Sunday 11 November 2012

Season Ends with NAOC's

I am finally able to give everyone an update about my experience at the NAOC’s after being busy with school and my short track speed skating. It has almost been a month since the NAOC’s that were held in the Delaware Water Gap, PA. The NAOC’s was a great event to attend, great competition, great atmosphere and good organization. I was happy with my races considering the lack of orienteering I did since the COC’s in August. The middle was held on some awesome terrain that I really enjoyed, my result was almost awesome as well but made a poor route choice decision and paid for it really bad. The long was a very physically tough race; I did not have the speed at all and combined with small mistakes here and there made for a mediocre result. The sprint was fast and furious and I am the most happy with this race despite learning a new lesson, if you know you’re at the right control don’t bother checking the code because if you compare it to the wrong code you will lose over 1 minute and lose what could have been a medal for sure and possibly a gold. The relay was a great opportunity to practice a relay race since there are not many opportunities to race them. It was great fun until I could not find one of my controls, it turned out after running by it a few times within meters it was on the ground and that’s why I could not find it. Embarrassing for me and unfortunate for the organizers, questionable that the men’s results even got posted! It is really is too bad that it happened that way but it did. Overall the NAOC’s was a jammed packed weekend of great orienteering, great maps and tons of friendly Canada/USA competition.


Middle finish in the pooring rain.
Long finish.
Train on,
Damian