When thinking of a subtitle for this write up a few significant ideas jump out at me. “How to get Motivation” comes to mind when reflecting on the combination of high quality competition and great people. “Woodhill Forest Returns” comes to mind, considering years of repetitively reusing the same old maps have come to an end with some wonderfully challenging orienteering. “Matt goes Full Beast” also comes to mind when thinking of how my solid performances pale in comparison to those of one of the best orienteers New Zealand has ever seen. I could write endlessly on these ideas, but have decided to keep this to race analysis for now because I don’t have all day, but maybe once I take a break from full time employment I will have all day. Maybe I can even interview Matt on his races in a podcast format.
Let’s start by setting the scene. I trained all summer for ultramarathons, burned out, took a month off training, then got in 3 moderate weeks before racing. I felt only moderately fit, but fresh and excited to race.
I started the sprint strongly and felt focused, approaching the controls cleanly and with enough time to plan ahead. There was a lot of changing direction and I was happy to stay on top of my navigation, only encountering a few hesitations, my first just before 6. Here, I was expecting a staircase, but didn’t see it in the terrain and so ran around some gardens unnecessarily. I had a second wobble running onto the grass field before 10, and had to back track a few metres. 14 was a little scrappy also, as I hadn’t planned ahead for the map flip and was navigating reactively, almost missing 2 staircases, which were smaller in the terrain than I had expected. I may have taken a slightly suboptimal route to 16, and got caught in the bushes leaving 18, but these were pretty minor. I was beginning to fade here, and had to concentrate more on running to hold my speed. This wasn’t too bad as I found the rest of the course easier, and I flowed pretty smoothly through these final controls to the finish, landing a fair 5th place 1:21 down on Matt Ogden. However, the real winner was Cameron de L’Isle, still running in the junior elite grade, who took the fastest time of the day 6 seconds up on Matt. Looking back on the race overall, I’m still navigating a little reactively in sprints, and have never trained my sprint technique well enough to really get on top on things in a twisty course like this one. I also didn’t capitalise on the touch free punching system, and can see a number of times when flowing through the controls would have saved me a few seconds.
The long distance! My favourite! This was my first time racing on this new map in Woodhill Forest, and what a fantastic area! A few less tracks would make this area perfect, but the mix of trees and contour detail make racing here such a pleasure. I started knowing that Matt would be the favourite to take the win and Tommy Hayes, Cameron Tier, and Chris Forne were all fit enough to beat me also. So I had to be clean and rely on my endurance to pull through in the second half of the race.
I started strong and tackled 1, 2, 3, and 4 calmly, then took to the road for the longer leg to 5. This gave me a chance to suss all the route choices that would come later in the course. I came into 5 quite confidently, but struggled to understand the contours and found myself moving very cautiously. The visibility was also limited, so caution was warranted, but it was too late as I had already lost contact. I found a clearing on the east of the control circle, and approached from the side but missed again despite my GPS moving directly over the control. I must have been extremely close here but didn’t see the flag, hard to say why. I bailed out to my original attack point again and tried 2 more times before finally stumbling on the control right where I had been standing earlier. I was very disappointed to lose 6 minutes here, and genuinely did not understand the mapping within the control circle despite approaching from 3 different directions. My attack points were all distinct and should have lead me straight to the control. I was having a rage to myself on the way to 6 and overshot, losing another minute. This was salt in the wound and I bailed out to the track and tried to move on, knowing that there was still a change to making up some places in such a long race.
And I did manage to shake it off and get some flow going again. 12 through to 15 was some of my best work in this race and this gave me a lot of confidence. My flow was challenged greatly by the next few controls, which were all very tricky, 17 especially, because the visibility was so low here. I chose the road again for 20 and for some bizarre reason didn’t chose the road again for 23 – I can’t even remember this leg. I had more moments when my orienteering was really good, but generally I was thinking about running more than navigation as I got more and more tired. I made a total rookie mistake leaving the road in the wrong place coming into 25, and stuffed around in the dense manuka forest for an extra minute, but came out fighting. I think the main problem here is complacency. I spike a few controls and then let my guard down in a way that doesn’t happen in a shorter race, so mistakes like my poor direction to 28 should just never happen.
The final section of the course was simply stunning orienteering, and this is where the results were determined. Matt had suffered a blow similar to mine earlier in the race, but didn’t come back fighting quite as strong as I had and slipped off the podium. Tommy, Chis, and Cameron were all moving well and at the spectator control (28) it was Tommy leading Cameron and Chris by less than a minute, while I was grinding away a further 3 minutes down. Chris lost the plot completely at a very tricky 31 and was out of the running, while Cameron and Tommy died a slow death fumbling though these crucial legs, basically handing me the victory. I was almost perfect through this final battle ground – a reward for never giving up. So I’ve finally won the long distance at NZ Champs, an achievement that has taken 5 serious attempts.
The middle has always been a hit and miss race for me. If my concentration is wavery I’m bound to implode as soon as I begin to push the pace. I felt this unsteadiness again for the first 4 controls, but I did hit these tight controls cleanly, giving me a lot of confidence. This didn’t last for long however, and I ate dirt on 6 by taking the straight option instead of the clearly faster evasive manoeuvre around the hills, costing me 2 minutes. To make matters worse I did a parallel error down the wrong spur and lost another minute. I didn’t realise I’d lost so much on the route choice, so I was still feeling positive and ploughed on energetically. Apart from a few warrented hesitations I was pretty clean from here on. I was focused and good at identifying the key features in advance and was never navigating reactively. There were reasonable risks on legs like 11, 16, 17 and 21, with numerous similar parallel features and I planned well and avoided these traps successfully. I had 1 small mistake on a short contouring leg to 18, a little discipline to hold my height was all that was required to prevent this.
I pushed hard all the way to the line and finished in 43:45 and feeling satisfied. To find I had bled 2 minutes on the route choice I didn’t see was a surprise, but to find that taking all my mistakes into account would still leave me 6 minutes behind Matt’s time of 34:22 was simply dumbfounding. Nick Smith in second place had a strong and stable race and was still more than 6 minutes off the lead. This has to be the most dominant victory I have ever seen in New Zealand Orienteering and Matt has clearly taken his fitness to a new level with many months of consistent training and a relatively relaxed last month.
The good part of being in the same club as Matt is that in an elite relay, his speed is on my team, and not against me. This course would suit me as the terrain is fast and I can run straight with little obstruction. I started the team off in the first leg mass start, and did my usual chill start. The long leg to the first control gave me plenty of time to plan the course and I sussed all the routes and noted the few tricky controls. As we got close to control 1 I flicked back to navigating and found myself slipping right of the rest of the pack, which was now slowing after a fast start. I was confident until I pulled up 20 meters short on a very similar knoll. Instead of taking the time to look around me I cracked under the pressure of being alone and withdrew back towards the other runners to my left. This was wrong, and I was not even orienteering. This is stupid emotional stuff and makes no sense. I quickly relocated and ran back to where I was earlier, but just a bit further, and the control was exactly where it should have been.
Now it was game on, and I hunted down the line of runners for the next few minutes until I was in the lead. I had planned my route choices already so left 3 aggressively and tried to drop everyone. I punched 4 with a gap, and pushed on by myself, confident in my speed in this terrain, but then ran into more runners who had a much shorter split to 4. Nick Smith lead through some short controls and then I set the tempo to slowly grind him down and take the solo lead. But my plan was foiled again by another long split, I found myself back in 3rd, but gaining on the 2 leaders.
I was burning hot and making ground, but after another longer split to 11 I was still the same distance from the leaders, and now back in 4th! I was definitely moving faster than anyone through this section but with all the long splits I was not able to regain my spot at the front. Joseph Lynch held a small lead and will be one to watch in the coming years. Matt ran last leg in my team and was 5 minutes faster, another world class performance.
So that concludes a relatively lengthy breakdown of a very interesting NZ Champs for me. I’m highly motivated and hope that my win in the long is enough to get me to WOC this year, but let’s see what the selectors think.