Discussion: Junior Team

First, I want to say that I was very disappointed by some very excellant orienteerers that didn't show a little bit of consideration to the Juniors while they were competing at JWOC. They saw everything you wrote while over there. I didn't learn about the discussion until my daughter returned from JWOC. The least you could have done was waited until they were done before ripping their efforts to shredds. That said I will move on. I have seen some very exciting ideas coming out of this discussion but I ask that you stop critizing those of us that are trying our best to help the Juniors the last few years and start putting your ideas to work. It will take all of us working together to get a good USA Junior program off the ground. I'm game are you? Then put your words to work. You can start by going up to any Junior you see at an A event and talking to them. Get to know them and offer your help by discussing their run for the day. They WILL NOT COME TO YOU!!! They are kids and will not ask an unknown person for help. Another way you can help is by being apart of the Junior training camp that has been done the last few years in the spring. Coach Jeff looks for good help every year(I know this for a fact) The only cost to you to help at this camp is your meals. If we get enough help maybe we can do a JWOC training camp besides the other training camp. You all have good ideas and if we work together instead of you critizing those that are trying to do some good, we just might see an improvement in a year or two.

Some of you know me and some don't. I'm a FAR cry from a good orienteerer but I LOVE OUR SPORT and have said all along that the youth of this fine country is the future of your sport. (Just read some of the things I have written in the ONA)Every chance I get I share our sport by teaching the basics to whoever wants to learn but especially to the youth in my area. I challenge all of you to get involved with the Juniors, they are a great bunch of teenagers. I know as I have been involved with them for almost 4 years now and I'm a mom to two of them.

We all need to help our junior to raise in O. I admire all the work that the junior team support group is doing having two daughters of my own. It is hard work and burden on the family. We need more people helping them.

I may suggest the following as a start:
1. Start logging all junior training at Attackpoint with the goal to have at least 7 hours per week 20-30 miles for females and 30-40 miles for males.
Motivation: Self-discipline and opportunity to compare and get an advise.
2. Start learning about micro and macro cycles in training and tapering for competitions.
3. Start running intervals and doing other speed work. Same about uphills and rough terrain.
4. At age 18 at least or earlier start running at M/F21+ courses at all A class competitions. Leave USA Champs only for running in their age group.
Motivation: Avoid hard transition from junior to senior. Prepare for international competitions.
5. Don't miss any training with senior team if such opportunity exists.
6. Streamlined and published rules on selecting into junior team is needed. Message for concerned moms and dads: "Your son or daughter may not be the best. It is great priviledge to run for the country but it is also great responsibility."
7. Clearly defined goals of the junior team program. For example:
a. Reach A finals at JWOC.
b. Qualify at top 10(20) in Elite National Ranking.
c. Be at 10(20) top teams at JWOC relays.

I am sure that our seniors can add to the list.

Hard work and lots of sweat - that is the road to the success. Just remember that each 10% off require doubling the efforts. And our juniors are ~50% behind the junior world elite. More hard work needed.

Cheers,
Sergey Velichko, dad of 7 years old Masha who competes successfully with 12 years old girls, hopeful that one day she will represent the USA at Olympic games.

All right, here it goes.
A lot of words've been thrown around already and this is the time to do something about it. Sergey put it right, RESPONSIBILITY is the key word along with others such as pride and etc. ( sounds as if a congressional hearing on WorldCom bust :) And it is not only Juniors, but all of us have to have the feeling of responsibility and do what we can to help our Juniors. Great ideas Sergey, and just to continue, this is what I have to say.
Since all of us want to "help" but the distances preclude us from doing so, the Juniors Web Site or Attack Point could serve as the tools for providing the help when other means are not available. Let's say an athlete needs a technical advise on completed course. He could upload the map ( gotta talk to Peter Gagarin) with his route choices and receive a leg by leg analysis from other's or specific advice on different points or questions. I believe such interaction can be very benificial for everyone.
As for the practical training I intend to do the next. As DVOA's leader on each and every local meet I will devote time for any willing Junior to profess his skills. Besides doing analysis on the courses and teaching thechnical aspects I will take them to specific legs or parts of the courses as to provide real opportunity for learning. And this is exactly what I suggest to other leaders in their clubs to do in order to provide materialistic help.
Moreover, for every person who was, is or plan to get involved in preparations of any kind of Juniors, please understand that I personaly ( and no doubt everyone ) have the greatest respect for your relentless efforts and everything else you've done for Juniors. As for the criticism, while it may hurt, it really needs to be viewed as a possitive and in no way a negative experience because it indicates that things aren't that smooth and something has to be done about them.
Hopefully, all our talks will turn into productive outputs, so that not only pride fills our Junior's hearts, but ours hearts as well, for their efforts and results.
Sergei.

Thank you Sergey and SerZhyk for such postive responses to my comments. I agree that criticism can be positive and very helpful but the timing of such criticism is very important also. The week of JWOC with the Junior Team being able to read you criticism is NOT good timing in my opinion but enough said on this topic. On to the very positive ideas. Maybe I'm a little behind in things or maybe because I'm far from an elite orienteerer, it wasn't until just recently that I learned about Attackpoint and I'm still checking it all out as I have time to do so. It is really great and as it should be with Kenny as the creator. I agree that it will be a great tool for the Juniors to use for training with our country being so big and spread out. I think we need to get the word out to all parts of the USA for the Juniors to start using it as a tool to help them. One really good way would be to write an article for the ONA about it and how the Juniors could use it to help them with their training. As I'm really new to it and still very unsure about how everything works, I suggest that one of you write this article or find someone that will. Also we can put an annoucement out on the clubnet to all clubs to spread the word among their juniors about using it. I can put something out on the clubnet, if you would like for me to do this. Also we need to get the elite male and female runners from clubs to do as SerZhyh has suggested; to make themselves available to the juniors of their clubs to give help, encouragement and possible one day training sessions open to all interested juniors of their club. SerZhuk, as I'm also a member of DVOA and have been active with the juniors both in the club as well as the national team, I'm more than willing to help you organize any kind of junior training for DVOA's juniors. (I'll be helping at this sunday's Club Long O champs at FCE. Look me up we can talk. If you don't know who I am just ask for the person who has been working with the juniors, most know who I am.)
Keep the ideas flowing and share anything that has worked in your club or that you think will work for clubs. Let's make sure that our great ideas start to spread and benefit all of the US Juniors no matter what part of the country they are located in.

I can organize two weeks of training for advanced older juniors next year before the JWOC. Details are here.

It was mentioned to me recently that there was discussion about moving the M-20 course to Blue. I would just like to say that I strongly oppose this idea. From my experience training with Juniors overseas, the focus of Juniors needs to go the opposite way. I ran up from a very early age, running M-20 when I was 14, and qualifying for the next year's JWOC. I remember Jeff telling me that I should move up through the courses first, but I felt that if I could be breaking 10 minutes a K consistently on Red courses, why run shorter. I also enjoyed the competition that none of the younger courses have.

Now after training in Norway this summer, I have realized that I missed something very important. While I can easily complete aa 7-9 kilometer Orienteering course, (I even ran the 26.3k Highlander when I was 14 and 15) the question is. can I do it at full speed constantly, while maintaining a complete level of concentration. I have quickly come to realize that, no that isn't the case. At my young age of 16, I cannot hold a perfect level of concentration required to run a perfect course, for more than 45 minutes. After that, I begin to make stupid mistakes since my brain is tired, it isn't getting the oxygen it needs, and I begin to lose concentration.

While obviously, 18 year olds are a great deal stronger than I am both physically and mentally, they are still not at the same level they will be when they are 21. While the level of competition is a great reason to run with the Seniors, most Juniors, and especially those with such little Orienteering experience that we tend to breed here in the States, are not ready for those long courses. Sure we can run 8 or 9 minutes a k on long courses, but that is not good enough. For any Orienteer to be ready to compete on an international level, they need to be ready to run an absolutely perfect course, and on most terrain, under 7 minutes a k. Longer courses do not provide the same level of mental concentration, they only extend it over a longer period of time. You can get the same mental intensity out of a course half the distance, so it isn't necessary.

While some people say Juniors need to be ready for the 10k Classic run at JWOC, I say that is BS. The Classic is a long course, and no 20 year olds are consistently running 10k courses in Europe. Maybe we should pay a little more attention to what they are doing in Europe, because it can't be too wrong. While the best Juniors in Scandinavia may be training as seriously as the Seniors, putting up 10 hours a week, they are not training for long courses, nor are they running them. Training many miles does not mean running long courses, but rather running more short ones. Of course I don't mean short, but Blue courses are too long to be good for our Juniors, and the extra length is just gratuitous. There is nothing a Junior will gain from running a Blue course that he can't gain on a Red.

Dear John,

for your reference, the course lengths at this year's Fin 5 were:

H21E 7.7 11.2 8.4 6.2 11.1
H21A 7.8 8.2 7.9 5.0 10.0
H20E 7.4 8.4 6.4 5.3 10.1
H20A 6.6 6.7 4.8 3.9 6.4

You can see that the total for H20E is 1.3 km shorter than H21A for
the sum of the lengths of the five days, or 3.4%. The only day that the
difference is significant is the third day—they give the juniors
an opportunity for more rest than they give the older folks.

You can look up O-Ringen, you'll find similar stuff. H20E is similar
to H21A, but much shorter than H21E. We do not have courses
like the European H21E in the States, except occasionally, but
our Blue approximates H21A quite closely.The European H20A is
more for juniors who have good navigational skills but for some
reason or another aren't top-competitive. If you'd like to be able to
win H20A, I'd agree with you, Blue is too long to train for that.
JWOC Classic (Long) is like H20E, not H20A.

Running shorter courses does give you speed. You'll need it
for the Medium (formerly known as Short). You will never gain
what you need for a 10-km course by running 6-km courses.

Oh, and if juniors needn't be ready for the 10-km Long at
the JWOC, who is the JWOC for, then? I'm very, very sorry, but
this type of opinion is exactly why some "seniors" get upset,
and why some juniors shouldn't expect all roses and candy bars
for mediocre performances.

John and Other Juniors,

To go or not to go for notched up courses should be done on an individual basis under supervision of your coach. It will make only harm if you are not prepared physically, technically, and mentally for elite courses. For me looks like John needs more physical and technical training. I belive 18 is perfect age to start transitioning to elite races. Both mentally and physically you should be ready at this perfect age! Your best running times will come in 2-3 year range so your O techniques would correspond and peak at your last year(s) as junior and make good transition to national elite. Train hard and you will harvest the fruits of your labor!

I aslo want to add that I would encourage USOF and clubs to organize more competitions having standard WOC/JWOC courses: sprint/middle/long/relay. Classic courses that we have at most of our A meets does not belong to any of these being somewhere between middle and long. Hopefully with more "grass root" movement we will reverse this tendency. Look for PNWOF next year that would have all kinds of courses! Having shorter courses should be one more motivation for juniors to try and compete against national elites. Don't miss this chance if you are ready! Go for it!

Dear Vlad,
I am not saying that all Juniors should be running 6k courses. This is just what I have determined, along with my Norwegian coach, is appropriate for me at the moment. Of course this isn't sufficient training for a 10k JWOC course, but frankly I don't care. JWOC is not a competitive event for me. I am 16, they are 20. I know some Juniors are already to compete competitively at this level when they are 17, but I started much later than they, and as a result, will take longer to reach my maximum potential.

By the age of 19 and 20, of course Juniors should be training for the 10k classic at JWOC, but that doesn't mean they should be running those distances in competitions here in the States. Besides, Blue is sometimes even longer than 10k. Running Red is more than sufficient in competition, except for of course the competition that they will miss from the Blue course. Training is another story when it comes around for JWOC.

One other thing we should remember, our Juniors are not as good as others around the world. Even training for the 10k classic right before JWOC won't get them to that level. This doesn't mean they should train for it all year. You have to build up, you can't just turn somebody into a World-Class Orienteer in a year. In my opinion, as influenced by training in Norway, is that running longer courses in competition would be more detrimental than beneficial to our Juniors.I am only writing this in response to a rumor I heard that the M20 may be moved to the Blue course.

I fail to understand now training for something can possibly exclude doing that something many times over so you can get good at it.

The average length of a Blue course for 29 races in 2001, including all Shorts/Mediums and one Long/Ultra Long, was 9.82 km.

I fail to understand how training for something can possibly exclude doing that something many times over so you can get good at it.

without taking sides yet in this discussion, I will point out that marathon runners to not usually race marathons as training for racing marathons.

True but they do cover the distance in their training, albeit not at the race effort. I know of no successful marathoners (<2:30 M) who would not do 30K+ training sessions one or more times a week. And, the physiology of racing for 2.5 hours is quite different than that of racing for just over an hour. Metabolism of fat becomes the primary energy mechanism after 70-110 mins of racing. A 10K O course should be doable under those times by a trained athlete.

Although late in this discussion, I wanted to voice my opinions. I am not trying to detract at all from the positive ideas that have come from this discussion, I just wanted to add my two cents.
Firstly, I'm glad that the junior team is getting attention but feel that perhaps some of the older orienteers in this country are trying to live vicariously through our results. As a junior orienteer, I'm proud of our top american and north american runners. They are my role models. I do not tell them to improve because they aren't performing well enough for my standards. For all this talk about junior goals, very few (there are exceptions) of the older orienteers have ever asked my goals, and frankly I'm more interested in meeting my personal goals than in living up someone else's expectations. Also, I get very offended by the comments that juniors don't ever do course review and never seek to improve; we are not apathetic. We do course review; we talk route choice we talk about how we could have avoided error, we coach each other, and we congratulate each other.

Even later into the discussion on "which course should good juniors be running"...

While some have mentioned the physical benefits of getting accustomed to JWOC Classic/H20E-length courses, and John has mentioned the issue of concentration duration, I haven't seen any talk of what was always the key issue for me: the length of course over which I could physically maintain my maximum map-reading speed. I was never the most physically-talented junior, and so the danger that I and my coach at the time (Mike Waddington) were most concerned about (round about John's age) was that I'd switch from 7km Red to 10km Blue and have to lower the running speed a notch to make sure I could finish it. This would then encourage those bad habits that creep in any time you run with a map in hand and aren't going at maximum map-reading speed - mental laziness, reduced challenge, etc. I think I ran the odd Blue course when I was 17, but only for 'fun' :), did any long one-off races I could (Billygoat/Harriman/etc.)but stuck to Red for any important races. And then every winter I worked on the endurance/base, trying to get rid of this problem of needing to run a different running speed over 7 vs. 10 km.

Another good idea Mike had (since I was pretty keen to move up to Blue and bite off more than I could chew!) was to incorporate goals on Red with the reward of running Blue. Goals were always in specific m/km on area, rather than anything depending on other people. E.g. "Break 8 m/km at the Pawtuckaway Troll Cup and I can run M21 at the Ontario Champs."

It sounds like my case (being not that strong physically) makes me different from John at least, but the principle applies. Make sure the move to Blue doesn't mean you're compromising the speed at which you orienteer - if it doesn't, then moving up can't do any harm.

While I understand that running Blue can be physicaly, technically and mentally tough, but aren't you exited to compare your results with those who older (especially the spits.) and capitalize on it. When I was your age, I was!