Canberra has certainly turned on some fantastic weather for the group of juniors training in Canberra this week. The NSW training squad have been treated to some cool nights but glorious days, and have had the wonderful opportunity to be involved in a variety of training activities, both technical and physical, and have gained tremendous insight from some of our finest orienteers, Rob Walter, Shannon Jones and Lizzie Ingham (yes we'll claim her!!)
Karen Blatchford sends an update of the training the squad have been undertaking supported by international elites.
The squad arrived in Canberra on Tuesday. Training to date has included
- Working on technical skills at "Majura West": attackpoints, aiming off, following natural handrails, contouring, collecting features and breaking down long legs.
- Map memory exercise at "Kowen Forest", where in pairs they had to take turns to run a leg on map memory.
- Fast terrain running where they were paired up with someone of similar ability to race short intervals at Black Mountain. With some ACT juniors joining us this turned out to be a bit of a State Challenge for the competitive boys.
- What better way to inspire juniors and make them aware of the opportunities available with our wonderful sport than to have Rob Walter speak to them about his amazing success overseas and what it's like running in some of the big relays in Scandinavia. Thanks Rob.
- 3km 'O' time trial: With Dave Meyer as our contact person and inventor of this concept we had access to the AIS track where juniors completed a 3km time trial involving reading control descriptions and punching SI. At each control they turned/changed direction and their control description told them how far to travel in that direction before punching again and turning to run another specified distance. Great way to do 3km, kept them thinking while exhausted. Dave then treated them all to a recovery session and provided prizes for the run: Fastest male and female NSW were Aidan Dawson and Nicola Blatchford, encouragement awards to Toby Wilson and Rebecca Kennedy.
- Thursday afternoon a large group of ACT and NSW combined to complete a contouring exercise on "Bruce Ridge".
- Following an insightful talk by Lizzie and Shannon last night about Sprint Orienteering, today's activities involve some intervals at Radford and a sprint relay at ANU.
After dinner on Friday night the squad will contest the Camp Champs on "Mt Ainslie" before heading to "Wattle Ridge" for Ecmo's challenging SL3 on Sunday.
Special mention must be made of Nick Dent and the mountain of work he's put into the camp, and the excellent training he has provided for our juniors.
