The World University Orienteering Championships in Borlange, Sweden began today! Tomorrow, July 20th, is the long distance event. We have 4 men and 4 women running.
For men we have Kevin Culberg starting at 10:10am, Keith Andersen starting at 11:00, Leif Anderson at 11:16 and Brendan Shields at 12:16. For women we have Hannah Burgess at 10:07, Holly Kuestner at 10:49, Tori Borish at 12:13 and Alison Campbell at 12:31.
Great job to everyone today! The terrain here is difficult both physically and technically. The soft ground and high blueberry bushes make it tiring to run and the bland terrain makes it very hard to relocate. All of our athletes put together the best race they could today and are looking forward to the sprint tomorrow, which will be a mix between urban and park. The starts for the US are:
Men:
Brendan Shields 15:57
Jordan Laughlin 16:27
Keith Andersen 16:29
Women:
Alison Campbell 15:44.30
Hannah Burgess 16:05.30
Tori Borish 16:26.30
The sprint sounds like a lot more fun than the long...as I remember the only good thing about the blueberries is that if they are ripe you can have a little snack. Pictures are great, keep them coming!
The US WUOC team went to the sprint model this morning to warm up their legs and calibrate their brains. Video master Leif took some video of the runners finishing. Take a look at one here - more can be found on the US Orienteering Team facebook page!
Unfortunately the live video didn't work very well today because of a slow internet connection. Tomorrow and on Friday we are in a different place and we also have the option to use a different operator for the mobile internet so hopefully it will work as well as it did on the long distance.
The camera is just a tiny webcamera which was quite well hidden on the announcers desk. There were actually people asking us where it was because they had friends at home who wanted them to wave to it.
Today was the middle distance. These woods were arguably more open, but there was a lot more climb. The women had 4km and 255m and the men had 4.9km and 290m.
Tomorrow is the last day and it's the relay. In past years there have been 4 people in a WUOC relay team, but this year the teams are only 3 people. We have members on 4 different teams.
USA Team 22 is Jordan running first leg, Brendan running second and Leif running third. Kevin and Keith are on a North American team with Jeff Teutsch. They are Team 44, also known as COMB-4. Keith is leading off, followed by Jeff and then Kevin. On the women's side we have US Team 213 led by Holly, followed by Hannah and anchored by Alison. Tori is on team 237, COMB-4. Niamh O'Boyle from Ireland leads this team, followed by Janeta Turka from Latvia and then anchored by Tori.
The men's relay starts at 10:00 and the women's starts at 10:15. Mixed teams will be starting during this time as well.
Also, Keith snagged some great pictures of our runners coming into the finish at the middle. Check them out here.
Thanks for the support everyone! The relays went well today, with the highlight being the US men's team beating Canada :) Go USA! Check out some videos of the mass starts and Leif starting his third leg here.