Next
year's WOC is going to be fantastic if the Japan Challenge week is any indication.
In many ways this week of racing and training was a dry run for the WOC organisers
as much as it was for the athletes. With many national teams present (Sweden,
Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, New Zealand) along with many other miscellaneous
athletes, at times it felt like a major international. The quality of organisation
and planning was very high and the organisers worked extremely hard to make
everything run smoothly. 
After
recovering from the journey for a couple of days we were plunged straight into
the races, PWT followed by a WRE long distance. PWT was a lot of fun in a
detailed city park near Nagoya. The British women fared well with a 10th for
Helan Bridle and a 12th for Sarah Rollins. Nick Barrable managed 14th despite
suffering a migraine only hours before the race. An exciting innovation was
'no-contact punching' - you only had to waft your emit brick over the control
to register. See the results here.
The
Long distance was held in a new area of WOC relevant terrain, mapped by the
WOC mappers and planned by a WOC planner. It was a great race, with every leg
providing a different challenge. The terrain is very well suited to tough classic
races with a mixture of baffling route choice legs and detailed control picking.
Route
choice in Japan is a real art form with no single best way to tackle a leg.
The fastest runners all took radically different routes throughout the course
and even with the benefit of hindsight it is impossible to say which way is
best. Most important is to simply make a choice based on your strengths, feeling
and physical shape and stick with it. I finished in 10th place (a long way behind
Finnish samurai Jani Lakenen) and Sarah was top British girl in 13th. See the
results here. 
We spent the rest of the week exploring as much of the terrain as possible and
squeezing in some tourism and culture. This included a sushi buffet, a visit
to an elementary school to teach orienteering, a traditional Japanese meal
and a run up 1350 steps to visit a temple. Along the way we encountered some
exciting Japanese wildlife and met a lot of really friendly and extremely helpful
people. Thanks very much to the organisers for all their hard work - we have
been inspired by their enthusiasm! You can see the results from the mid week
races here.We will post much more information about WOC 2005 on the international pages as soon as possible.