Live Streaming Mass Start sprints this Friday (3rd Feb) from 22.30 (CET)

There will be live video, commentary and results at this year's Dirty D Sprint the Bay in New Zealand. The first Stage of the 6 sprint races over the weekend will be the first ever mass start sprint race on such a scale in New Zealand. There will be 60 starters in the Men's Elite grade. This is perfect for spectators (both at the event and on the web in our LIVE CENTRE), since the winning times for each of the four courses are 12-16min. Viewers can enjoy a presentation that is jam-packed with sprint orienteering action.


This year's STB is part of the 2012 New Zealand Elite series.

Hanny Allston, WOC 2006

Lizzie Ingham, WOC 2011

Angela Simpson, JWOC 2011

Carsten Jørgensen, WOC 2006

In the Women's Elite competition we have a stunning field. Hanny Allston (WOC Sprint gold-medallist, 2006) is back from a long break in competitive orienteering, but rumour has it she is still as fast as ever. Our home-grown Kiwi stars will be challenging her for the Yellow Singlet (yes that's right! - Our event mimics the Tour de France system for added entertainment - with yellow, green, polka-dot and white singlet's for various sub-competitions leaders in the elite classes). Lizzie Ingham displayed her super-from at WOC last year in France. She was 11th in the Sprint, 13th in the Long and 18th in the Middle, all extremely good results from a physically and technically demanding week! The other major contender for the Yellow Singlet STB 2011 winner Angela Simpson. Angela has produced some amazing results in the last years, she was 6th place in the WUOC sprint in Borlänge, Sweden in 2010 and an outstanding 6th place in the JWOC Sprint in Poland last year.

Chris Forne, WOC 2010

The Men's Elite field will also show some very tight competition. New Zealand's star male orienteer Chris Forne has finally returned to New Zealand after living in Trondheim for the last few years. Chris has  had several top 20 results at WOC in recent years. World famous 'old man', Carsten Jørgensen has entered for STB this year. Carsten has had several top results in his long and illustrious career as an elite orienteer including an individual WOC bronze in Germany in 1995, and a WOC gold in the Danish relay team in Norway, 1997. Carsten is a famed runner in Denmark (and Europe in general), and despite his 'special running style' and 'inevitable ageing defect' he still puts 99% of NZ elite orienteers to shame with his super-steam-train-speed. Many up and coming NZ juniors and first year seniors are extremely stirred by Chris Forne's return, and will be chomping at the bit to show him what's changed in NZ orienteering since his absence, and take him down. There will be a large Australian presence at STB 2012 who will no-doubt be top Yellow Singlet contenders, and also entrants from as far as Switzerland and Finland!

So, make sure you get in on the action - if you're in Europe enjoying the long winter, watching STB 2012 is bound keep your orienteering hunger at bay for a little while longer :)

Watch the races here:  http://www.sprintthebay.org/live/livecentreinfo.html 

The times for Live-Streaming of the races in the LIVE CENTRE of our event website for different time zones are as follows:

STAGE	Stockholm (CET)	Helsinki (EET)	Los Angeles (PST)	Melbourne (EDT)	Auckland (NZDT)
Stage 1 Course 4 Course 3 Course 2 Course 1	3rd Feb 10.30pm 10.40pm 11.00pm 11.30pm	3rd Feb 11.30pm 11.40 pm 12.00am 12.30am	3rd Feb 1.30pm 1.40pm 2.00pm 2.30pm	4th Feb 8.30am 8.40am 9.00am 9.30am	4th Feb 10.30am 10.40am 11.00am 11.30am
Stage 2 First Start	4th Feb 5.30am	4th Feb 6.30am	3rd Feb 8.30pm	4th Feb 3.30pm	4th Feb 5.30pm
Stage 3 First Start	4th Feb 9.30pm	4th Feb 10.30pm	4th Feb 12.30pm	5th Feb 7.30am	5th Feb 9.30am
Stage 4 First Start	5th Feb 5.00am	5th Feb 6.00am	4th Feb 8.00pm	5th Feb 3.00pm	5th Feb 5.00pm
Stage 5 First Start	5th Feb 9.30pm	5th Feb 10.30pm	5th Feb 12.30pm	6th Feb 7.30am	6th Feb 9.30am
Stage 6 First Start	6th Feb 2.00am	6th Feb 3.00am	5th Feb 5.00pm	6th Feb 12.00pm	6th Feb 2.00pm

There will be 6 sprint races over 3 days in sunny Hawkes Bay's sweltering New Zealand summer. The tour singlets for the elite classes which are decided after the first stage and can change after each new stage are as follows:

Dirty D Yellow Singlet: For the overall leader - based on combined times for all Stages.


O-LYNX White Singlet:  For the overall leader that is a junior runner running in the elite competition - based on combined times for all Stages. 


Copy Plus Green Singlet: Worn by the leader of the 'Sprint-Leg' points table. There are 1 to many designated Sprint Leg's assigned to each course (marked on control descriptions and in the terrain), the times for each leg are ranked and given a set of points.

Noel Leeming Polka-Dot Singlet:  Worn by the leader of the 'Hill-Climb Leg' points table. There are 0 to many designated Sprint Leg's assigned to each course (marked on control descriptions and in the terrain), the times for each leg are ranked and given a set of points. The points allocated for the hill climb leg differ depending on it's physical difficulty.

Here are some map snippets for each stage:

 For further STB details, download the event programme or check out our event website.


Sprint the Bay in 2013 will be held in January directly after the last World Cup race in New Zealand. We expect a big turn out with a lot of international stars. We plan to try and bring an amateur TV production with HD coverage of the events live to the internet.

Please like our Sprint the Bay Facebook page.

More Winter Trainings :)

Training is going well now. Im already starting to feel stronger and faster :D The local clubs have been taking turns at organising trainings every Saturday. There was an interesting one that you can see on the 'onsebakker' map. It was designed to help practicing planning ahead. There were several 'big' controls containing several little controls. You had to do the big controls in order, but you could take the smaller controls in any order you liked. It was a fun change, and I did find it really useful with my planning. The map without the title on it is 'Lungebjerge'. Maja and I went there for a training run on my birthday. I ran an old course of Klavs's as you can see. It was a really nice area, the forest was quite open so it was much faster than most of the other maps on Fyn. It was also sandy as opposed to the traditional 'mudbath' type maps around Odense. We will be organising a B grade event on this map in April. On a lighter note (or should I say heavier?) my body weight seems to have increased dramitically since the end of last season. Then I had an all time low of just under 60kg. Now I am bouncing around the forrest at a whopping 67kg. I can't seem to find and visible signs of chunkiness, perhaps gravity is just a bit angry at me :S I will be able to have a nice little break from all of these cold winter trainings in about 3 weeks time. Maja and I will head to Alicante in Spain (where I had JWOC in 2002). And by 'nice little break' I meant an intensive week long training camp with 2 trainings per day and a world ranking long distance event. The WRE will also double as one of my 'trial' runs because I will not make it back to NZ this year for the actual trial races. One of the main camp coaches will be Mats Troeng (a member of the Swedish national team). The 2x trainings a day and lectures at night should give me a good oing boost before coming into the next season :P You can read more about the camp and see some pics and maps of the terrain here: http://www.o-travel.com/traningscamp_alicante_en.htm

Update + some pics!

The last weeks training hasn't been the greatest. I had an unscheduled rest day on Tuesday when I was supposed to do intervals. I just felt too tired and the weather was a bit depressing. I think the hard training week in Hungary finally caught up with me :) I did manage to get a nice strength training session in though. It was much nicer being inside, it's pretty cold here now, but I know its only going to get worse. It's dark at 4.30pm which is going to make finding the motivation to train difficult in the next few months. I'm sure I'll manage :)
The photos here are from Hungary. The top one is the Uni Hotel which will be the accomodation for WOC next year. The rooms are pretty nice, much better than in Czech republic this year. There are nicer big rooms with double beds and leather lounge suite. There are also smaller rooms with 2 single beds, but theyre also an quite cozy. Next photo is just of some of the terrain. As you can see its very open with good visibility. I think come WOC time the visibility will be a little lower because the leaves will actually be on the trees. This will also make runability faster because you will be able to actually see those nasty little rocks, that are currently hidden under the leaves. The last photo is just a nice view of the finish from the long distance qualification race.
This weekend I've decided to have a crack at Jættemilen. It's a 25.1km mass start loops race, with common last loop. There's a good starting lineup as you can see: http://www.orientering.dk/ok%2D73/loeb/jm2008/
My plan is to stick it out with the leaders for as long as I can. If I don't have any problems with cramp then this should be to the end. If I do have to pull out it will be nice to get some relay practice under my belt. Ther is also a sprint in Hillerød on Saturday (the day before Jættemilen) with 1000kr for the winner. So hopefully I can pull out a good run :) The websites for Jattemilen and the sprint are:
http://www.orientering.dk/ok-73/loeb/jm2008
http://www.orientering.dk/fif/loeb/sprinten

Hungarian Training Camp 2008

I spent last week in the mountains near Miskolc in Hungary preparing for next years World Champs. I have recently been injured so planned to use the time to take it easy and learn as much as I can about the terrain. But as usual I pushed it a bit and ran most of the trainings quite hard. I was making quite a few stupid mistakes on what seemed like fairly simple terrain. I will put that down to the lack of orienteering in the last few months. I struggled alot with the uphill running, living on Fyn in Denmark is defnitely not the place to be to prepare for WOC next year. It is as flat as a pancake here and I have already noticed a loss of muscle mass and strength in my legs. I think I will have to put in some serious strength training untill Maja and myself can (hopefully) move to Oslo early next year. I think I will try and get to some terrain atleast once a week in an attempt to keep myself running strongly.
A couple of the maps here are from our trainings. As you can see its fairly steep. The light green is very runnable but the dark green is hell. Also I learnt that it pays to avoid the stony ground, it slows you down immensely. Tamas - Kut is from Bukkfensik Cup. Controls 2 and 21 were placed wrongly, as you can see I pretty much lost my head after number 2. I had about 7mins mistakes on the whole course... Pretty shocking really.
Silica - L'adnica was a training in Slovakia (just over the border from Hungary, so still pretty relevant). I only made a stupid mistake not checking my compass on number 4. I thought I just had to run along the track and into the second depression, but I didnt notice the small track on the map which actually continued on for longer than it looks like... What a sucker! However, it was my favourite map from all the trainings. You can run pretty straight, but all the rounded features make it easy to change direction without realising it, so you have to be good with your compass.
Miskolc - Tapolca and Berekalja were the 2 sprint trainings we did. They were set in the same style as the WOC sprints will be i.e. Starting in the forest and coming down into the town/park. I was focused on going hard in the terrain part of the course because I thought it would be my weakness, but really I had no mistakes. I could have had a better route choice on Berekalja from 4-5 , but generally I am running well on all the short legs. I was quite pleased. My main focus for 2009 WOC will be sprint, folled by middle and relay. Apparently the WOC sprints wont be quite as steep as the trainings, but still I was struggling a little on the hills. I will have to do alot of strength work and some hill intervals next year.
I am most likely not going to be running the long distance at WOC anymore, atleast not untill I have sorted out my problems with cramp and fatigue. The Bukkszentkereszt map shows all the fun I will be missing out on next year! haha! Its so steep. WOC final is reportedly going to be 19km next year... They are getting longer and steeper by the year!


Well, thats it for my first post on this blog... don't expect them all to be that long!