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.
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 (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 :)
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
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 :)
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
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
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.
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!
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