EOC 2014 - Everything bad is good for something?

Worth it

Before and After

EOC 2014: The dawn

3x Europameisterin! - What a week!

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EOC Relay: Maps and Results

Back from the European champs with 1 medal and 1 diploma...

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Swedish O-Easter

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EOC Long Men 2014: Why did the winners win?

Enttäuschend

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Signe Søes did a fantastic comeback winning EOC middle....

STAFFEL-EUROPAMEISTERIN – Unfassbar

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EOC Long Women 2014: Why did the winners win?

EM-Rückblick

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Gold at EOC Relay

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West Point A meet

Usually, the first big national-level orienteering race on the east coast is the West Point event. A meet is the outdated name for national-level orienteering events. Anyway, this year team trials was ...
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Tying shoelaces: the daisy chain

Have you ever had a shoe come untied mid-run, even after double knotting it? And then after running through mud and ice and snow and more mud, your laces are frozen into a massive glob of uselessness ...
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California

After Team Trials, Ed and I had a week to kill before two our favorite people married each other in Tahoe, so we decided to stay out in California and have an honest-to-god vacation, where we had noth ...
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Team Trials

This year, thanks to some interesting scheduling requirements, the ski orienteering championships were a week before the summer orienteering team trials. Team trials are not necessarily the US champs, ...
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US Ski Orienteering Champs

Theres been a lot going on lately, that Id like to blog about, but I think Ill just go sequentially and start with winter activities, since that happened before summer, which happened before spring - ...
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Tuesday night springtime racing

This last Tuesday was one of the first bonus races of the spring, though that all depends on how you count the costume race. The costume race was great, because not only were most people wearing costu ...
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Chasing spring

The last two weekends have been a bit of a blur. The weekend after the Birkie, I headed down to Connecticut with Anna and Anne, to visit Becky and get into the forests with hopefully less snow and do ...
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Tuesday night worlds

The last race that would count for the Tuesday night race series was this week, and I was sitting in third place after missing a whole bunch of races. Not like theres anything on the line aside from m ...
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Tenerife day 3

The weather on the third day, Wednesday, was supposed to be the sunniest, so we headed to the northern part of the island for some running and hiking. The first run started from Cruz del Carmen, whic ...
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Team USA uniform news

Noname to outfit Team USA!Orienteering USA has announced that it has come to an agreement with the Finnish athletic high performance clothing manufacturer Noname to be the uniform supplier for the Un ...
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The Birkie

I had Birkie fever this year, not too bad, but this was the one race I was traveling for and hoping to actually perform well at this winter. The elbow tendonitis, combined with orienteering team trial ...
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Tenerife Day 1 and 2

Ross and I just returned from an awesome five days spent on Tenerife. We stayed in a small studio apartment on the north side of the island, just outside of Puerto de la Cruz. This was the perfect lo ...
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Waterville Valley Eastern Cup

Last weekend was the final Eastern Cup of the season, and the last chance for my juniors to score points to get to Junior Nationals. I signed up for the skate race, a 10k, but decided not to sign up f ...
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Bergen Sprint Camp

Last weekend I made the trip from Oslo to Bergen to participate in the famous Bergen Sprint Camp.This was my first time going to the annual event and I may have been slightly skeptical about the cond ...
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Coaching in Vermont

With Rob in Finland for the U18 USST trip, and Jamie at the Craftsbury marathon, I was next in the chain of command to lead our CSU army to success at the Stowe EC. This meant no racing, because even ...
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4 months?!

Has it really been 4 months since we last posted here? Le sigh, it has.Were still doing what we do best - eat, sleep, work, orienteer with a few changes in place. Ross started a PhD program in scienc ...
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Introducing the athletes of the 2014 US Orienteering Team!

We are incredibly proud to welcome the members of the 2014 US Orienteering Team. This fine group of athletes represent the best in US orienteering. Collectively, they have competed, trained, and serv ...
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Tuesday night throwdowns

Two weeks ago, we were racing in a full-on rainstorm for the Tuesday night race. It was warm, relatively speaking, but the rain soaked me through within minutes, and I quickly got chilled. As somebo ...
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Rumford skate race

Last weekend was the second Eastern Cup of the year, in scenic Rumford, ME. I have fond memories of racing there in college; its a tough course that rewards good skiing and good fitness; you cant coas ...
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Simulated blizzards

The first Tuesday night race was last night. Tuesday night world championships! Intelligent people were suggesting that it would be good to stay inside, because of the arctic vortex whipping around. I ...
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Vacation, and the Bogburn

From Craftsbury, it was on to Rochester for some pagan rituals involving loot and goo, those terms referring to what goes under versus on the tree. A few short days, and the adventure-mobile headed n ...
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Craftsbury EC

Last weekend was the first Eastern Cup of the season, up in Craftsbury. They had enough snow to hold the classic race (10k mass start) on the real race trails, moving away from the silly little manmad ...
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Racing! (on skis and foot)

Ski season is just about starting, with the first race this weekend up in Craftsbury, VT. I elected not to sign up for the classic race, given that my elbow is still not perfect and I dont want to me ...
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Blue Hills Traverse

Ive taken a few years off from the Blue Hills Traverse, even though its a good race thats held every year and its relatively local. The last one I did, in 2010, was just a really bad day for me, and l ...
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DVOA Fall orienteering festival

After a lot of travel weekends lately, I wasnt too psyched about another long drive, this time down to French Creek State Park, west of Philly. But, the Delaware Valley Orienteering Association held a ...
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Raid the Hammer

Last year, Ali and Amy Rusiecki and I did this adventure race in Canada as Team Giggles. We won the womens division, and were close on the heels of the mens teams, just five minutes out of the lead in ...
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New England autumn

This has been a glorious fall in New England. Its finally getting cold enough at night that it truly feels like fall, and the trees got that memo, breaking out into these brilliant flaming colors, coa ...
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U.S. Two-day classic championships

Last weekend was the two-day classic championships in orienteering, up at Bear Brook State Park in NH. There are too many US Champs in orienteering, mostly because we cant agree to do what the rest of ...
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Seasonal update!

About one post per season seems about right :) Its just a day after my birthday and Im home from work sick with a cold. Staying home today was mostly out of consideration for others, as today is a me ...
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Canadian Nationals

Last weekend I headed over to Hamilton, ON with Zan and Anna for the Canadian orienteering national championships. It was a long drive, but well worth it, as the event was incredibly well run, had two ...
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Hudson Highlander

I never got around to writing about the Highlander on here. It happened. I finished. Id never done it before. Thats a heck of a race, and it kicked my butt. I wrote up a race review for Inov-8, so you ...
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Pisgah 50k

I have been doing more running this summer than in past years, in part because I was feeling a bit burned by orienteering after Worlds, and I just wanted to put one foot in front of the other. Running ...
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Orienteering (and looking at animals) in South Africa

Mary and I ran a local orienteering event near Johannesburg, South Africa, a few weeks ago.   I had a clean, but slow, race.  The area sits about 1600 meters above sea level.  Thats enough to ...
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First Race Accomplished!

Today was the first of three races for us here at the World Games. It was the sprint distance and it was held in a park and residential area in the southern part of the city. Ross ran a great race, p ...
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World Games!

Wednesday morning we woke up in the 3rd tallest building in Colombia, and headed downstairs to a breakfast of fresh pineapple, scrambled eggs, and a colorful rice and meat dish. Sam and I are in Cal ...
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Greetings from Cali!

This week Alison Crocker, Eric Bone, Ross Smith and myself (Samantha Saeger) are in Cali, Colombia to participate in the World Games. Ross wrote an update on our personal blog, which you can readhere ...
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Departure from the serious -- what the heck does a team leade...

Sometimes it feels like the world is against you.The US team to WOC this year was made up of 10 athletes (5 women, 5 men) and two team leaders. Everyone already knows what the athletes do -- eat a lo ...
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WOC 2013: It's a wrap!

WOC 2013 in Vuokatti, Finland is finished and US team members have once again set off to various destinations around the world.Were a good looking team, arent we? (All photos by Kenny!)As in most yea ...
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Middle Qual: whut.

Yesterday (Thursday) was the Middle Qualification race and we had a full line-up: Ali, Sam, Hannah, Boris, Eric, and Brendan. Those watching the coverage online or in the arena, with gps-tracking, wi ...
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Trail-o day 2

Sharon had a fantastic day today. Once again she got all of the timed controls correct and she only missed two controls on the course. Her score of 19 out of 21 placed her 17th for the day and pulled ...
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Trail-O team thinking hard

Today was the first day of competition for the Trail-O Team. 20 controls and four timed controls made for a challenging exercise. I had our best result with a score of 18 out of 24 correct, placing m ...
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Clare's pics from the opening ceremony

Ross and Eric show USA spiritTeam USA is attentiveRoss hangs with Clares photo pal Jersey;
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Shaving Ross Smith

Take one normal American.Well, perhaps not fully normal.Shave a triple mohawk using a mouse-shaver.Let the subject run free for a few days to determine if he likes the haircut.Apply hair gel liberall ...
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Ali 18th in WOC Long distance!

Alison Crocker had USAs best-ever finish in a WOC race today by coming 18th in the long distance final. She ran very well technically from start to finish and was helped by a great route choice on th ...
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US v Peer Nations WOC rankings

Peer nation standings after the long qualification, sprint qualification and sprint finals races: Portugal New Zealand Belgium Ireland USA, Canada, Japan are all tied Back to okansas.blogspot.com.
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Final JWOC peer nations ranking

After the JWOC relays, I came up with my final JWOC peer nation rankings. New Zealand 96 Ireland 83 Belgium 71 Japan 69 Portugal 67 USA Can 46 The scores can be interpreted as the chance that a matc ...
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Ali 9th in Long Qual!

Ali stormed through the Finnish forest today and placed 9th in her qualification heat, easily qualifying for the final, which is on Tuesday. Heres Ali talking about her race:;
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Long Qualification Report from Wyatt

Pull up a chair and get ready for a race report from Wyatt, who ran the Long Qualification today: I had a pretty good race, for me, today, in the WOC Long Qualification. With my best 5k in the past 2 ...
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Trail-O Pre competition

The Trail-O team of Clare Durand, Sharon Crawford, and Peter Goodwin got some practice in over the past two days. A competition set by Lauri Kontkanen - past Gold Medal winner - gave us an opportunit ...
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Team USA gets in the spirit!

Last night Alex helped fellow team member Ross get ready to race. It involved a par of clippers and some new snazzy racing stripes!While the rest of the guys tried on their GPS sports bras for the lo ...
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