2009 National Orienteering Team
Athlete Profiles

Jon Torrance

Age: 38
Hometown: Ottawa
Currently living: Washington, DC
Clubs: Ottawa Orienteering Club, Quantico Orienteering Club
Occupation: Engineer

How long ago did you start orienteering?
Just over 19 years, not counting a couple of high school gym class outings.

How many WOCs have you been to?
4 in 2005 through 2008 - Japan, Denmark, the Ukraine and the Czech Republic What is your best WOC result:  20th in my long qualification heat in Japan

What are your goals this year at WOC? 
In what I think is ascending order of difficulty, beating the US in the relay, running both hard and cleanly in all my races, improving on my best previous WOC qualifier placing, and qualifying for an individual final.

What keeps you motivated to train for the sport? 
Orienteering is fun.  And I'd feel pretty silly sinking so much into airfare to do it if I didn't train hard.

What is your favourite event? 
I don't think I have a favourite discipline at the moment, though I think I'm currently likely to do better in sprints than middles or longs.  Mass start races - the Billygoat, the Hudson Highlander, Thomass events, farstas, etc. are great fun, even if I wouldn't want them to be the norm in orienteering.

Do you have a pre-race ritual?
First, obtain a live goat, then draw a pentagram... no, not much of one.  A brief physical warm-up, including a few short accelerations if there's room, some deep, calming breaths while reminding myself of all the corners I shouldn't try to cut technically, and orienting myself.  Plus I can't resist the paranoid urge to check my SI card multiple times before call-up.

What would be your best orienteering memory? 
Various triumphant moments and awesome terrains come to mind but nothing in my memory is more magical than some of the times I've orienteered while snow fell. Of course, some of the other times I've orienteered in falling snow have been pretty miserable.