas that made running easy. The next timed event was a "color" event(similar to our national events) that drew a few hundred people. It was in a big field that had been used to get clay for a china factory nearby. That meant there was a stretch of small depressions where they had dug out the clay which were very challenging to navigate through. The visibility in the fields was hindered by gorse, an evergreen bush/tree that has spiny needles. This was in southwestern England, near Plymouth. My last Endland event was held near Birmingham. This area was 7.3K with 440M climb for the M40 long course. I finished 13th out of 42.
Also during this trip I went to Snowdonia National Park in Wales. This is a beautiful area in northern Wales. I picked up two orienteering maps with permanent courses on them at the tourist information center. One of these has a "working forest", which means they cut the trees down. (And I thought that forests "worked" just fine without man's intervention. Silly me.) In spite of that, the maps were very fun to orienteer on. Some controls were missing, due to foresting/ vandalism, but it was pretty obvious when this had occured. I was very happy these maps were available. That allowed me to explore the park and orienteer at the same time! Seems to me like England is a good winter vacation. They have orienteering each weekend somewhere, and they don't get much/any snow. It is known to rain alot during this time though.