JWOC Is Underway

Nate competed in his first JWOC (Junior World Orienteering Championships) race today. He is one of 6 junior boys (born in 1989 or later) to represent the US in Primiero, Italy.

The main web site is here.

Today's event was the Sprint finals. The results were posted in near real-time at two "radio controls" and the finish. The online results are available here. Nate seemed to have an OK performance. He ran quite well in the first section of the race (to the first radio control), just under 25% behind the eventual winner. He was 40% behind in the second section, but had a great finish, staying within 8% of the winner in that section!

The map of today's Sprint course is available in two parts, here and here.

The next event is the Long Final. It should be a very challenging race: the distance is 9.5km with 440m of climb! The winner is expected to take 72 minutes. Without knowing the terrain very well, it's hard to judge Nate's expected time. He was about 30% behind the winner today, which would be 93.6 minutes, or slightly under 10 minutes per kilometer. That is a fair amount slower than he runs in the US, but things are different in Europe!

The Start List for the Long has not been published online yet. The first start will be at 9:30AM, local time, which translates to 3:30AM EDT. The last start should be around 3:30PM, which means 9:30AM EDT. So, depending on Nate's start time (and your sleep schedule), you may be able to follow him live tomorrow!

UPDATE FROM Nate - he just called and his start time is 11:22AM tomorrow (so, 5:22AM in Webster - get up early!).