Brent Langbakk took advantage of the junior national team's absence from the Yukon Orienteering Championships (YOC) long distance course last night.

Yukoners Lee Hawkings and Kendra Murray, along with junior national teammates Graeme Rennie, Graham Ereaux, Emily Ross and Tori Owen, left yesterday for the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) taking place in Rumia – Wejherowo, Poland, from July 2-9.

Langbakk, who took sixth in the YOC middle distance course on June 8, jumped to first in the long distance with a time of one hour, 11 minutes and 12 seconds over eight kilometres in the male 21-34 class yesterday.

"It's a couple minutes – bang, bang, bang, bang – between several spots, and there's a lot of depth,” Langbakk said.

So when members of the national orienteering training centre, which Langbakk brought to Whitehorse this summer to attract the country's top orienteers, are absent, it changes the mentality, he added.

"In the sense that maybe it plays on you a little bit and you try and push, and that's always the balance with orienteering, is trying to find the right speed; to push hard physically, but not push so hard that you make a mistake,” Langbakk said.

"So when you have in your mind, ‘Lee (Hawkings) probably did really well on this leg,' then the tendency might be to go a little bit faster than you should. Ideally you just want to focus on your own race, but I think that does play a bit.”

Ottawa's Eric Kemp took second in the male 21-34 group in 1:22:36, while Forest Pearson finished third with a time of 1:24:45.

Kemp is one of the high-performance athletes who has been training in Whitehorse this summer.

Like Langbakk, Kemp was disappointed the field was blown so wide open without the junior national team members competing.

"It's too bad for me because I lose most of my competition. There are still a few elites lurking around that can still beat me. I arrived two weeks ago, and the last two weeks there has been a real synergy with all the guys and the girls pushing each other at all of the trainings. In Canada that's a very rare occurrence, because we're so spread out. To have so many juniors and elite juniors in one spot is very special, very rare.

"There's no other place in Canada that has as much orienteering training as Whitehorse right now.”

Also rare is the challenging terrain in the Yukon, he added.

"This is the place to be if you want to get better. And of course, with the Westerns and the Canadians coming, there's no better place to prepare.”

Whitehorse will host the Western Canadian Orienteering Championships from July

16-18 and the Canadian Orienteering Championships from July 22-24.

Kemp is thrilled to be training for the upcoming events on some of the toughest courses in the country.

"This map, Long Lake, is considered one of the most technical and most fun maps to race on in all of Canada,” Kemp said, adding that the course is extremely fast, technical and fun.

"This terrain chews up and spits out a lot of runners. I've done a huge amount of mental training to prepare myself for technical challenges that the Yukon has to offer. My sources tell me that the Canadians, particularly the Canadian middle distance, is very similar to this kind of terrain, but it's even more technical, so that's what we have to prepare for and that's what we have to look forward to. I can't wait.”

Langbakk agreed the courses in and around Whitehorse pose unique challenges.

"Nothing's for free in the forest here, you got to work for every inch, and it's got a lot of climb. The section at the end here, two foot deep moss, it's super physical, super tough. This is world-class terrain, one of the toughest technical maps there is, that you can get anywhere. I've shown this map to international orienteers and they just drool, because it's that good.

"But it means it's really hard. The course Pam (James) set was fabulous; it was a nice blend of really challenging technically and really challenging physically.”

He likened errors in orienteering to errors in golf.

"You could be doing great and on the 18th (hole) you slice it off into the trees and you're bogey, you're out of there. Orienteering is kind of like that; you're better just to be steady and consistent and hit all the controls, instead of being fastest on all of them, but then making a five or 10 minute mistake,” Langbakk said.

Langbakk was responsible for bringing Kemp and the junior national team members to Whitehorse for training this summer.

Kemp said he is currently transitioning between junior and senior circuits, being too old for the 20-and-under junior category eligible to compete at the JWOC.

"It's a big jump to make,” Kemp said. "It's taken me really two years of hard training, lots of running throughout the winter and lots of technical training during the summer when all the snow's melted and we can run in the forest again; and I'd like to think that I'm competitive in the male elite class,” Kemp said.

He competed in the JWOC in Primiero, Italy, in 2009, finishing fourth in the middle distance C final for his best international result.

"It was a breakthrough for me because I had finally put down a good race at the international level; I knew it was the first time I had really came through in ortienteering.”

Results from the YOC long distance event are as follows:

Female 12 (2.3 km)

1. Hannah Jirousek 19:35

2. Savannah Cash 19:55

3. Amanda Thomson 22:59

4. Sonjaa Schmidt 29:56

5. Lea Ott 30:04

F 15-16 (3.1 km)

1. Pia Blake 38:28

F 35-44 (3.8 km)

1. Philippa McNeil 47:26

F 55-64 (3.8 km)

1. Karen McKenna 1:06:41

2. Violet van Hees 1:50:57

3. Jill Pangman 2:21:41

Male 12 (2.3 km)

1. Mettias Schmidt 29:59

M 13-14 (3.1 km)

1. Caelan McLean 31:21

M 21-34 (8 km)

1. Brent Langbakk 1:11:12

2. Eric Kemp 1:22:36

3. Forest Pearson 1:24:45

4. Afan Jones 2:12:32

M 35-44 (6.2 km)

1. Ryan Kelly 1:42:30

2. Darren Holcombe 1:56:29

M 45-54 (6.2 km)

1. Ross Burnett 1:08:41

M 55-64 (3.8 km)

1. Jim Hawkings 1:05:41

2. Bruce McLean 1:12:07

Open 1 (2.3 km)

1. Marshal Latham 39:59

2. Family Sennett 45:50

3. Finn Pearson 1:02:56

Open 2 (3.1 km)

1. Georgi Pearson 52:04

2. Sherri Cooper 1:16:04

3. Tracey Taylor 1:25:10

4. Anne Tayler 2:33:21

Open 3 (3.8 km)

1. Jeremy Johnson 1:01:52

2. Lara Melnik 1:59:31