Stockholm 2015

Generic information about Stockholm

Report by Nick Barrable

Staff: Nick Barrable SYO, Carol Young RAFO/HH, Sarah Dunn MAROC, Tom Fellbaum MDOC, Tamsin Moran SOC/ShUOC - we were one coach down on what I would normally have but Ruslan Glebov made up for shortfall.

Stockholm 2015 took a similar approach to the previous 4 editions, however it was slightly earlier than normal - the last 4 clashed with the White Rose!
The tour was 12 days - starting on a Tuesday 11th August - Sunday 23rd August. At the time these dates were published and circulated, there was no pre-JWOC camp to Switzerland. This clashed with the first week. The two athletes it affected decided on different outcomes. Fiona Bunn joined the tour mid-way through.

The chef, two coaches and two athletes left one day late. With the flexibility of the accommodation, this is not a problem.
The tour also benefitted from Ukrainian 28 year old Ruslan Glebov who runs for Ravinen and lives in the club hut (12th at WOC 2015 Long Distance). He helped with hanging, shadowing and other chores. A super asset and a great gentleman. He has mobile internet too!
All participants arrived into Arlanda except Fiona flew into Skavsta/Ryanair.
Scottish athletes miss school for this tour and thanks go to staff who 'let them' start school late. Unfortunately, with WMOC in EST the second full week of August in 2016, next year's dates will mean all of tour will clash with Scottish school.

The selection policy/process seemed to work smoothly and we selected 20, with 1 withdrawal, already mentioned. We had a few 'no's which we knew about in advance which was very helpful. Sue Marsden provided the invaluable results excel spreadsheet.
We took 10 girls and 9 boys - with 3 of the boys and 5 of the girls being top year 16s - the rest were 1st year 18s.

Ravinen fee was 750 sek pp. but as the GBP has been getting stronger, this is still a bargain. We get a £35 club top, 6 big races, some training maps/permissions and 12 nights in the club hut, which is possibly a net loss for them and we certainly appreciate the support we get. However, they also gain from the profit we generate from the Luffarligan event - ca. £400 pounds this year. I hope some of our talent can repay them by running for Ravinen/moving to Stockholm for a bit, in future!

We did 3 large washes again at my apartment block (3km from clubhut on bus route into town) in my communal washing machines.

Most days we swam in a Lake - often at Hellasgården itself.

We got tour blue hoodies (£17) and black technical Ts (£13.67), as well as Sprint Vests (£13.67), done the same as last year from Ethicstar in the same colours. JROS and CompassSport logos embroidered. They seemed to go down well and are good value considering the coloured embroidery and printing. I didn’t get a tour name on them.

Almost everything was paid for on my SEK payment cards and we used 13  - 1 for SEK - GBP conversions so overall the tour could save on costs/fees. (2014 was 11.45 - 1 so nearly 15% cheaper this year than last (2012 was 10.4sek to 1GBP)).

We seemed to get a lot more twisted ankles and cuts this year than before. Joe Thomas got a nasty cut from the shower which meant he could not run for several days.

The end of tour is always a rush due to getting up early and taking bags to the event and then going straight to the airport.

Melkes Minne, which we ran at the start of tour, is a 3 leg relay with no gaffling which Södertalje Nykvarn Orienteers put on in memory of Melke, a promising Junior who suddenly dropped dead in the 90s (one of many at the time who did which led to all O comps being stopped for many months). Categories are 16s and 20s. It is the only time we get some of the 16s running 16s. We had 6 teams entered and 5 of them ended up on the podium (top 3) winning prizes - which I think is good for them in many ways.

Athletes experienced a proper Swedish TrailO course. Ulf Rask  from Sigtuna OK re-hung controls from Uppland DM several weeks before which we did before watching midnattsloppet 10km on Södermalm (which Tom Fellbaum ran). Pippa Dakin won the TrailO with a Full House on the course and Louise Adams was second.

As per 2 years ago, we took athletes to an introduction to Olympic weight training with an ex-Swedish Olympic weights trainer who is still involved in the Swedish Weight lifting Federation. He is a PE teacher at a Middle School and we went to his gym there. All thought the session highly useful and Peter rather knowledgeable - and funny!

Results wise, several people got in the top 3 in the first weekend of races. All ran 18. Laura King 3rd in Middle and 1,2,3 in the Long - Pippa Dakin, Emma Wilson, Abi Mason. Tom Lines 3rd in Middle and Aidan Rigby was 3rd in the Long. The second weekend were Elite races, pre-SM, and much harder competition. On the Long on Sat, best Brits were Fiona in 13th, +11.32 down and Aidan Rigby 21st, +16.31 down. On Sunday's Middle Tom Lines ECKO M16 continues to impress and lead the way with 10th, +6.40, and best girl was Pippa Dakin in 6th, +4. (Full results - see Eventor/Links on Spreadsheet).

For next year's tour, the Iddefjordens SK hut near Strömstad is booked for Tues 16th Aug - Sunday 28st. We will train before WOC and then run the WOC spectator races and train. The girls will get the luxury of beds. Boys on the floor in the main building with the possibility of camping. I visited the hut in May this year but I had been there before in 2009 and 2010. Jon Marsden, Carol Young (chef) and Tom Fellbaum are already signed up for the tour.

I want to keep things simple with 2 x 9 seater Minibuses and a car, so suspect we will take 8+8 athletes, 5 coaches and chef.  

An article was put in the October 2015 edition of the Compasssport magazine.

For this year's tour again we did not train on any area we trained on in 2014. (We had 4 who were there last year).

There are large numbers of different maps within close useable distance so this is relatively easy! Using public transport worked well. I calculated we spent £950 on transport. Hiring vehicles and fuel, parking fees, would be considerably more. Next year we will see how cheap we can get it!

This year we used Ravinen flags and didn't borrow any SI as we were doing quite a lot of races with SI. We used Luffarligan SI for one training and got one unit Stolen which we replaced out of the Luffarligan profits. We also did all the Ravinen trainings that were on offer. Quite nice for the athletes to get a feel of what a Swedish O club does.

Printing was done for free in Sweden.

We had only 2 map permissions to pay for, some we got free and some Ravinen paid for directly.

No visits to A&E this year.

We cleaned the basement up very well before the bulk of the athletes arrived. Special thanks to Ruslan here.

Ralph Street came up from Södertälje to visit for 1 day.

Emma Klingenberg was due to give them a talk after lunch but on her way to the clubhut she had a bike accident and never made it. She ended up in hospital overnight with concussion. 

Participant Report

By Jack Leitch

My big focus for the year was to get selected for the JROS Stockholm tour. To achieve this goal I had to perform in 4 out of the 6 selection races, including 3 days of the JK. The criteria for selection was you had to average <125% of winner over your best 4 races, so I was delighted to actually achieve <115% and to get selected.

So on the 11th of August, myself and 17 other first year M/W18s and top year M/W16s arrived in Stockholm for 12 days of orienteering in the forests around the city.

During this tour we became members of the local orienteering club OK Ravinen and competed for them in 6 competitions, which included 1 night relay, 2 middle races, 2 long distance races and 1 mass start gaffled race. We stayed at the OK Ravinen club throughout the camp, sleeping on the floor in the basement. This meant that we were near to all of the areas and, most importantly, we got accommodation for free! The whole tour was  organised by Nick Barrable, with Carol Young, Tom Fellbaum, Tamsin Moran, Sarah Dunn and Ruslan Glebov (a Ukrainian WOC orienteer) supporting.

Here's a summary of the training we did and how it went for me over the 12 days:

On the first night, once everyone had arrived, we did some night training around the club hut which was… interesting. We started off all together as a group and met at the next control. This would’ve worked out fine if I didn’t make a 10 minute mistake on the 3rd control along with 6 other juniors – a tough introduction to Swedish forests! After this training, we all went back to the club hut to have dinner and shortly after went to bed.

The next 11 days of the tour then kind of stuck to a schedule of leaving at 09:00, morning training/racing, having lunch at 01:00, afternoon training/racing, evening training/racing, dinner and bed. The training consisted of exercises focusing on certain skills e.g. practising visualisation on a course on a contour only map. In between sessions we did a lot of swimming in nearby lakes, as it was very hot ( ~25 degrees). This process was absolutely knackering but at the same time it was amazing and I learnt SO much from it.

The terrain in Sweden is nothing like I’ve ever run on before. The forests were clear and perfectly runnable (so nothing like the south!), were very technical with lots of contour detail and had lots of rock features.

Over the tour we ran a competition out of the junior men which we called The Tour De Stockholm. This was a tally of our results from all the races we ran and there was a ‘Golden Jersey’ for the lowest combined result. In this competition I finished second in the end, behind Aidan Rigby, with my best result coming from the mass start gaffled race on the second Wednesday were I came 14th  in H18E, beating the other GB athletes by over 5 minutes. That was also one of the most fun races over the tour as we were running against some very big names e.g. Olle Boström and Jonas Leandersson (WOC Sprint gold medallist this summer).

Finishing in Stockholm, ended a 4 week period where I’d only been home for 36 hours, with all the time away being either orienteering racing or training! Stockholm was fantastic. We all had such a great time, learning lots and having fun in what's a wonderful city.

Big thanks to Nick Barrable, Carol Young, Tom Fellbaum, Tamsin Moran,Sarah Dunn, Ruslan Glebov, JROS and Ok Ravinen. Luckily, I’m now off on a proper holiday!

Selections

Louise Adams, SYO
Kathryn Barr, MOR
Fiona Bunn, TVOC
Pippa Dakin, SYO
Ella Gilbert, NOR
Laura Hindle, MDOC
Laura King, AIRE
Abigail Mason, MAROC
Chloe Potter, BOK
Emma Wilson, CLYDE

Alex Carcas, INT
Noah Howlett, LOC
Jack Leitch, SO
Tom Lines, ECKO
Harrison McCartney, OD
Eddie Narbett, BOK
Alasdair Pedley, EPOC
Aidan Rigby, CLOK
William Reynolds, SBOC
Joe Thomas, MWOC

Selection Policy

Selection policy for attendance at the Stockholm Training camp (2015)

Date

The camp will run from 11th August – 23rd August 2015

Eligibility

The Camp is predominantly for M/W17’s born in 1998 but some top M/W16’s born in 1999 may be selected.

Athletes will not be selected for both the Deeside and the Stockholm camps.

Numbers

The camp will be for a maximum of 20 athletes

Criteria

Athletes wishing to be selected will have achieved the standards set out below in the following races;

Standard for selection; Athletes wishing to be selected will probably have achieved 125% or less of the winner’s time as averaged over four of the above races.

*Note that any athlete may count ONLY one of the British Night Champs OR JK Day 1 Sprint towards their average of 4 results for selection.

Selection process

If there are more than the maximum number for the camp who have achieved the required standard then those with the lowest averages will be selected.

The selector may choose not to fill all available places if there are insufficient qualified athletes.

The tour selector

The tour athletes will be selected by Nick Barrable (SYO and OK Ravinen) and the selections will be reviewed by the Chairman of Selectors of Junior Regional Orienteering Squads (JROS).

Illness or Injury

All cases of illness or injury which may affect an athlete’s ability to compete in one of the above selection races should be notified in writing to the athlete’s Regional Squad coordinator prior to the running of that race, clearly explaining the reasons for their failure to compete. The Regional Squad coordinator will make the Selector aware of such notifications prior to the race.