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
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:
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!
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 :)
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.
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
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 :)
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 :)
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 :)
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.
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).
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 :)
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
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.
Hey hey!
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 :)
