Recent Happenings (incl. Blodslitet)

Hey hey!
I haven't been up to too much lately, not exactly by choice either. I had a small rest after WOC and then decided to run a half marathon. It didn't go too well, I felt really sick and ended up puking at about the half way point. I managed to finish the race in a pretty lazy time (77.01 - I was hoping to do below 73min). The next day I could hardly walk!! Apparently I had tried to squeeze too much life out of my racing flats. They had worn a bit thin at the front and had become compressed, so I had nearly no cushioning in my forefoot.
I tried to train after a couple of days rest when it didn't hurt to walk any more but soon realised that I was far from healed! My injury put me out for 2 weeks. I did manage some light jogging but just returned home as soon as it began to hurt.
I managed to make good use of my down-time. I organised some cool club trainings around Odense (I am now one of the 4 senior coaches, including Maja and 2 others).
After easing back into training for a week I headed to Fredrikstad in Norway with Maja and her parents for a short holiday. We did a training near Halden on the way up, and another couple of trainings around Fredrikstad. The trainings all went really well except for 2 controls on each where I made huge mistakes :P
There was an ulterior motive deciding our holiday destination. We were going to run Blodslitet. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea after my recent injury, but I really just wanted to see if I could last the whole race.
For those of you who don't know, Blodslitet (est. 1968) is a mass start race consisting of 3 loops with forkings and a longer common final loop. Oh... and it's long. Really long (not to mention in tricky nordic terrain aswell!).
The elite mens race this year was 26.2km. I started off quite well, but then made a 3 minute mistake near the end of the second loop. After that I was mostly on my own. I was quite happy to make it as far as I did before the inevitable cramping started (between 6-7 on the last loop) and I even managed to finish without completely locking up :)
It was very satisfying to finish the race, and with no trouble from my foot! :) After two hours, fifty-six minutes and thirty-one seconds I ended up in 23rd place, 27:31 behind the winner Øystein Kvaal Østerbø.
You can see the maps below :P

Træningslejr i Trondheim

Last week, with support from my club Odense OK and the crush Åke Jönsson has on me, I was able to tag along with the Danish team on their training camp in Trondheim.
The purpose of the camp was to prepare for WOC next year. It was my first time in Trondheim, and it definitely showed :) My orienteering was ok for the most part, but then occasionally went totally out the window.
I went over a day earlier than the Danes. I stayed with Chris and Emily in their cozy little apartment right near an awesome forest. Chris and I went for a jog on his map the evening I arrived and I went again early the next morning.
The next few days were pretty busy, just eat train eat train eat sleep etc... I managed to twist my ankle whilst falling off a cliff on the first training with the Danes. But I managed to run the next day so it can't have been that bad :P
On the weekend we ran a long distance race and a relay in Selbu. The long started well, but then I made a really dumb route choice on the 4th control. Then by about the 8th control I was totally stuffed and starting to cramp again, probably from my lack of training in steep rough terrain. So the rest of the course was just a bit of a mission, watching fast guys run past :P
For the relay I ran for a local club, Byåsen Idrettslag. Unfortunately for them I had probably my worst run in 15 years or so. I ran first leg. I wasn't focused at all and muffed the first and second controls. Then I was all alone. I decided to try and catch up but then lost about 17mins on the 6th control! I duno what happened. Maybe I bumped my head or something. I tried to relocate off a rock a few times but just never went close to the control. I think I was last in on the first leg :S
We had a few more trainings before heading home. The trainings are here:

Woc-analysis in a nutshell

I made mistakes, I was stupid, I didn't enjoy the sports. And now I'm free. A longer version is available in Finnish.

With a smile, Minna Ross

Though I must add, it was pretty nice having the chance to watch Chris kicking some ass for NZ!!!

Time Warp

It's now close to a month since I left Denmark for the 2009 World Games in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. I have no idea what happened to these last 3 weeks. I am in the middle of packing my bags for WOC in Hungary and I realised I better smack something down on my blog about WG before my short memory gets the best of me!
I met the rest of the NZ team (Darren Ashmore, Tania Larsen (ex. Tania Robinson) and Lizzie Ingham) in Hong Kong a few days early. The idea was to get used to the heat and the humidity and do a few technical trainings on the local parks.
It was my first time in any Asian country so it was quite a culture shock for me. The population density was crazy. Families packed into the tiniest of apartments. I really enjoyed my self though. Just the task of finding our way to training each day was an exiting adventure. Even when Tania was mucking around and caused us to get separated from the others in the subway, I still couldn't find anything to complain about :P
Next we moved onto Taiwan. I could write forever on the next few days, but I'll try and keep it brief. We all managed to get accredited without any hiccups, then shunted off to our hotel. We had to take buses for a minimum of 20min each way to get our dinner and lunches. I must say however, it was definitely worth the trip. A nice big buffet of anything an athlete could want. Plus a chance to gawk at the body builders and some of the other sports teams.
The model event, for sprint, middle and relay, was on a very small central park. We were able to jog there from the hotel. It seemed a little cooler than in Hong Kong, but still like running in a sauna. The map seemed to be pretty good. Darren and I jogged around most of the controls to have a chat about it, but mostly just to look cool and psych out all the other teams.
That night was probably the best part of the trip. The opening ceremony! Having to leave the hotel at 4.30pm and be mostly on our feet until 11pm the day before the sprint was a compromise worth making. We didn't get to see all of the acts in the beginning of the ceremony, but walking into the stadium with 40000 screaming people was something I might only have the chance of doing once in this life. We even managed to get on TV just after Hayley Westernra finished singing Pokarekare Ana. We were also privileged to inhale the smoke from a pretty impressive fireworks display.
The next morning it was time to put our serious hats on. I have a lot of problems with the heat in the past. So instead of trying to sneak a peak at all the girls running their sprint I chose to sit in the airconditioned tent and feed ice to my scrotum. My race went pretty well. I wasn't quite as in control as I would have like to have been. I lost 5 seconds or so on the 2nd, 7th and 8th controls, and about 20 seconds on the 5th. After about the 13th control I could feel myself starting to slow up. The heat was killing me. It was a real battle, but I really pushed myself to try and keep a reasonable tempo until the finish. This paid off big time. I was in the lead at the time I finished. I could see all the top guys were also feeling the burn coming through the spectator control. I only had to watch 9 guys come in to beat my time. I ended up in 10th place. My best placing (so far) in a world level event. That combined with having a nice cold coke in one hand is one of the best feelings :) I have to say though, I think I can fully attribute my new performance level to all the new Dirty D O-gear we got. By far the most comfortable and cool looking o-gear around at the moment! xox
Next morning was the middle distance. The event was on a 1:5000 sprint map, but with middle distance rules. That meant we could go through everything except olive green. My race wasn't as good as the day before. I made mistakes on #'s 3,7,9,10,11 and 13. So after a bad start I made up a few places to end up in 18th place. Still a great result for me!
The relay was without a doubt my best run. I ran the first leg and started out hard. Unfortunately I had the longer forkings throughout the course. I finished in 9th place but only 1min 29sec behind the Russian leaders. With only one mistake (nearly going the wrong way around the last loop - I realised at the radio control) I was very satisfied with my run and was able to sit down, relax, enjoy a big fat Taiwanese beer and watch the rest of the relay. Our team did really well, despite having 2 old fogies. We finished in 11th place only 11mins down on the winners. A great result for NZ!!!
The closing ceremony wasn't as spectacular as the opening one. It was a delightful evening spent partying in a secluded bar with the Brits and the Aussies whilst hustling drinks off a chubby little Taiwanese lady named 'big mama'.
On the way home I stopped by oringen to see my little sister Kate. I managed a couple of jet lagged races on the open 9 course. It was nice to run in a real forest again :)
Now I guess I better get back to packing!
Ciao!

Vestjysk 2-dages

Whilst all the fast guys were strutting their stuff at the world cup races in Norway, I had a nice weekend with great weather in west Jylland :) The 2-day event was held on an inland dunes map near Holstebro. It was quite tough running. There is a lot of heather to push through and the ground is very sandy. So naturally I felt a bit tired, but I'm sure it was the same for everyone :)
The first day wasn't the greatest run for me. I made a few small mistakes and one huge 7minute mistake on the 17th control. I found it quite hard to make sense of the vegetation and contours.. I nearly went to the control in the beginning but came across some depression with no control there and I couldn't see any others on the map so I went on a small adventure. I came back from a different direction about 6mins later and found it straight away :) I came in 3rd place 1min 43sec behind and a little disappointed. I think that in a more important race with a bit higher conventration things might have gone a little differently, but who knows!
The second day was a little better. I made a lot of small mistakes around the controls but nothing too huge. My biggest mistake would have been the 17th where I didn't check my compass too well and ran too much to the right, then made a mistake near the control as well. It was a really hot day, especially with no protection out in open. I found myself dreaming about every drinks control. But it was all worth it to get to the finish and have a nice cold coke, and to win.
The results for both days are here (I ran 'Sort 10km'). The link for results on the second day doesn't seem to be working :S but maybe it will soon :)

Dansk Park Tour 4

Yep yep. Last weekend was the last round of the Danish Park Tour races. I ran the first race really well. I maintained a high speed through the whole course (after a tough week of training with 3 interval sessions I didn't know any different!).
It's a bit boring (and arrogant) to talk about all the good things I did. So I will now, as usual, sytematically list my mistakes and shortcomings :)
I made a couple of bad route choices on the 3rd and 4th controls. I also made a mistake early on the way to the 11th where the purple line obscured an impassable wall. I lost 30 seconds maximum from these mistakes but still managed a convincing win.
I realised in the next hour or so whilst trying to recover that perhaps I had pushed a bit too hard in the first race. I felt fatigued from the beginning of the 2nd race. I tried to put it in the back of my mind and concentrate on the navigation, but as it turned out my mind had also not fully recovered :) My first mistake was on the 4th where I took a risk that I would be able to find a nice hole in the green to bash through before the control, but I just kept getting stuck and had to go around. I lost 5-10 seconds standing in the middle of the control circle at the 5th before I saw the control stuffed down in a ditch instead of on the vegetation corner. On the 10th control I made the coolest mistake I have made in a long time... I went straight, only reading the buildings on my map (lazy tired mind) and came across an impassable hedge. Instead of looking at my map and minimizing my mistake I just thought 'oh, I'll just run around it. So unluckily I chose to run right and then ended up going backwards and then did the exact same thing one more time before the map spat me out again back at the 9th control :)
I lost some time on the 11th because I didn't see the track coming into the control from the left, and also some time at the 12th where I just ran past the control looking for a bush instead of a tree. I managed to get my mind together for the last few and finish well, but still only managed a 4th place.
Luckily my big win in the morning was just enough for me to win the day overall, and as it turns out the whole park series :) I just hope, well, I plan to pull out a sprint like the morning at the World Games in a few weeks.

Jukola

It's been a while since Jukola, and since I actually wrote anything on here :) But I thought I'd have a quick spiel about how it went.
I was running first leg for Pan Århus. I had run first leg in Tiomila this year and I felt that I could do much better in Jukola, but for some reason I felt really tired from the start of the race and totally died (physically) in the last half. Other than that it was an awesome experience! Running around the racecourse at the start was incredible, so much noise and excitement.. all I could do was try not to trip on the guy infront of me. My plan was to get as close to the front of the pack before we got into the forest so that I would be in a good position for the rest of the race. So I ran pretty hard in the first kilometre. I just glanced at the map and folded it around the racecourse leaving a bit of room for the first control. When I started to get free of the stampede I searched my nicely folded map for the first control but just saw a line going straight off the page. I had to completely unfold my map to reveal a huge 4km lst leg :S The run to the first control was brutally fast, leaving me a little out of breath. But I really focused hard and forced myself to read the map. I ran a pretty good race (routegadget). I didn't make any mistakes apart from drifting a little far to the right on the way to the 9th control. I managed to get within 18 seconds of the leaders at 6.8km through the course but then, like I said, I died. In the next 5km I dropped from 18 seconds behind to 5min 19 seconds behind without any mistakes. I finished my leg in 78th place. I was happy with my run. I just put the fatigue down to all hard training in my build up to world games.
Our team ran pretty well in the rest of the relay. Our secret weapon Greg Flynn brought the team home to finish up in 121st place. Not a bad position to start from next year :)
You can see the car at the start doesn't start fast enough and everyone freaks out :D