Ross Morrison - Elite Orienteer

GoPro head-cam training video

2011-11-25T17:01:00.001+02:00

I managed to save up some mobility in my feet for a training camp with my club last weekend :)

Here's a video I made with the GoPro camera footage from one of the trainings. (It looks better if you change the resolution to 720p and play it bigger or full-screen).

My orienteering is nothing spectacular, but it's cool to see what I was doing again after the run - definitely a great analysis tool. I can see already by comparing to the other guys in my club that there's things I really need to improve on!

You can see the map from this one, and my other trainings from the weekend in my DOMA.

New Sprint Video

2011-11-01T17:33:00.005+02:00

Check out this cool preview for STB 2012.

More and more work is going into STB each year as it grows bigger and better. In 2012 we hope for the biggest turnout yet. Entry has been open less than a week and we already have entries from New Zealand, Australia and Finland.

Come.

PS. There will be be a blog post about my 2011 season some time. I think I will find some motivation for that when I'm not injured any more :)

Getting ahead of myself!

2011-08-12T13:43:00.002+03:00

WOC is about to start tomorrow (the long qual) with my first race being on Sunday (the middle qual), and although I should be focusing on what I'm doing I can't help but be distracted by this awesome preview!

The oceania carnival 2011 looks superb! It makes me wish I had a big sponsor to help me get there and back after WOC (hint). The terrain is very attractive, it looks very challenging technically, but also quite fast. It would be great if more of the top international runners were able to make it to competitions like these, but it looks like for now we'll just have to wait for some faster/cheaper form of transport to emerge! On the upside I'll be able to enjoy the event from Finland with the live GPS tracking and video and cheer on the omen and the other NZ representatives :)

France Rocks!

2011-08-06T17:26:00.008+03:00

Quite literally too... After a week here I have 2 bad ankles, but not bad enough to stop me enjoying the awesome terrain. Before coming to France I had only heard negative things; 'It's soo green', 'It's soo rocky', 'It's way too hard', 'Don't waste your time, save yourself for another year'. I came to France with a positive mindset, I figured that being negative wasn't going to help me to have any fun here. So far I have been pleasantly surprised with the terrain. I can agree that the running is difficult in places, and the navigation even more so, but isn't that what orienteering is all about?? The more challenging the terrain and courses, the more satisfaction you can get from having a good race right??
I travelled to France after Fin 5 and Oringen (I'll write more about them later if I get the time - but highlights were 7th (video here)place and 9th place respectively in the sprints), to meet with Amber (my oldest younger Sister - her WOC debut is this year) for some casual training. We have been on as many maps as we could get our hands on.

Most of the trainings involved me putting out toilet paper controls (mostly in the right places :P ) with Amber running the course a little later. It can be quite frustrating sometimes to have to double/triple check everything and spend so much time standing around in the control circle, but it will be better next week when our coach Dieter Wolf arrives with sport-ident and controls. Check out the quickroute Prepoulin training below - slow going at the moment!. We have both had some really good patches of navigation and also some shocking mistakes. However, we are both slowly getting a good feeling for the maps, terrain and the best places to run. One of the highlights for me has to be the sprint training we made in Annecy (see the video below). It was such a beautiful city, and although it became a pedestrian dodging competition in the town we both finished the training with huge grins on our faces :)
We have played around a little with 3DRerun. My GPS watch has been playing up a bit so you might see some crazy things, but contrary to popular belief I can't jump buildings in a single bound... So enjoy the videos (best in full screen):

Montmelian:

Annecy Sprint:

Foret du Grand Roc Sud 2x trainings, the first training a shocker for me. I had a bit of a meltdown and couldn't think, but the 2nd was better, Ambers brain aneurysm came in the 2nd training instead . Check out the mispuches from both Amber and I!! woops! And also where my good ankle became my bad ankle at 3.16:

Here's today's training on the Le Creux Qui Sonne map. This is probably my least favourite map so far.. The paths are really hard to see (check out my #1 - there was a bigger path the way I ran) and there are a lot of thinnings on the ground. Some parts of the map are really strange too, I don't agree with what's there (like around #6 and #12, and the path before #13 was in a re-entrant) but I wouldn't like to try mapping it!:

I don't know if I'll get time to blog again before WOC, so hopefully next time you hear from me I have some good news :)

Cool Orienteering Video

2011-06-30T10:20:00.004+03:00

Mick Finn has been doing heaps of great work in NZ lately trying to 'up the profile' of orienteering by creating cool videos and magazines. This video is some of his finest work to date, covering the Queen's Birthday test-match against the Australians - Well done Mick! And keep it coming :)

You can find some more of Mick's work here.

The Pursuit of Happiness (Megablog pt.2)

2011-06-23T12:02:00.011+03:00

The last month has been a busy one! First up I had a huge weekend over Queen's Birthday, with 5 races - over 50km of orienteering including the ANZ challenge (NZ vs. Australia) :)

The Saturday started with a 'multiday long distance' - 14km in Woodhill sand dune terrain. The race went well for me, I lost around 1minute on the 8th control, where I misread the map. I saw my control but then there was another hill covered by the control circle that I couldn't see, so I kept going. After that it went well, with only a few small hesitations. I won the race by about 3minutes, so I was very satisfied. See winsplits and routegadget.

In the afternoon we headed to Massey University campus in Albany for a sprint race. I had a shaky start to the race.. the map was detailed with a lot of shorter controls - it was raining and slippery and a lot of people managed to 'arse over' going around the corners. I had a lot of trouble becoming accustomed to all of the olive green. Duncan Morrison was running well in the first half of the course until he made a mistake and I caught him. I eventually managed to get into the map and start to push and managed another win :) Here are the results in winsplits.

Day 2 began with another 'multi-day long distance' in Woodhill, this was a bit shorted, 13km but a lot more climb and some tougher terrain. I was tired, both physically and mentally from the start - probably from pushing too hard the day before. I made a huge mistake on the 2nd control. I ran nearly to the control but didn't see it, then I went to the next broad spur to search for it and finally returned 6mins later. Damn! It was hard to stay motivated to run well for the rest of the course and I was very messy and lazy with my navigation, I lost a lot more time, but still felt obliged to finish the race because I was in the pinestars team against Australia. I finished well down the field as expected, I was also beaten by my younger brother Duncan Morrison which is a bit hard to swallow. See the routegadget and winsplits.

Kate Morrison who had been carving up in the elite field over the weekend, even though she is still a junior. Stage 4 was a 2-man (well a man+woman) relay against the Australians. This was by far my most favourite event of the weekend. The race was again in Woodhill forest in a smaller, very detailed sand-dune area. I was in a team with my little sister Kate was running well on the first leg, smashing everyone right from the beginning with the steep climb to the start triangle. Hwover Kate made the mistake of flipping the map to check a control description on the guys course (the map had the 2nd leg printed on the back) so she thought she was at the wrong control and lost some time. She came in about 1min behind the leader - Angela Simpson, and in about 5th place behind some of the Aussie teams. I headed out on the 2nd leg together with Duncan, and after the disappointing run in the morning I managed to step up and push right from the start. I ran a really good race only losing 5seconds on the 7th control. I had caught the leader Tom Reynolds by the 3rd control, and luckily we had different forkings on the 2nd pivot, so I was able to push a bit to get ahead. I managed to come back in the lead for Kate and I to win the relay for NZ and the central scorchers superseries team.

Day 3 was the third and final 'multi-day long distance' race. I was feeling very tired again in the morning, but it's always easier to push when you know it's the last race for the weekend. The beginning of the course went well for me, I only lost a little time on the 7th control, where I went right past it and didn't see it behind some bushes. My biggest mistake came on the long leg - the 10th, where it was very vague before the control. I doubted my direction at the end (even though I had been right) and the went to the left to check for the control by some other hills.. Doh! I lost over a minute here. The rest of the course went pretty well, but I ran out of energy near the end. I finished in 4th place, and I was satisfied with my run after a tough weekend. Gene Beveridge, an NZ junior heading to Poland for JWOC this year managed his first big elite win with a very impressive run. Check out the routegadget and winsplits. Also check out the cool superseries trailer for the weekend (with promises of more to follow) made by Mick Finn below:

After a big weekend of racing it was back to reality with my first exam week. There was a lot of cramming late nights while trying to recover as well. The exams all went well, better than I had expected. My last exam was on Monday the 13th of June, the day before I planned to fly out to Finland in the pursuit of happiness. That night my brother had organised a final hill tempo session on Mt. Eden in Auckland and farewell dinner at 'La Porchetta' with all of the Auckland crew, and even my Dad who was up there on business. Cheers Duncan!

My first week in Finland was also a very busy one. I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and managed a very lazy jog before getting the much needed sleep that seemed to elude me on the plane. The next day I had an easy terrain training before heading to watch the first stage of the NORT tour/World cup race. It was great to see the top guys competeing, I just wished I was able to run too (It wasn't possible to enter in just 1 stage of the NORT tour, you had to run in all three, and that was more than my wallet allowed for!). I got a chance to run the qualification course that everyone had run in the morning before the sprint, I felt the full effects of jetlag like never before, but it was a fun course.

Saturday was the day I had been looking forward to for a long time - Jukola! To the layperson Jukola is an orienteering relay with 7 team members that runs through the night. I managed to make the 3rd team for my new Finnish club Rajamäen Rykmentti, to run first leg. This year there were over 1500 teams on the start line, my team was starting in about the 4th row back, check out the start here(you can see me in Black and Yellow:

The start was fast (as always) and I felt a bit fatigued and stressed, I managed to get the first control well, still up with the leaders. The 2nd control however was not so good and I lost 1min 30sec. This put me back into around 300th place, aaaaaaahhh!!! The rest of the race went well, but it was just such a mission battling past other runners. I found myself taking unorthodox route-choices just to avoid people which actually resulted in making up some time. I ended up in 81st - the 1min 30sec I lost in the beginning ended up costing me a lot more over all. Check out my splits here:I also uploaded my gps route to the new 3d rerun thanks to Jan Kocbach (World of O creator) It's really cool to see and compare to the other top teams. You can hold the ctrl key and click on the start triangle and the the little video camera by my name to mass start the runners from there and follow me(My GPS is a bit inaccurate on the way to the first control, but then it gets better) So you can see my big mistake on the second control. You can also hold ctrl and click on the 4th control to see a mass start from there, it was re-assuring to see that I didn't lose so much time from here on in the course. So check out the 3d rerun here :)

Vote for Me! (Please??!!!) :D

2011-06-01T13:41:00.003+03:00

Hey hey people, here's your big chance to help a kiwi Orienteer! I applied for an AMP scholarship to help kiwi people 'do their thing'. One of the categories is a peoples choice award, so the person with the most votes get's a $10,000NZ scholarship.

Orienteering at an elite level is pretty expensive for a kiwi. Travelling to Europe every year is not cheap!! (and we pay all our own flights, accommodation etc!)

So if you have a spare 2 minutes, please follow the link below and vote for me! Also you can click the facebook share button to share it to all your friends!

Vote here: http://www.doyourthing.co.nz/2011-00687/ross-morrison

Thanks to everyone for the help and support! :)

Training Training Training

2011-05-23T10:01:00.006+03:00

NZ champs was the perfect motivation for me to start enjoying my training again. I'm not saying I wasn't having fun before, but now I'm looking forward to each session and always have a specific focus or goal in mind. I had some good results at Nationals, but technically there was a lot of room for improvement in my orienteering.
I have been working quite a lot in my part time job at shoe science, so that I can save towards moving to Finland in June. This means that most of my training has to be done in the dark. Normally this would be a bit frustrating for me, but right now I'm making the most of it :) I will be running Jukola relay shortly after I arrive to Finland, so to prepare I've been doing a lot of night training in Woodhill forest.

In the first few night sessions I was making a lot of mistakes especially in the vague areas where I couldn't seem to run in a straight line! But my technique has quickly improved. Also it is sometimes hard to know for sure if you are at the right control point because we don't have any markers or controls, just our oxygen deprived brains and 10m of vision. The latest night training I did at a moderate pace, with only a couple of small mistakes (hesitations on #2 and #11 and a mispunch at #25 where I didn't check my compass). With 69min over 11.5km I was quite happy. It was also the biggest training week I have had in 2 years with 151km of running - 37km of which was night orienteering.
My next goal is a 5km time trial next Tuesday where I will attempt to beat my personal record of 15.30. Then I have the Australia vs. NZ test match at the Regal Orienteering Carnival over Queen's Birthday weekend. I will be looking to have some great technical races to build my confidence before heading to Europe. It will be interesting to see what it's like to run in Woodhill terrain in the day time after so much night training :) I think it will be a challenge to beat the up and coming NZ junior runners, especially the 'O-men', who are running up in men's elite, they all have a lot of experience in Woodhill and I know they've been training extra hard and are frothing at the mouth for JWOC in Poland!

On a final note, here's a video made by Mick Finn from NZ champs with my Route:

Double National Champ!

2011-05-05T13:33:00.013+03:00

Well then, from the title of this blog you can see that the NZ Champs at Easter weekend in Hawkes Bay went better than expected!

As I mentioned earlier I was the mapper and planner of the NZ sprint Champs on Friday afternoon. It was great weather and such a nice event centre, so it was so good to finally relax (sort of) and enjoy all the hard work that myself and my club mates had put into this event! The map covered two private girls schools in Havelock North, Woodford House and Iona College. Here's a snippet of the building detail in Woodford House. There were a lot of canopies and weird shaped buildings with stairs and height differences which made it really interesting for route choice legs. Have a look at the routegadget to see the courses and winners routes. The winner of the Men's Elite grade was Toby Scott. Toby is still a junior and will be competing at JWOC in Poland this year. He ran up in the elite grade because the NZ champs were also the trials for WOC. After Toby's performance it looks like he will be my team mate in France this year, but we are still waiting on the team to be named! The Women's Elite winner was Lizzie Ingham. Another impressive performance was by Kate Morrison (my little sis) who won the W20 grade, and had a faster time than Lizzie on the same course. So the sprint turned out to be a day for the Juniors. It's exciting as the quality and standard of NZ orienteers seems to be improving - it will be interesting to see some world class performances in the next few years!
See winsplits for the sprint here.

The middle distance was held on a new map called 'Fire Station'. This is on the Maraetotara plateau adjacent to one of Hawkes Bay's most well known maps. It consisted of areas of detailed rock over open farmland, some pine-forest of varying run-ability and NZ native bush. Finally it was my chance to race. I was itching to compete in orienteering again since I had regained my fitness level of last year. I had some problems in the beginning of the race with controlling my speed, this is something I will have to work on as I am getting faster. I also made a couple of mistakes after the spectator control where I was a bit unsure of the map and hesitated a bit, then got distracted by the camera man. I made one bad route choice later on in the course (#15-16) but apart from this my race went well enough to win! It was a good feeling as always to win a national title!
See winsplits and routegadget for the Middle.

The Long was again a new map, a bit further south of Maraetotara this time. This map was a lot more farmland with more intricate areas of rock detail. This proved very hard to read while running on 1:15000. I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning of the course, on #2, #6, #7 and then I got really stuck in the 'white' forest leaving from #7 and lost nearly 1min. I didn't give up after these mistakes, I thought that if I am finding this difficult then so must everyone else! So I pushed through the rest of the course, only making some smaller mistakes. I managed to win by over three minutes so I was really happy. It would have been nice not to make any mistakes and have a huge win, but 3mins is still enough for me :D
See winsplits and routegadget for the Long.

The relay was the final competition for me. I ran first leg for my NZ club HBOC. There was a very elaborate forking system and butterfly loops on first leg which made it a pretty cool course! I had a huge forking on the first control and then ran really fast to catch the leaders again, but it was too fast I guess and I lost 1min 30 on the 3rd control. I managed to pass everyone (except Karl Dravitski who had a commanding lead) through the butterfly loops. I then pushed ahead of the main pack to chase Karl, but I had no idea he was ahead, I actually thought I was leading. I went really well for the rest of the course until the 2nd to last control where I lost over a minute. I had a lot of trouble understanding the map in the control circle. I was just standing still trying to make sense of anything I could. I got caught by the pack and was passed by 4 runners. I managed to find the control and then pass 3 of these runners and then had a really exciting finish sprint with my little brother Duncan for a 3rd equal finish on first leg. Unfortunately my little sister Kate didn't have a good run either and our last leg runner mispunched so we were disqualified. The winning team was PAPO, with superman Carsten Jørgensen on the last leg it was hard for any teams to match the pace!

So overall, I was very happy with my results from the NZ Champs, but there's a lot of work to be done!! I've already been out for 2 night trainings in Woodhill forest after coming back up to Auckland, and I can feel my navigation improving every time! This is a crazy butterfly loop training set by NZ junior Matt Ogden. You can see I'm starting to make less mistakes than usual :)

Getting back into it! :)

2011-04-21T11:20:00.013+03:00

Sup! Things have been a bit up and down for me since WOC last year, both with training and just life in general. Now things are starting to look really positive again J. I had quite a long break after WOC last year, a few months with only really light training just to stave off obesity. I didn’t have so much motivation to train after the unfortunate appendicitis ruined my world champs, but after sprint the bay and being beaten by the stars (Julian and Øystein) I decided I didn’t want to feel slow anymore! So a little ass-kicking was all the motivation I needed to get back into training. I decided to do a bit of track racing with what was left of my summer, and managed to beat my 1500m PR several times, getting it down to 4.01. Now I’ll have to try again next year to break that 4min!

It didn’t take me as long as I had expected to get back to my form before WOC. So I am quite confident that I will be faster than ever this year! My biggest obstacle will be finding the time to get out to the forest for technical training more often. With Uni 4 days a week and work on the other 3 there’s not much daylight! That’s why I’ve invested in a decent headlamp, which I’ve already put to good use twice in the last 3 days!

See the map from my night training with NZ junior Matt Ogden.

50 controls with over 15km, I can’t think of a better way to spend a Monday night!

Controls 10 to 27 were really fun, and it felt so good to focus so hard again! I have to say though; night training in Woodhill forest without controls or refl

ectors is quite difficult! You can see there’s a few missed controls there on the long warm up and warm down parts!

We’ve had the first Auckland OY competition of the year. See the results here, and route-gadget here. The course was very physically demanding and the map was questionable in parts, but all in all it was a good preparation for NZ champs in Hawkes Bay next week. The middle distance will be 3.8km with 475m climb, so quite steep!

Speaking of NZ champs, this year will again be unable to take the illusive sprint title as I am the mapper and course planner. It’s my first time setting a WRE, so I’m quite nervous to see how it will go! (More so than my own individual performances in the middle, long relay…). The area is of Woodford house and Iona College, two adjacent private girls’ schools in Havelock North. The terrain is beautiful for sprint orienteering, with intricate building detail, hills, park and forested areas making for interesting courses with plenty of route choice. We are planning to use this map for Sprint the Bay in 2013 straight after the world cup in NZ. Unfortunately I can’t upload any pictures or map snippets of the area until my next post!

Last night was another night training with my little brother on one of the maps we made for Sprint the bay (Maison de Sante).Even after doing fieldwork and ocad there, night still made it difficult! There were no big mistakes, and it was a nice hill tempo and a chance to wear in my new inov-8's.

At the moment it’s likely that I will be buying a one-way ticket to Europe this year. I plan to move to Finland after WOC. At the moment I’m trying to sort out a sporting visa and making sure I can continue my studies in computer science. It will be an exciting move for me, to live somewhere with such cool terrain, and of course to help prepare for WOC 2013! I’m also excited about the winter, I’ve never lived somewhere with so much snow, so it will be fun to learn how to ski and give my body the break from running that it desperately needs!

My main focus for WOC this year will be for the sprint. My running is improving a lot at the moment, and with proper sprint training and preparation I believe I can do really well. I also plan to run the middle and the relay (the long still won’t be possible because of my problems with cramps). I have also been having problems recently with my ankle (that I hurt at WOC in Ukraine), so I will have to do a lot of work on it before France! J

Well, that’s it for now I guess! I plan to start blogging again a bit more often, that way I won’t have to write so much!!

Sprint the Bay 2011

2011-01-04T00:27:00.002+02:00

For the last few months I have been involved in organising the 2nd year running of Sprint the Bay. The new tour-based sprint orienteering weekend has caught the attention of a lot of orienteers, both in New Zealand and internationally. The event consists of 6 sprint orienteering races over 3 days, and simulates the Tour de France with a yellow singlet for the overall leaders, a green singlet for sprint leg leaders and a polka dot singlet for hill climb leaders. Last year, NZ's Darren Ashmore managed to take down Swiss runner Martin Hubmann for the Yellow singlet, and NZ's Angela Simpson a close second place to Denmark's Maja Alm.

This year we have some top elite runners from Norway: Øystein Kvaal Østerbø (4th place WOC sprint 2010) and Elise Egseth (5th place WOC sprint 2010). Other top contenders include Julian Dent from Australia, Rassmus Andersson from Sweden and our returning champ from last year, Darren Ashomre. In the women's competition, Angela Simpson will be out to prove herself after her outstanding 6th place in the sprint at WUOC last year.

Check out the website to see videos and results from last year, or to enter! http://www.sprintthebay.org/

Mega Blog!

2010-11-08T01:02:00.022+02:00

Well well well, it's been a while since I wrote anything on here. I guess I've been a bit distracted. I suppose I should give a bit of an update for my religious followers ;) A lot has changed for me since my last post over a year ago. I'll try and give some bullet points rather than a huge diatribe about my recent happenings so that you can stay awake throughout:

- In late 2009 I applied for a visa to continue living in Denmark which was unfortunately denied.

- We appealed the decision.

- Denied.

- Having no qualifications didn't help my cause so I decided to go back to NZ to sort my life out.

- Unfortunately Maja was only in her first year of study so she had to stay behind in Odense, so now we're another Skype couple (which isn't as fun as it sounds!).

- Since I was back in NZ for the lovely summer I became a bigger part of my little brothers brain-child 'Sprint the Bay'. Originally I was just going to be a long distance course setter (not for a long distance, from a long distance), but after being kicked out of Denmark I became sort of a co-president of the event. It involved 3 days with 6 sprint orienteering races. We decided to have a yellow jersey (well yellow singlet really) for the over-all leader and also a green jersey for dedicated sprint legs in each of the races. This made things extremely competitive in the elite races. I was able to compete in the races I wasn't mapping or setting, and with Martin Hubmann in NZ for the summer I had some really good competition. Check out the results and courses from last year on our new website. Also a there's a cool video from the first stage here:

- The rest of the summer was filled with some trainings that I organised for our local club (see maps etc. here) and working on a vineyard.

- Time to study. This time around I decided to go with Computer and Information Science at AUT university in Auckland. I had a look at various courses, and this seemed the most interesting to me, and there's also a huge variety of job types available when I come out the other end with my little scroll.

- I've never lived in Auckland before this year, but I enjoy it much more than I thought I would. There's a lot of guys up here who are really motivated to train for orienteering, mostly juniors, so I was able to get motivated to train on those days where you'd rather build a cardboard box fort in your living room and eat food containing preservatives that you can't even pronounce.

- After starting up regular interval sessions twice a week, I started to see a lot of potential in our juniors. This was one of the reasons I decided to put my self forward for the JWOC coach for 2010.

- At the Easter weekend I had an average National champs. I made a mess of the sprint race, however I was happy to win the middle distance after a really bad start (see the route gadget for sprint middle and long, and the results for sprint middle and long).

- By the time we were ready to embark for our trip to Europe, the junior guys were beating me half the time in orienteering, even though I had massively improved my 5km time to 15.30.

- JWOC 2010 was in Denmark (one of my other incentives for coaching the team) - check out the team blog here. The terrain was not too dissimilar from areas around Auckland but the vegetation was very limiting in a lot of places which I think was the main challenge for our juniors. As always, NZ draws the short straw with JWOC being on the other side of the world. We don't have the luxury of regular training camps throughout the year on relative terrain. Making a JWOC A final become very difficult with only 2 weeks of relative training, but with 2 of our guys and one girl making the A final I was very happy. The relays went really well with our teams getting NZ's second best ever placings in both the guys and the girls races (both 12th). A lot of the team were disappointed with their results, but the experience was a good one and now they know what is required of them to do really well on the international stage. Now they have the memories and the motivation to train extra hard for the coming years.

- After JWOC I had a week to gather my energy before the world university champs in Borlänge, Sweden. The plan was to due some high quality training (intervals/intense o-sessions) but with less volume than usual. But either I was a bit shagged from the JWOC week or I am allergic to pancakes, because my body had other ideas. On the Tuesday I woke up with an extremely sore stomach which only seemed to get worse and worse. After spending nearly a day in the hospital being mucked around they suddenly decided I had an appendicitis and I needed to have my appendix removed, but of course by the time they got around to doing it it had already burst.

This would make my recovery take weeks instead of days.

After a week in hospital I wasn't feeling too good. Not just from the pain in my stomach, but from the week I was supposed to spend with my girlfriend being taken away along with my best ever chances at WOC. I decided to travel to Borlänge anyway, because Maja was in the team. It was a bit depressing not to be running but it was really fun to support the kiwis and see Angela come an awesome 6th place in the sprint! And of course the party was a highlight.

- After having my guts ripped out 3 weeks before the world champs I was thinking of taking a holiday instead, but since Trondheim was promised to be some awesome terrain I decided that I would still be able to have some fun competing. I ran in the sprint qual, not expecting too much of myself. I felt horrible. I didn't really make mistakes, maybe some bad route choices. But I didn't really feel like myself. It was just so hard to think and to run compared to normal (see the map and results). To my great surprise I made the final! I was happy at first but then realised this meant I had to run again later in the day. After running a ridiculously long way to the start point, I was already tired for the start of my race. Things went badly from the word go. I messed up the first control by deciding on my route-choice from memory of the old maps then realising that they had put a up a temporary impassable fence for the race. When I got up to the castle I was physically exhausted and stopped reading my map, I was just running around trying to find a way out of the fort and nearly succeeded with running right off the edge. This seemed to be my biggest challenge for the entire WOC. All of my mistakes were after climbing a hill and my brain just seemed to dissolve. Later in the course I made a huge mistake where I didn't know what was happening. I thought I had run into an out of bounds area because I was suddenly on a gravel road when my map was telling me it was supposed to be paved. I then proceeded to flounder around few a few minutes while everyone passed me, i.e. I came dead last in the race! (See the GPS tracking and results) The next race was the middle qual. This was my most enjoyable race from WOC, it was quite physical, but I took it easy after having learnt my lesson in the sprint. It paid off because a lot of people made a lot of mistakes in a lot of places. I qualified in 9th place which I couldn't quite believe given my recent misfortune (see the map and results). Next up was the middle final. This course was boring and weird. It was too fast for me with the physical shape I was in at that time and naturally I pushed too hard and made huge mistakes, like on the way to the 4th control (see the GPS tracking and results). The relay went ok for me, I was happy to be able to run the whole way (except for the huge ass climb after the spectator run through), I made some bad route choices in the race but no really big mistakes (see GPS tracking and results).

- After the Europe tour I had a lot of study to catch up on after missing 7 weeks of class. I never really did catch up but I managed to pass my exams (I think). I won a world ranking event at labour weekend, the course was a bit unfair with dodgy controls but I pushed hard enough to puke so I must have run all right (see route gadget and results).

- Now that university has finished for the year I'll head back to Hawkes Bay for a nice summer of training!

Recent Happenings (incl. Blodslitet)

2009-10-18T22:41:00.011+03:00

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

2009-09-15T11:11:00.020+03:00

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

2009-09-01T15:01:00.010+03:00

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

2009-08-08T17:49:00.019+03:00

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

2009-06-30T16:08:00.006+03:00

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

2009-06-29T18:56:00.009+03:00

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

2009-06-24T23:05:00.005+03:00

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

More Sprinting

2009-05-29T13:08:00.009+03:00

Last weekend was round 2 of the Danish Park Tour. My rival from round 1, Rene Rokkjær wasn't running. This time however, I had to contend with the formidable Claus Bloch. The races this week were in Viborg, so we had to get up nice and early for the 2 hour drive to the event.

The first course went ok. I made a small mistake on the way to the 6th where I was a bit wobbly, I climbed up the path and then dropped it all to go around some bushes. I didn't lose too much time on Claus though. I lost 20+ seconds on the 19th control. I decided to take the small track through the green to lead me right to the control. It would've been a good route choice if I was a midget (I mean a real midget). It was really overgrown and I basically had to walk/crawl along it. Apart from this, I was happy with my run. I finished in 2nd place, 7 seconds behind Claus Bloch.

Again we had not so much time to recover untill the second race. Just over an hour. I had time to warm down, put on warm clothes, scoff down a bananna and some cashews and then it was time to warm up again. The second race went quite well too. I made a small mistake on the fifth where I ran to the wrong tree. Then I made a big mistake on the 7th control. I think atleast 20 seconds or so. I came in between the wrong buildings, then I panicked and ran to the right even further from the control before realising. The rest of the course went ok, apart from feeling quite tired. I managed to win the second race by 10 seconds giving me a 3 second lead overall.

On a completely random note; I found this video the other day on Veoh. It's from the WOC sprint final in Czech Republic last year. It brought back all of my supressed memories of forgetting my racing flats and having to run in one of the Australian officials' gigantic clog-like trainers. So, I whacked some music on there and stuck it on youtube :)

JFM Sprint(s)

2009-05-16T11:37:00.008+03:00

Yesterday we had the first of the Dansk Park Tour events. It is a sprint race series (20min EWT's) with 2 races per evening. There are 4 days in total over the next month or so. Points are given on your placing from the total time of each 2 races combined. The overall winner is the one with the most points on their best 3 out of the 4 events.

Yesterday also doubled as the JFM (Jysk/Fynsk Mesterskab) sprint champs. Both of my runs were pretty good except for 1 control on each course I lost most of my time. On the first course (3.7km) I had a good route choice on the way to the 5th control, but then I hesitated and went down a path with an impassable hedge that I thought I could cross. It was a dumb mistake as the way I was already going would have been faster anyway. I lost 20-30 seconds. I also had a little bit of a bad route choice on the 8th control.

I finished my first course at about 6pm. My second start was at 7.34pm, so I didn't have so much time to recover. It was physically quite tough to run hard on the second course (3.5km, but the GPS watch says I ran 4.7km!). I lost alot of time on the first control (about 30 seconds). I didn't read my description and I assumed the control was on the corner of the building in the middle of the circle. It was actually right behind me tucked in the corned of the olive green, which was a hedge. At first I thought I was at a wrong building, so I went back out towards the road. Next I thought it was in the wrong place so I checked the next corner, then when I turned around I saw it. Lesson learnt. The rest of the course was ok. I took what looks like a strange route choice on the 9th control. The first bridge over the railways was also the route to the start so there were alot of people crossing the opposite way. I only lost a few seconds though. After that I only lost a few seconds at a couple of controls in the circle. Just tired I guess.

I ended up in second place in both races behind Rene Rokkjær and second overall. Maja won the womens grade though :)

DNF at SM

2009-05-09T19:19:00.010+03:00

Last weekend was Sjælland Mesterskab (Zealand Championships) in Grib Skov just North of Copenhagen. Saturday was the relays. Unfortunately Odense didn't have a team so I just ran around the longest open course. I only ran at 90% to try and have a perfect run, but I still made some dumb mistakes. I think I was too relaxed. When I am running at 90% I have picked up a bad habit of only concentrating at 90% aswell :)

Sunday was the SM long distance race. I was unofficial because I am living on the wrong island, but I still wanted to have a good run against the Rasmus's. I started really well. I felt quite fast and only made a few small mistakes. Just after the 8th control disaster struck. I was jumping over the small ditch after the control and a sharp stick went right through the bottom of my shoe (Inov8 Talon 212). Luckily it didn't pierce the skin. (This is the 2nd time I have had this problem. It happened to me with my Inov8 mudroc 280's when I was warming up in Hungary last year... I think the rubber they use is a bit too soft and thin for rough dry forest. I wonder has this happened to anyone else or am I just that unlucky???) I tried to pull it out, but the rubber had squeezed tight around it. I took the shoe off and spent the next 6 minutes or so fighting to get it out. I had to watch the 2 starters behind me go past. Finally I managed to push the stick into the shoe using another stick and pull it out from the inside. I raced through the next 2 controls and caught up to Michael Sørensen who had started 6mins behind me. We ran through the rest of the course together. We were running pretty fast, I was struggling with the pace a little as I had run so hard to catch him up again. On the way to the 26th control I took a different route choice. When trying to jump over a ditch I fell in up to my neck in slimy black mud/water. It really freaked me out, any deeper and I probably wouldn't have come back up. It was the last straw. I got the next control then walked back along the road to the finish. I missed out the last 1-2km loop and DNF'd. After vigorously wiping the mud off myself and bathing in my cologne I saw Michael Sørensen come in to finish in first place. On a day where just about everything seemed to go wrong, I at least had the consolation that I had been running well enough to win if things had gone a bit differently :)

DM Sprint...

2009-04-26T13:30:00.005+03:00

Well... My dreams of winning outright didn't come true. I tried to replicate the preparation that I had for the JK sprint. I even wore the same socks. The start of my race went well. I was nearly tripped up on the way to the first. There was a control quite close on the same type of feature which was a little distracting. I managed to keep my head to the 4th control (I was leading here). Here there were other controls on nearby trees so after I punched I checked the code on my descriptions and saw it didn't match... It took me a little while to realise I had checked the 3rd code instead of the 4th. I think I let this little hesitation get under my skin. I only lost 4 seconds but I was running damn fast on the next leg and accidently missed the best route choice. I was still in a rush on the 7th. I went to the left because I saw the gap on the map. When I got there I could see no such gap. I wasn't calm enough to see that the green and the wall there were actually passable. I assumed it was olive green so I ran right around. To the 8th I can see from my GPS watch that I had totally lost my head. I ran full tit and then was about to jump some bushes but then stopped because it was olive green. Then I proceeded to run at 2min 30sec per km pace to the control. On the 9th I ran straight thinking there was a gap in the building, but nope. Then I ran back around the long way to the control. Now I could see Emil Folino Nielsen had caught me up 1min. Then and there I kind of lost motivation to push myself. I dawdled around the rest of the course having a few problems with closely placed controls. Emil never caught me right up, but Claus Bloch who had started 2min behind caught me at the 19th control. We both messed up the 2nd to last control (along with the entire elite field). I assume everyone had the same problem as me. I saw a control there when I was at my 12th control and figured it was my 20th. I'm glad I checked the code because our control was in the same place on the other side of the castle wall. I don't agree with this type of course planning. It seems in a lot of places the course planners were trying to trick the competitors into mis-punching. I pretty sure there are rules about how closely controls can be placed, especially when they are on the same feature. Of course you should check your control codes, but you shouldn't have to when you are punching a control in the middle of your control circle. If I had been running hard in the end I would probably be crying along with the rest* of the Danish elite team who had nearly all mis-punched.

*Christian Christensen, Rasmus Djurhuus, Rasmus Søes, Christian Nielsen, Mikkel Lund.

Tiomila

2009-04-23T13:07:00.010+03:00

That was possibly the most nervous I have ever been before an orienteering race. My first ever Tiomila. Running first leg for Pan Århus. The minutes being counted down before the start felt like an eternity. Finally we had the call '15 seconds' then only 4 or 5 seconds later the gun went off. With one big 'BANG' I had 400 guys prematurely coming up my ass (in a totally hetrosexual way). The first kilometre was a blur to me, partially due to post traumatic stress but also from the intense speed. All I could hear were airhorns and people screaming. I just had to concentrate on not falling down and not getting stuck in the bottle neck of the start chute. (It's hard to put the 10mila start experience into words. This video from last years 10mila captures it pretty well - you have to skip through to about 10min though).

10 MILA- orienteering race
by Petzl-crew

The first leg was a nice long one. I chose to take the track all the way around to the right. I came into the first control at the front of my group. We had been fanging it the whole way. I was a couple of seconds behind a few guys who had gone a bit straighter. I finally started to relax as I thought I had got into a good position for the rest of the race. As we crossed the main road again I realised I was wrong. I was a little demoralised to see 30 or 40 odd runners infront of us. They had had a much shorter forking on the first. The next control was a mess for me. I think I just got caught up in they mayhem of so many people pushing throught the marsh that I forgot to read my map. I came to the wrong split. I stood there for half a minute trying to work out where I was. It was pretty hard with lights heading in every direction. I headed back to the stone wall that I didn't remember crossing and I clicked. I had lost 2 minutes atleast.

The rest of the course I was just running so fast trying to pass people when there was room. At the first radio control I had caught up to 109th place, just over 2mins behind the leaders. At the 4th radio after 10km I had crawled up to 39th place only 49sec behind the leaders. At night in the Swedish forest I had no idea how far I was behind. My only indicator was that it was becoming harder and harder to pass people. On the way to my 21st control I ran past the other split control (#50) just as the lead group had come out of it. Unfortunately my next 2 forkings were long ones. I lost close to a minute on the 22nd control from route choice and then missing the control. I should've stayed left to avoid the marsh like I had planned, but I got dragged down there by some lights who had another split. The second to last control was a 1min nightmare aswell. I should've avoided the green stripes. It was extremely rough. I just got stuck behind some guys and we were all hardly moving. I passed a couple of guys in the finish to come in in 54th, 4min16sec down from first place.

I was a little disappointed with my run at first. But looking at it afterwards I realised it wasn't too bad. I had all of the longer forkings except for the second control, but I had decided to go to the longer one anyway!! I also made up alot of time on the leaders. I was 3rd fastest on my forkings. Minus my mistake at the second I would have been fastest. I think with my lack of experience in night orienteering, and in Swedish terrain, I can safely say it was a very good run.

Our team did quite well throughout the rest of the relay. Flemming Jørgensen ran well on second leg bringing our team up to 37th place. Rasmus Kragh bumped our team up to 31st place after running well on the 18km night leg with no forkings. It was a little bit downhill from there. We finished in 50th place in the end. First Danish team!! 2 places ahead of Spring Cup OK. Not as good as our 30th place last year. But top 50 is still really good :)

JK 2009

2009-04-16T14:44:00.023+03:00

Blockhead

Last weekend Maja and I headed to the UK for the Jan Kjellström International Orienteering Festival. It was the first time I had been to the UK. It wasn't as bad as I expected. I think everytime I've seen Britain on TV it has been overcast, but the weather was great! Perhaps I've been watching too much Coronation street! It was a nice trip. We flew over Wednesday evening to Birmingham and drove to Sheffield. We stayed there with our good buddies Bryn and Piret. Thursday we went for a run in the Peak district, it seemed like a great training area. Friday morning we left Sheffield super early to travel up to Newcastle. It wasn't such a long trip, but we heard that the traffic could be really nasty at easter. We arrived about 6 hours before the sprint race... oops. On the up side we got to do some sightseeing. We saw a cool castle and I got to eat my first meat pie since I left NZ (steak and kidney). It wasn't the same :( The hours finally wore down and it was time for the sprint. I wasn't feeling super fresh before the start. I had been training pretty hard during the week. Once I started running I was fine though. I was really focused on the orienteering side of things. I wanted a good run as it was only 2 weeks untill DM sprint. I only lost a little time on the 13th and the 17th due to bad route choice. I made 1 mistake on the 25th where I was too busy figuring out the route choice for the next leg and ran right past the control. That was only 10 seconds though. I heard the commentators as I was running into the finish saying that I had won. I was stoked, and a little surprised. There were some fast guys in M21E that I would've thought I needed a perfect run to beat. Alright! My first gold of the season!

That evening I got to see my Dad and my little brother for the first time in a year. They were in London on their way to the world schools championships in Spain and decided to drive several hours for 1 days competition and to see me!

Saturday was a world ranking middle distance race at Kyloe Hills. I felt ok warming up but as soon as I got into the terrain I felt really tired. I tried to push myself but had to walk a little uphill by only the 5th control! The terrain was really rough though, so I guess I had a little

The old man

bit of an excuse. It was really green and there were alot of fallen branches and thinnings everywhere. I made a small mistake on the 4th control. My biggest mistake was on the 7th. I thought the control was in a re-entrant. I went right by the control and ran down into a valley and saw the gigantic cliff and was totally confused. I lost over 2mins. I had seen Matt Crane pass me at that point so I pushed to catch him up and got really tired on the way to the 15th and sort of gave up on the chase. It turns out I passed him again when he mucked up the 9th control. At the 15th I saw Oli Johnson coming up behind me so I pushed through the last controls and got a little bit away from him. I got a 7th place. I was ok with that. I was aiming for top 10, but I think on another day I could have won.

Sunday (WRE long distance) wasn't the best. I think I was just too tired from pushing hard the last 2 days. I made alot of mistakes. I started to get cramps jumping downhill through the heather on the way to the 15th control. I got to the 19th control and was tempted to DNF. But I managed to cruise around the rest trying not to totally cramp up by having a couple of dirty waters at the drinks station. I was miles slower than the winners. I lost much more time from being slow than from mistakes so it was hard to compare. I got some pretty good splits after I had slowed down though, so I guess my navigation was still ok.

DM Nat

2009-04-16T12:57:00.013+03:00

Well this post is a bit late, but oh well. The other weekend was Danish Night champs. It was my first proper night orienteering race. By proper I mean In a forest where you can see 5m as opposed to in NZ farmland where you can see forever. The course wasn't as tricky as I had expected. There was a hell of alot of track running. Technically my race was pretty good. I lost between 90sec-2mins on the first control from bad routechoice and then a little mistake near the control. I was just too happy to see another control on a vegetation boundry. I also had a bad route choice on the way to the 7th and the 17th. So I lost about 3mins in total from mistakes. I had had a very busy day organising a B grade event and started to feel it on about the 9th control so I had to slow down a bit for the second half of the course. I got some really bad cramps near the end of the course and had to walk a bit. Infact, I struggled to even walk in the open from 33-34. I totally locked up going down the green hill to the last control and had a nasty fall. I got a pretty cool gash up the side of my leg, but it was quite annoying. I think I could've had a very good time. I was still pretty pleased with 5th place though :) I was pretty happy that I could navigate alright at night. It will help my confidence for Tiomila this weekend.

Spring Cup

2009-03-30T15:22:00.009+03:00

Saturday was my first big international race of the season. It was a very strong field in the elite class with a lot of top guys, 190 runners in total. Judging from the names in the start list I aimed for a top 25 placing so I was pretty satisfied with coming 25th!!! I made about 3-4 minutes mistakes throughout the course which means I could've been placed in the top 10. I was starting 1 minute behind Daniel Hubmann so I was praying he would make a big mistake in the beginning, but no such luck! The first 2 controls were very vague and the vegetiation was quite hard for me to read. I lost about 90 seconds total in these 2 controls. Looking at winsplits you can see that alot of runners had a much worse time in the beginning than I did. I was caught up at the 7th control by Jamie Stevenson and Scott Fraser (1min and 2min behind me). Mats Haldin was also running with them. He had started 4min infront of me but must have made some bad mistakes in the beginning. I thought atleast we can run fast in a pack for the rest of the course, but over the next 2 conrtols they completely monstered me! They were running much faster than I could handle! I had officially been dropped. I was quite annoyed and was quite slow through the next couple of controls whilst my body recovered from its unexpected beating. The rest of the cousre was ok, with only a few small mistakes here and there. I managed to catch Mats Haldin again at the 18th control and ran with him through the last few.

I was disappointed that I couldn't keep up with the speedy guys, but it was really fast terrain. I think at the moment I am more suited to steeper rougher terrain. I know I am running faster than last year, so my training is working. It should be just a matter of time and not getting injured untill I can keep up with the guns!

Nord Jysk 2 Dages

2009-03-17T16:07:00.010+02:00

I have mixed feelings about my performance this weekend. Physically my runs were very good. However, my orienteering was shockingly bad. The first day was at Tornby. It was a bit green in some places and had some intricate sand dune areas. The map looked a bit like Woodhill in New Zealand, but in person it was a different monster. I found the map very hard to understand out on the beach. There was alot of detail, but nothing looked like I expected it to. My plan was to take it easy and make no mistakes (save myself for the next day). I lasted about 5 controls. I made a small mistake at the 5th, then I was off running like crazy again. I was with a couple of guys that I had caught up. We made small mistakes on some controls where I wasn't reading my map enough. Somehow on the way to the 14th control I had let myself drop a little bit behind. I glanced at the leg and thought this is easy enough, just run straight to the track in the green. So I bolted after the 2 guys infront of me not caring to read my map. We ended up going way to far left and we got stuck in some green and I suddenly realised none of us knew where we were. After eventually relocating, we had lost about 3mins. Again, I start running like crazy. The next 2 controls were fine but then I navigated to the 10th control on the wayy to the 17th. I saw it was the wrong number so I checked the next depressions. Then I saw those guys passing me again, but I was sure the control was back further. Eventually I clicked, swore heavily, and again started running like crazy. I made some small mistakes on the rest of the course but it wasn't too bad. I lost 8mins all together, so I was very surprised to see that I was in 2nd place. I guess everyone had just managed to make more mistakes than me.
Sunday was at Uggerby. It was even worse than the day before. I was fine on the way to #1 until I hit the vegetation boundary just before the contol. It was very distinct so I thought I had somehow run all the way to the track (I should know better by now, It's happened countless times since I've been in DK). I mucked around for a little bit and then clicked. I didn't let it get to me and ran well through the next part of the course. I lost some time at the 12th where I missed the small track going into the conrtol. I guess I was just running too fast. I mucked up the 13th. It was much greener than I expected, but I thought I was right going into the control. I should've taken the main track to the left, it would have been much safer. My hugest mistake was on #17. I decided to run hard along the beach and come up at the track. I came up at what I thought was the track and then proceeded to search for the control in the comletely wrong area. I climed a hill to work out where I was then I still lost time in the control circle. About 4mins all up, Jeeez. There were only some small mistakes in the rest of the course. All up I lost about 10mins. I can't remember the last time I made that many mistakes!

So, I am happy with my new speed in the terrain, but I thing that is my problem. I have to consciously tell myself when I need to slow down going into the controls. Also to not be distracted by other runners. I will work very hard on these things at my race this weekend then hopefully I will be more confident for spring cup next week! :P

PS. Sorry about the maps. I kept forgetting to start my watch, and our scanner isn't working so they're just photos :S

Hallandsstafatten + Hallandspremiæren

2009-03-11T22:34:00.005+02:00

I traveled with my club (Pan Århus) to Halland in the south of Sweden on the weekend. The idea was to get some good training in before Tiomila. On the Friday night we had a night race. My run wasn't very good. I made about 5mins of mistakes, mainly from not using my compass enough. I have to get used to night orienteering in forest. So far I've only really tried it in open farmland in NZ. It's much more difficult when the visibility is so low.
Saturday was Hallandspremiæren long distance race. I was using this race as training, trying to concentrate on my navigation. The terrain was really rough. There was a lot of fallen branches and thinnings everywhere. It was also really muddy, so it was very difficult to run. It seemed best to take the tracks, but there had been a lot of forest work going on, so some of the tracks had been turned into squishy mud pools by some big machines. I went well in the beginning of the course. My first real mistake came at the 5th control where I didn't read the control circle properly. I lost a little time on the way to 9 where I got a bit disorientated and fell in an icy pool of mud. Number 18 was my biggest mistake. I lost 2½mins coming into the control... I was using the green vegetation to my left which was a really bad idea :S All up I lost about 5mins, I was in 5th place. The winner Marcus Millegård must have run like a demon. He was 11min in front of 2nd place and 14mins in front of me.
Sunday was Hallandsstafetten (splits are from 1st and last leg runners - 8.5km - with the same forking). It was snowing. I ran first leg as practice for Tiomila. I was with the leaders until the 10th control where I got confused by all the forest work tracks that weren't on the map. I wondered at the time why I was the only one heading in a different direction (usually a sign that something is wrong). I lost about 90sec but I ran hard and caught up to a group about 1min behind the 2 leaders. I totally lost my mind on the long route choice leg to #15. I wanted to run just around the left of the quarry, but for some reason I decided to run way up a massive hill through some green. The rest of the course was ok. I pulled out a big 330m finish sprint and came in in 9th place, about 2mins behind the leaders, then threw up everywhere. I had to quickly get to the showers before I got hypothermia!
It was a good weekend. I definitelty think I can run fast enough to keep up in Tiomila. The terrain there should be a bit more open than at Halland so it should suit me.

Orienteering Season Begins

2009-03-01T18:19:00.005+02:00

Today was the first event in the 2009 Danish orienteering season. It was a B class event... whatever that means.. I think Danish championships are A class. The first thing I have to say is the map was very green - a lot of blackberry and other crap everywhere, even in the white areas. My run was not so great, I made some really retarded mistakes. On the way to the 2nd control I was going dead straight then I saw another runner that had started in-front of me and I thought he had already got the control. He sure fooled me :P I lost about a minute there. I wasn't able to catch him again until the 6th control. I ran pretty smoothly for the next half of the course. Physically I felt quite bad, probably from the tough week of training this week, but looking at my gps route I was running around 3min kms in the terrain at some points (where it was a bit open) and along the tracks. I lost time at numbers 15 and 16. I had some trouble making sense of the contours. At first I thought #15 was in a re-entrant. I'd say I lost 30seconds, but there was a lot of hesitating there, so maybe close to 1 minute. Number 17 was terrible, I didn't see the track on my right at first and thought I had to go straight. There was so much crap all the way from the control that I was going in every direction, then I realised my mistake and bailed to the track. I think my exit from #24 wasn't the greatest. It could have been faster to run straight down to the track, but even the light green on the map is pretty harsh so I'm not too sure. The last loop was fun. The forest was a bit more open than the rest of the course. I made a real hash of the last one. Again I misread the map. I thought that the control was on an earth-bank in a re-entrant, but it was up on the spur. I over-shot it by quite a bit and lost 80 seconds. In total I lost around 5mins. Hopefully I will be more focused on the more important upcoming races, 5mins is too much in an international event :)

Carnage Hill... worth the fun???

2009-03-01T00:05:00.008+02:00

Carnage Hill (NZ's main tourist attraction) was the finish chute for a competition held in Woodhill forest in New Zealand in around 2004 (If I remember correctly). It is so named for all of the carnage seen that day... novice sandy face-plants... elite pile-ups... veteran barrel rolls... and a lot of geriatric gumbiness.
The organizers of the event so enjoyed the days' knee slappers that they organized a post race finish sprint competition (with Sport Ident) among the runners with the fastest finish splits from the day (I'm the one in the blue and yellow shirt)... I think it was won by our very own NZ team member Chris Forne... but I could be wrong, my memory is not the best... However, I don't have to remember the antics of that day, the bloopers are permanently burnt into my retinae.
Digging up this video got me to wondering... was making a crazy video for others really worth the relentless slaughtering of my body?? Could I put my knee problems of the last few years down to carnage hill??? Or perhaps from the other unnecessary sand dune jumping done for cheap thrills over the years??

Hmmmm... I think the pain is more likely from running over 100kms week after week. I'd prefer it was from that, rather than having to admit to myself that just for a few minutes of 'hang time' in my youth, my whimsical actions will have me shuffling round the M50 courses with a zimmer-frame while I watch my more conservative rivals lope on by.

... I reckon that when they get around to having WOC in NZ with the carnage hill finish I'll do it all again :)

WRE Middle and Long Distance - Spain

2009-02-25T18:08:00.010+02:00

I said I would write about my WRE, but I don't really want to. It was a shocker of a run for me, and the most annoying part is that if I took off my 7mins of mistakes I would've got some pretty good WR points :) I have a sack full of excuses, but I can honestly only put it down to careless orienteering and possibly running a little too fast. The map was in a really cool area. I felt a bit shocked in the beginning of the course, it was a lot different to the coastal sand dune terrain I had been flying through all week. The ground was very hard and covered in loose rocks the whole way. I felt pretty good running, I can see my strength training is starting to have an effect. It was very tough on my ankles though, perhaps I should be doing some extra strenth stuff for them. My first big farkarp came on the second control, I planned to run down into the terraced area early and run up the erosion gully to the control, somehow I just missed it and continued right up the re-entrant. It was annoying, I knew I had missed the control but my insecurities made me continue 'just to make sure'. The 3rd control went well, I took a nice fast route choice. The 4th control - what a nightmare. I haven't made a mistake like this in years. I saw on the GPS routes on the website that this mistake wasn't made just by me. You can see on the map where I crossed my line out, that is where I planned to run, and where I thought I had run! Somehow I actually ran around the lower hill on that spur and when I hit the first track I thought I was at the second. I desperately tried to make everything match but then eventually admitted to myself that I was wrong, stood still for 20seconds, cursed heavily and sprinted to the control. Continuing to sprint through the 5th control and and down to the 6th could've paid off but I knew in the back of my mind that whatever shit was left was also about to hit the fan. I totally missed the control and realised where I was and then ran back up to the control, didn't see it behind a bush (sneaky spaniards) and missed it a second time! After this I decided to calm down and had a few smooth controls. I had a small mistake on the 10th where I was distracted by another runner who had passed me and I caught up again. Number 15 was a mess. I ran right to the middle of the control circle and didn't see the cliff, then ran around for a while thinking I was wrong before heading back into the green junk to find it right where it should be. I raced around the last loop with William Lind which was quite refreshing, after the shocker I had had I wish he had started 2mins behind me instead of 6!! It's a nice feeling now to know I can keep up with the best guys in the terrain. I've Just got to get the confidence and experience to do it by myself, then I'll be away laughing. I'm looking forward to some good relay 1st legs this year though :)

The long distance went much better. I made about 2mins of mistakes in the beginning, mostly from standing in the control circle and not seeing the control. But things were much better once I got into the longer route choice legs (#9 onwards). I was really happy with my route choice to number 16, it got me a pretty quick split which would've been much quicker if it wasn't such a wet day to be jumping down slippery rock faces. I embarked on the longish leg number 25 at the same time as Klaus Schgaguler from Italy, he went left along the tracks. I beat him easily to the control, but I lost time, I think close to a minute from not running straight at the beginning and not running hard. I was hesitant the whole way, worrying myself and checking his route choice to see if he would be faster. It's very easy for negative thoughts to take over in a long distance in the rain when you're beginning to get tired. I have to be more positive and confident. So, overall I lost about 4mins (19 was a bad route choice, dead straight was much better). I finished in 6th place, less than 4mins behind. A good run for me. I don't consider myself a long specialist, mostly because of my previous problems with cramp and fatigue. But hopefully I can sort them out, it looks like my weak discipline could become my strength :D

Training Camp in Spain

2009-02-21T18:23:00.028+02:00

What an awesome week! It was so good to escape the dreary danish weather for a little while and learn how to read a map again. The program was pretty full on, so naturally the week went really quickly.
First up we had a long distance race inland from the coast. There were a few good runners there, I didn't run too hard, maybe 85% and I had little trouble with the map. For instance, I didn't know that you were allowed to run through the orchards which affected my first big route choice leg, and later on, number 10 I took a route choice on some tracks which just seemed to disappear, leaving me a little lost. But other than that it was ok. I think I was 10mins down on Mats Troeng, and I got to run the last part of the course with Johan Runesson.
In the afternoon, we ran the mens middle distance A final course from JWOC in 2002. I didn't realise untill afterwards though, I kept thinking... this seems really familiar (as over 2mins, I ranI ran in the B-final on the same map in 2002). I made a big mistake on the 2nd control... into the control circle and couldn't see the tapes with the SI unit tied to it (this happened a fair few times throughout the week :D) I lost a little time on the 6th control and 80sec on the 8th. I ran about 80%, but it felt really good to run in sand dunes again... the closest thing to NZ since I left :) My time was just over 27min. Johan Runesson beat the winning time from JWOC in 2002 by 7sec, I think he did 22mins for 4.6km, quite impressive considering the map had changed a little and he had ran a long distance in the morning.
Eat. Sleep.
Early the next morning we had a tennis-o training. This was a new one for me, but a really cool excercise. We ran in groups of 4, there were several short courses and we took different turns at starting first with 15sec start intervals between us. The first to the finish gets 4 points, 2nd - 3, 3rd - 2 and 4th- 1. I finished first on all of the small courses, except 2nd on one of them. Its a really good excercise to get your orienteering speed up, and for running with others.
The afternoons training was again new to me, I think a really unique type of training. We ran in the technical sand dunes on a round, contour only map with no north lines and we were't allowed a compass (though it wouldn't do you much good on that map). Even the small depressions had been rotated so you couldn't work out where north was. I had a complete shocked on the first control.... I made a huge parallel error and floundered around for about 10mins. It was a really fun excercise though (once I decided to start concentrating :P)
That evening (dusk) I ran the night training without a light. It was really hard, because the SI units just had grey reflector pipe with them, which is really hard to see without a light shining on them.. It was ok though.
Eat. Sleep.

Next morning we drove up to Alicante for a city sprint. We started in a pit type thing in an old fortress, so we couldn't see where everyone ran. It was designed to be really technical... and it was!!!!! It was almost painful trying to pick a routechoice... I just wanted to jump all the walls, it was fun though. I ran ok, until the 9th (and probably the easiest control). Once again, I didn't see the tapes (or the small clearing) and mucked around for a minute and a half. On the way to the 11th control I headed straight down the hill and then jumped off a wall before realising it was meant to be impassable, so I had to disqualify myself. I was pretty happy with my run though, I would have won over some really good runners if it wasn't for my mistake on the 9th.
In the afternoon, we headed to a mountainous inland map called Penarubia, this looked familiar again... I think our NZ team went training here in 2002, or maybe just for a run... I think I remember a taking a photo of Dave Stewart's ass above a dangerous overhang at the top of the map. This training sucked for me (just my opinion)... the ground was so rocky (real ankle busters), and it was so steep. I think my mind was really tired on this one... I navigated to the 4th instead of the 3rd, I spent a lot of time hunting for the controls in the circle, especially the 10th because it was up too high. Then on the way to the 15th, I forgot where I was going and went up way to high. When I realised, and looked down into all the green crap I had to run in for the next 3 controls I decided I would rather keep running over the mountain and back to the finish.
Eat. Sleep.

Wednesday morning. This was probably my best training of all. We had a mixed relay with others from the camp. We had a mass start with all the fast guys, (you can see me in the video above starting on the far left running in black boxer shorts because I accidently forgot my o-pants) there were some good ones too - Mats Troeng, Johan Runesson, Gernot Kerschbaumer, William Lind, Klaus Schgaguler and more... I was winning untill the 6th control where came out to the beach and ran to the wrong hill.. I think I only lost half a minute but was passed by about 15 guys.. I managed to claw my way back throughout the rest of the course and pass all the guns.. I was leading in the finish but was out-sprinted by William Lind. Like I said, I was really happy with my run.. If I can run like that this year at WOC I should be able to get our relay team off to a kick-ass start :)
I ran a night training that night with my tiny LED light. It went well for me I think, considering I could see about 2 metres infront of me the whole time. I didn't make any really big mistakes, I could see it would be really easy to get lost when the map was contour only with no north-lines.
Eat. Sleep.
Now we had a forest sprint which I had been looking forward to, but I totally made a mess of. I got distracted by another runner on the way to the 2nd control and lost time, and then on the 4th control I wanted to run along the fence, but this was gone!! Oh well... then later I lost time on the 6th, just standing in the circle I failed to see the control buried under pine needles :)
That afternoon we had camp champs, a one-man relay with butterflies. I was leading at the first conrtol... but perhaps I was going a bit too fast because I muffed up the 2nd control, one of those annoying mistakes where you are going right but you start doubting yourself... I lost a minute or so, and finished about a minute behind the winners... So a pretty good run as I was by myself on my loops.
Eat. Sleep.
In the morning, I ran a simplification excercise with various features taken off the map using ocad. It was mostly ok, except for not seeing the tapes on the 1st control and thinking I was going to the 13th when I was actually going to the 12th. haha! Straight after (on the same map) I ran the 'cutillas' mini sprint race. It went well except for a bad bearing on the 9th where I lost close to 90sec... damn... I would've been close to the record time too.
Eat. Sleep.
Saturday and Sunday we had the WRE middle, then long distance. I will make another post with more about them when I get the maps sorted. The middle was a real shocker, I made about 7mins of mistakes (I think I had spent too much time running fast in the sand dunes all week :P). I think I finished in 30th place in a pretty strong field. (only 3mins behind Hubmann though) The long was much better.. I lost about 2 mins in the beginning of the course, but I ran well in the big routechoice legs and only lost maybe another 2mins max in the rest of the course. I finished 6th, 3mins behind the winner. Good enough for me at the moment :)
The camp officially finished on the friday, but we flew out monday evening so Maja and I took the optional 100controls training, with contour only and no north lines. I made a few mistakes, pretty good out of 100 controls. There were only white tapes wrapped around the trees at the control sites and some were missing... so most of the control circle mistakes that you can see on my gps route are because of that. I tried to beat 100mins for the 100 controls, but ended up just on 100mins... a nice ending to the week :)

PS. This post took me forever!

Flogged by Feebling Fever

2009-01-28T11:59:00.008+02:00

After months of training in this ridiculously cold, wet weather, I finally got beaten down. I guess you could say I'm 'under the weather', but that doesn't really make sense. Being under the weather is what made me sick.. now I'm indoors wrapped up trying to get rid of this cold. So it would make more sense to say I'm feeling 'stuck under a roof'. Meh...
Training was going very well, but nothing lasts forever. I was sick all of last week, I skipped both of my interval sessions and just jogged instead. I was feeling better on Saturday so decided to do a long distance race on Sunday. The race went pretty well, apart from some silly mistakes. Running-wise it was fine, 2hrs 8min in heavy moor-land with no cramps is a satisfying run for me :) Unfortunately, despite being wrapped up in layers of thermals and with gloves the 2 hours in the cold wet seemed to get the best of me. Monday I felt worse than I had felt the whole previous week - rest day 1. Again I had to skip my intervals on tuesday - rest day 2. Today my throat is not sore and I feel less congested, I will try for an easy 60-90min jog and some strength training, depending on how I feel. It's very important not to overtrain myself, especially when the season hasn't even started. I'm disappointed that I won't be 100% for the training camp (Pan-pop tour) this weekend, but I should be back on track for my WRE in Spain in a couple of weeks. This is much more important. So it looks like this will be an easy week of eating healthily, relaxing and chomping down some of the health pills sent to me by my loving parents. :D

More Winter Trainings :)

2009-01-15T20:32:00.011+02:00

Training is going well now. Im already starting to feel stronger and faster :D The local clubs have been taking turns at organising trainings every Saturday. There was an interesting one that you can see on the 'onsebakker' map. It was designed to help practicing planning ahead. There were several 'big' controls containing several little controls. You had to do the big controls in order, but you could take the smaller controls in any order you liked. It was a fun change, and I did find it really useful with my planning. The map without the title on it is 'Lungebjerge'. Maja and I went there for a training run on my birthday. I ran an old course of Klavs's as you can see. It was a really nice area, the forest was quite open so it was much faster than most of the other maps on Fyn. It was also sandy as opposed to the traditional 'mudbath' type maps around Odense. We will be organising a B grade event on this map in April. On a lighter note (or should I say heavier?) my body weight seems to have increased dramitically since the end of last season. Then I had an all time low of just under 60kg. Now I am bouncing around the forrest at a whopping 67kg. I can't seem to find and visible signs of chunkiness, perhaps gravity is just a bit angry at me :S I will be able to have a nice little break from all of these cold winter trainings in about 3 weeks time. Maja and I will head to Alicante in Spain (where I had JWOC in 2002). And by 'nice little break' I meant an intensive week long training camp with 2 trainings per day and a world ranking long distance event. The WRE will also double as one of my 'trial' runs because I will not make it back to NZ this year for the actual trial races. One of the main camp coaches will be Mats Troeng (a member of the Swedish national team). The 2x trainings a day and lectures at night should give me a good oing boost before coming into the next season :P You can read more about the camp and see some pics and maps of the terrain here: http://www.o-travel.com/traningscamp_alicante_en.htm

Winter Training

2008-12-27T20:07:00.004+02:00

With the winter festives nearly over, training is starting to build up again. I am now being coached by Klavs Madsen. He was previously in the Danish team and was national coach for the Danish team for some years, and has a phd in sports science.
I have a strength training program. I am training twice a week with OGF, the Odense athletics club, doing intervals and tempo runs. At the moment I am also doing long runs in nearby forests and terrain, and doing hill intervals. In January, as hunting season will be finished, I will start technical training once or twice weekly with Odense OK. I will also Travel to Århus once a month for relay trainings with my international club Pan Århus.
I will have a big program of races next year which I am looking forward to! With relays like Tiomila and Jukkola, the World games in Taiwan, and world cup races around Europe. I will post my race program on here later on.
The map here is from a training I ran with Tue Lassen, danish team member, on one of the training maps close to his family home. He was nearly 5 minutes faster than me with a perfect run. I was fairly pleased with my run, considering I made some careless mistakes (as you can see). Tue is in really good shape at the moment. It should be good to train together in Oslo if our plans to move there in August still go ahead.

Hillerød Sprint + Jættemilen

2008-11-14T19:10:00.004+02:00

Sorry it took all week, but here's the maps from last weekend. The sprint was ok. I was going well until about the 10th control (except for a small mistake on the 3rd where I didn't see the gap in the hedge on my map). Then I started making lots of stupid mistakes. I wasn't really tired, I was just running faster than I could read my map. It was kind of good in a way, it was nice to start feeling fast again :) I ended up in 9th place just over a minute behind the winner. I won 8 splits and lost at least 90 seconds, so should have been able to win. Just have to slow it down slightly next time :)
Jættemilen was a mission. I had a disastrous start.. because I missed it!! I was in a long toilet queue, I wasn't prepared to run the 25.1km course without getting down to race weight first. When I got out of the toilet I had less than a minute to go up the hill and grab my compass and SI card then go to the start, clear and check and then begin! I had no chance. I started about 20-30sec after the mass start. I was nearly sprinting for the first 6 controls trying to catch the leaders. I got in sight but then started to die. I decided to relax and just run my own race. I was really concentrating on my orienteering. I was by myself from about the 15th control until the 50th. I even caught up a few of the leaders near the end. I was very happy with my run. 54 controls and I only made a few small mistakes. I got some cramp in the last 5km, but not as bad as usual. I finished in 8th place in 2hours 27min. The winner did 2hours 7min. So I was a bit behind. I think though that running by myself for that long and still doing 5min50sec/km is alright!
Sorry if the Jættemilen maps look a bit dodgy, I had put them on an angle and join the second ones together because they wouldn't fit in the scanner!

Update + some pics!

2008-11-06T19:31:00.013+02:00

The last weeks training hasn't been the greatest. I had an unscheduled rest day on Tuesday when I was supposed to do intervals. I just felt too tired and the weather was a bit depressing. I think the hard training week in Hungary finally caught up with me :) I did manage to get a nice strength training session in though. It was much nicer being inside, it's pretty cold here now, but I know its only going to get worse. It's dark at 4.30pm which is going to make finding the motivation to train difficult in the next few months. I'm sure I'll manage :)
The photos here are from Hungary. The top one is the Uni Hotel which will be the accomodation for WOC next year. The rooms are pretty nice, much better than in Czech republic this year. There are nicer big rooms with double beds and leather lounge suite. There are also smaller rooms with 2 single beds, but theyre also an quite cozy. Next photo is just of some of the terrain. As you can see its very open with good visibility. I think come WOC time the visibility will be a little lower because the leaves will actually be on the trees. This will also make runability faster because you will be able to actually see those nasty little rocks, that are currently hidden under the leaves. The last photo is just a nice view of the finish from the long distance qualification race.
This weekend I've decided to have a crack at Jættemilen. It's a 25.1km mass start loops race, with common last loop. There's a good starting lineup as you can see: http://www.orientering.dk/ok%2D73/loeb/jm2008/
My plan is to stick it out with the leaders for as long as I can. If I don't have any problems with cramp then this should be to the end. If I do have to pull out it will be nice to get some relay practice under my belt. Ther is also a sprint in Hillerød on Saturday (the day before Jættemilen) with 1000kr for the winner. So hopefully I can pull out a good run :) The websites for Jattemilen and the sprint are:
http://www.orientering.dk/ok-73/loeb/jm2008
http://www.orientering.dk/fif/loeb/sprinten

Hungarian Training Camp 2008

2008-11-01T20:11:00.010+02:00

I spent last week in the mountains near Miskolc in Hungary preparing for next years World Champs. I have recently been injured so planned to use the time to take it easy and learn as much as I can about the terrain. But as usual I pushed it a bit and ran most of the trainings quite hard. I was making quite a few stupid mistakes on what seemed like fairly simple terrain. I will put that down to the lack of orienteering in the last few months. I struggled alot with the uphill running, living on Fyn in Denmark is defnitely not the place to be to prepare for WOC next year. It is as flat as a pancake here and I have already noticed a loss of muscle mass and strength in my legs. I think I will have to put in some serious strength training untill Maja and myself can (hopefully) move to Oslo early next year. I think I will try and get to some terrain atleast once a week in an attempt to keep myself running strongly.
A couple of the maps here are from our trainings. As you can see its fairly steep. The light green is very runnable but the dark green is hell. Also I learnt that it pays to avoid the stony ground, it slows you down immensely. Tamas - Kut is from Bukkfensik Cup. Controls 2 and 21 were placed wrongly, as you can see I pretty much lost my head after number 2. I had about 7mins mistakes on the whole course... Pretty shocking really.
Silica - L'adnica was a training in Slovakia (just over the border from Hungary, so still pretty relevant). I only made a stupid mistake not checking my compass on number 4. I thought I just had to run along the track and into the second depression, but I didnt notice the small track on the map which actually continued on for longer than it looks like... What a sucker! However, it was my favourite map from all the trainings. You can run pretty straight, but all the rounded features make it easy to change direction without realising it, so you have to be good with your compass.
Miskolc - Tapolca and Berekalja were the 2 sprint trainings we did. They were set in the same style as the WOC sprints will be i.e. Starting in the forest and coming down into the town/park. I was focused on going hard in the terrain part of the course because I thought it would be my weakness, but really I had no mistakes. I could have had a better route choice on Berekalja from 4-5 , but generally I am running well on all the short legs. I was quite pleased. My main focus for 2009 WOC will be sprint, folled by middle and relay. Apparently the WOC sprints wont be quite as steep as the trainings, but still I was struggling a little on the hills. I will have to do alot of strength work and some hill intervals next year.
I am most likely not going to be running the long distance at WOC anymore, atleast not untill I have sorted out my problems with cramp and fatigue. The Bukkszentkereszt map shows all the fun I will be missing out on next year! haha! Its so steep. WOC final is reportedly going to be 19km next year... They are getting longer and steeper by the year!

Well, thats it for my first post on this blog... don't expect them all to be that long!