With the Junior World Orienteering Champs (JWOC) a month away, 8 members of the 12-strong team headed away to Kura Tāwhiti – Castle Hill for a weekend training camp of team bonding and specific training before heading to Europe.
The weekend started on Friday night, with 5 of the team and coach participating in a cross country race event on Ilam fields, before heading to the Castle Hill official team accommodation  – thank you Cory-Wright whānau!.

The following day we ran a middle simulation on the village forest map. The multiple depressions are similar to the JWOC long map, but not the thick native bush. The afternoon was spent studying both JWOC maps and university work before twilight Stress-O interval training sessions. The leader positions 3 control flags at a time with multiple runners chasing. It’s a great way to simulate race pressure without coaches needing to place control flags out beforehand. The evening was  the weekly team call focussing on the sprint. The team created a map of the sprint embargo using only google maps and streetview and created a freshly-made map for an indoor-o race in the house. 

An Italian mountain environment simulation started the next day. With the exception once again of rugged heavily vegetated native forest, it was very close to European alpine terrain training. The rain held off long enough for the team to go on a Swedish-style group orienteering run with some peeling off to head back along the Hogsback track to turn it into a longer run. The final training back in Christchurch was on a brand new map including Sign of the Takahē and the Cashmere hills. As the JWOC sprint has over 100m of climb this had a taste of urban climb combining distance with route choice.

The team had a great weekend. Alongside their regular O-analysis and preparation, they’ve been building momentum for JWOC together –  a team approach the coaches truly value. 
JWOC runs from the 27th of June till the 3rd of July, and you can follow along live on the JWOC website 

By Briana Steven