NEOC on Facebook
NEOC on TwitterBy Ali Crocker
Months before:
In the months leading up to WOC 2012, I was trying to just orienteer as much as possible, with the goal of 2000 controls since the previous WOC in Savoie, France. Throughout the spring, I attended lots of NEOC local meets to get good orienteering training in on the weekends. Over in Western Mass, we also had preparations for the Western Mass “5 day” A-meet, and some of this was really good training - test running a handful of courses and vetting all of the control sites for the A-meets at Earl's Trails, as well as setting and vetting my own courses over on Cemetery Hill.
On the physical side, I had dedicated myself to running the local Tuesday evening 5k held in Northampton, MA every other week. I think this was really great training, both physically, to put that effort in every other week and mentally, to get used to the pressure of racing and expecting the pain. Posting a new 5k PR also gave me great confidence heading into WOC that my physical form was in good shape! Other than these hard 5k efforts, physical training was about half running, half orienteering with strength (core + hamstring exercises) mixed in. Total hours per week ranged from about 6 to 10.
Weeks before:
With a few weeks before WOC, I reflected that I really hadn't done enough sprint training. So I planned two dedicated sprint training weekends along with Ian Smith and invited other orienteers to come along for the fun. On the first weekend, we headed west and did a set of three sprints at Fairfield University (WCOC) and then proceeded on to SUNY Purchase (HVO). For the second weekend, I designed a Boston-based “Tour de Park-O” which featured 4 different CSU park-o maps: Esplanade, Mystic River, Tufts University and finally Danehey Park. Again, friends joined up, which just made the whole thing way more fun and better training- it's very hard to recreate the true race feeling just on your own. And running with some pressure is definitely the name of the game in the sprint!
The week before:
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| Ali overtakes Celine Dodin in the finish chute to finish third at the 2012 WOC Relay. Photo credit: Ian Smith |
The weekend before Ian and I arrived in Basel and joined up with teammates Sam Saeger, Hannah Burgess (now Culburg) and Boris Granovskiy for a set of races there. The Saturday featured a city sprint in 3 different countries (France, Germany, Switzerland). It was good to have a bit of a reminder about how a European city-sprint works, with little city street blocks and a few narrow passageways. The forest race the next day went well, with Sam Saeger and I finishing a close 2nd and 3rd, respectively in the women's elite field- not bad! After that, I headed to an astronomy institute in Germany for two days to squeeze in a few days of necessary work – I had a telescope proposal due just 2 days before the first WOC race!
The last few days before the WOC races started I was in Lausanne with the rest of the team and trained on the model maps for the events. The most important thing in these training sessions is to observe how the map and terrain match up. So I paid attention to what the gradations of green meant for the vegetation as well as what the different brashing symbols meant- these were heavily used and critical! Also important were the different types of trails, the smallest of which could be very hard to follow.
And how'd it all go?
The sprint went very well, I feel like my sprint training paid off, with a 3rd place in my qualification and then a 20th place in the tricky final race, the best American result ever, in any distance! In the forest, I was disappointed to not make the final in the long race, but I had an absolutely fantastic relay leg, finishing in 3rd just a few seconds behind the top teams of Sweden and Switzerland. As the Norwegian commentator said in their TV coverage - “surprising!” =)
