Training Log Archive: Sandy

Not so sure about the workshop yesterday afternoon and what's planned for today. I'm not looking forward to it and sort of got sucked into doing something I don't really want to do. We'll see if it turns out better than I'm anticipating.

C • I hope it will be fun. What... 4

Hanging controls for today's practice.

Shopping in Oringen square is a blast. It's also very dangerous - as in easy to spend lots of money.

I talked to someone at the Noname booth and got the email address of someone who I can talk to after I get home about getting warmup suits for the club. The issue would be customs so it might be the case that we order them and then people going to Europe next summer pick them up ... or something like that. Otherwise they'll be really, really expensive. But I'll check into it now that I have the name and email of an actual person who it was promised speaks good English. So at least there's a possibility.

C • Nice. We always can send so... 1

One of the training courses at Oringen. We took a ski lift up to the top of the mountain and then orienteered up top for a while and then had to come down the ski slopes. The orienteering up top was lots of fun - wide open but hard to run since the ground is so hummocky. It was the equivalent of a sort of hard orange course but I didn't really understand that when I signed up; I went mostly for the distance I wanted to do. Mistakes were of the 10 second pausing to make sure variety. The legs down the ski slopes were not fun. Luckily only day 4 will have something like that I think.

I'll write more at some point, but the Academy is turning out to be pretty good. It's equal parts workshops, training and socializing and I've met some interesting orienteers from Turkey, Brazil and Chili. There are folks from Isreal and Japan and Ireland but I haven't had a chance to talk to them much yet. And of course Canada - I'm in a cabin with the 5 Canadians making language easy! The good part about the training in particular is that you can ask to have someone shadow you on a course or walk you through it or whatever and they've got a bunch of topnotch Swedish junior orienteers (Johan Runesson who won three golds and a silver at the most recent JWOC is one!) and very good adults who are willing to help in whatever way they can. I'd highly recommend it to others in the years to come.

We're off to a moose farm this morning and then more training.

C • Moose farm! 10

C • Academy 1

After the moose park visit we went to a close by map for more training. These are the Oringen model event maps and Hakan (Academy leader) just prints several copies of each of several courses and we can pick and choose what to do.

Today's map was absolutely fantastic terrain - just wide open and runnable parts with lots of contour and rock detail and then marshes and green patches that were still very runnable. But I just walked and talked with Eva Svensson (JWOC gold medalist in the sprint in 2007) and asked her about what she would be looking for on each leg and what information from the map she would be using and so on. She's injured so didn't want to run but I was happy to walk and just pick her brain and get used to the terrain. Unfortunately, she didn't think much of the actual Oringen courses would be on terrain quite as nice as that.

After lunch we talked a bit about the courses we ran on Thursday and some of the elite runners (Johan Runesson, Matt Speake) talked about what routes they would have taken and what they would have looked for.

This major reentrant that totally stymied me - it was just too steep for me to get down - wasn't worth more than something to check off on their route and they both said they'd just go straight. Not so helpful. But some other things they said were very helpful.

And apparently we will all get individual feedback in the evening after each of the first four stages of Oringen if we want it. And there are some "lectures" planned for the evenings with some elites (Gueorgiou one night and Matthias Merz another!)

The academy turns out to have a training session every day and today we trained on one of the maps that was featured on the Oringen website thing about how to orienteer in the mountains. It was great fun and I did fine for the first hour or so which was mostly up the hill. Towards the end after doing quite a bit of downhill I was tired enough to start making errors - not reading the map well and not having good plans. Something to keep in mind for next week.

The woods - and even the open mountain tops - are tough running and I really did mostly walking. I love the terrain though - the ground is nice and soft with hardly any rocks or stuff on the ground so my knees are fine but it's very uneven and hummocky so just physically tough to run in sort of like unpacked sand: easy on the knees, tough on the legs.

My course lengths range from just over 3km to just over 4km and I will be very happy if I manage to do each of the 5 days in under an hour. The walk to the start and the walks back and forth to the bus will add an extra 5 or more km each day so I won't be lacking for exercise!

The trip to Sweden was uneventful and I spent yesterday walking around Stockholm. Today I traveled up to Salen. The good news is I found some wireless; the bad news is it's not in the cabins, it's outside and it's raining! Wonder if they'll have more once Oringen actually starts.
'

C • cool 3