Pre World Cup races in New Zealand and infection in my thigh

The last four days of 2012 I spent running the Auckland Pre-Oceania as preparation to the World Cup races held the coming week.

The first race was a sprint held in on Roskill Campus in Auckland. I did an OK performance, except a 15 seconds time loss to the 8th control, because I didn't see the control flag behind a wall. My result was a 4th place, 29 seconds behind William Lind.

The three last races were held in Woodhill Forest, North West of Auckland. In the first two of them I was running in easy speed as training, but in the last one I was pushing harder. I did an OK race, but had some smaller mistakes. My result was an 8th place, almost 4 minutes behind Olav Lundanes.

I have uploaded maps from all the pre races in my DOMA and pictures from my first week in New Zealand.

New Years Eve was celebrated with runners from New Zealand, Denmark and a few other countries playing cricket and barbecuing in Greg and Claire Flynn’s place North of Auckland.

The last days have unfortunately been far from how I had planed. At the first pre race in forest I got a thorn in my right thigh. That’s quite normal for an orienteering runner, and after the race I thought I was able to squeeze it out with my nails, and it felt fine the following day.

On the 1st January I felt some pain when I was running, and during the day I became more and more swallowed and red in the area around where I had got the thorn. With a needle I was able to take out another thorn, and in the evening I also started with penicillin after talking to the doctor of the Norwegian team.

The next morning it was even more swallowed, and I had problems to walk, so I went to a local doctor. She said I had got a serious infection, and opened the area where I had got the thorn, and was able to take out some more small thorn pieces. The last 3 days I have got drips with penicillin (intravenous) in addition to stronger tablets, and it will hopefully kill the infection.

The infection is now less aggressive in the area where I got the thorn, but have spread to a bigger part of my thigh. Today I took ultrasound, and it looks like it’s not any more pieces of thorn left, so that’s good to know. I am still not able to walk, and will probably have to skip the first World Cup race on Sunday. So at the moment I am mainly lying in my bed waiting to get rid of the infection, so I can start running again.

Hong Kong Championships

On my way to New Zealand (where I will run World Cup I January) I stopped 3 days in Hong Kong. The main goal for the stay was to split up the long travel, but it was also nice to see the city and participate in the Hong Kong Annual Orienteering Championships, that included World Ranking Events in both Sprint and Middle Distance on the 25th and 26th December.

The Sprint was held in the Police College on the south part of Hong Kong Island. I did a quite stable performance, and finished with the best time. But I soon realized that I had skipped the 14th control, since I hadn’t seen it on the map during the race, and I was disqualified.

The Middle distance was held in a hilly forest area in Tai Tong, North West of Hong Kong City. Most of the forest was very bushy, as you can see on the map, but it was nice to run in the “white forest”. I did a quite good race, and was able to win in front of Will Critchley and Dag Steinar Ragvin. Helen Palmer won the women’s class both days.

It was nice to visit the areas around the city in connection with the orienteering races, but also to stay in the inner city some days. Hong Kong is a cool place to be, with a combination of Chinese and Western culture, and I would like to come back later if I have the possibility.

Picures from Hong Kong.

Trondheim – Oslo – Stockholm – Hong Kong – New Zealand

At the moment I’m on my way to New Zealand, where I will spend a whole month, including running the World Cup races the second week of January. But I can start with a short summary of what I have been doing during the autumn, since I have not been updating this blog too often.

After I came home from the PWT in China I have spent most of my time in Stockholm. Since I hoped to be selected to run the World Cup in New Zealand I decided to end last season early. In the end of September and beginning of October I took a few weeks with less training, and more focus on my work and other social activities. From the middle of October I have been training well and without any problems.

In the beginning of November I spent 10 days on a private training camp in the South of Europe, including races and trainings in Barcelona, Primiero and Venezia.

I the beginning of December I was one week home in Norway. The first part of the week I spent in Trondheim visiting my family and fiends. I had planed to do some skiing, but it was unfortunately not enough snow, so instead I got some nice long runs in Strindamarka and Bymarka.

In the weekend it was planed a training camp with the National Team close to Alborg in Denmark, with similar coastal terrain as it will be in first race in the World Cup in New Zealand. But because it was too much snow in Denmark to get good technical orienteering training, the camp was moved to Oslo, with more focus on physical training. We got some good training, including track interval, a sprint race and a 3 hour long run in Nordmarka.

When I came back to Stockholm it was a lot of snow, and it was nice conditions for skiing both on Lidingö and other places. Last week I did a 7 day long interval block, with in total 10 high intensity sessions. Because of the snow I decided to do most of the training indoor, with 7 sessions on track, 2 on treadmill (uphill) and one with sprint orienteering. Hopefully the tough training will give my shape a peek to the World Cup races in beginning of January.

Now I’m sitting on Moscow Airport, waiting for my connection flight to Hong Kong, where I will stay 3 days before I continue to New Zeeland. The main goal for the stop in Hong Kong is to split up the long travel to New Zealand, but it will also be nice to see the city. The Hong Kong Annual Orienteering Championships, that is includes World Ranking Events in both Sprint and Middle Distance on the 25th and 26th December, will also fit in my program, and I will probably participate in both races as training. The 27th December I will arrive to Auckland. I will later write more about what I will do during my 4 weeks in New Zealand.

Barcelona - Primiero - Venezia

In the beginning of November I had a 10 days long trip to the South of Europe. My goal for the trip was to run some good competitions and training in warm weather, with main focus on sprint orienteering.

The trip started with the 2 day competition TICBCN in Barcelona, that I already have written about. After the races I stayed two more days in Barcelona.

Monday I took it quite easy, and did some work on my laptop in the morning, before I went to the city for sightseeing and an easy run in the evening. Tuesday I did 2 sprint trainings in the morning and a strength training in the evening. My team mate in IFK Lidingö Biel Rafols and his family was very helpful, and let me stay in their home during my time in Barcelona.

Wednesday morning I took a flight to Treviso in Italy, and continued with train to Primiero in the Dolomites, where I stayed with my friend Giancarlo Simion. JWOC was arranged in Primiero in 2009, and it is a lot of good maps covering nice terrains in the area.

The first night I did a sprint training, and on Thursday I was able to run on both the map from the JWOC Relay and the mens Long distance course on Passo Rolle. The view in the Dolomites is fantastic, as you can see on my pictures from Primiero, and I was also able to taste the local food and drinks.

Friday I continued my travel to Venezia, where I was running the Venezia street orienteering race, that I also already have written about.

I did also some trainings on my own in Venezia, to prepare for the WOC 2014 Sprint, that will probably be arranged in the east part of the city. Maps from all the competitions and most of the trainings can be found in my DOMA.

World of O has at the moment a competition where you can vote for Course of the Year 2012. A lot of courses I  have been running are nominated, and I was interview by World of O in connection with the nomination process.

Here you can watch a video from the race in Venezia:

High tide in Venezia

Last weekend I travelled to Venezia to participate in Venice Orienteering Meeting. I thought it would be a good training for the WOC 2014 Sprint, that probably will be arranged in the east part of the city, and the race is also one of the most challenging and fun race I have been running. I have been participating in 2008, 2009 and 2010, with the results 1st, 2nd and DSQ, so I wanted to change the negative trend this year.

Saturday a open race was arranged in the area around the San Marco Square. I was choosing the longest course that was 5 km, so it was almost the double distance of a normal sprint race. I took it as a good training, without pushing too hard. The course was nice, but could have been more challenging. Results and splits

Sunday the traditional long distance race was arranged, with almost 4000 participants. In the early morning the tide was getting really high, and the organizers delayed the start one hour. When I was going to start as one of the first runners the water was still reaching to the middle of my legs in most of the streets, and over my knees on the middle of the San Marco Square. The organizers still decided to start people, but it was changed to free start time, so the time was taken from you did the start punching. They recommended the runners to take it easy, and walk where it was much water, and the elite runners to wait starting until the water had gone down.

But the race was unfortunately stopped by the police before half of the runners (and most of the best) in the mens elite class had started, due to that the early starting runners had been distracting the tourists and the locals trying to get the water out of their houses and shops. We where still able to get our maps, and I was running the course as a training (in 69 min), after the water had withdrawn from the streets. (In the splits I have got correct split times to all controls, except to the 1st one, where I have approx 3 h 30 min too long time, since the time is from I cleared my SI card before my original start time. The runners who got a time in the results started earlier then I did, when the conditions were worse due to the high water.) The course was really nice this year, so it was a pity the race was destroyed by the high tide. It was also perfect running conditions when I was doing my training, since it was not too much tourist in the streets. So if the organizer had just delayed the start some more hours I think it could have been a great event, but many would than probably not have been able to run before their planed travel home. Results and splits for the runners who were allowed to start, and had quite variable running conditions.

My pictures from Venezia gives a good impression about how it was in the city when the tide was high.

Politiet stoppet gateorientering i Venezia, orientering.no

TICBCN in Barcelona

This weekend I have been in Barcelona competing in a 2 day event called TICBCN. I was running the same event last time it was arranged, two years ago, and really wanted to come back. Here you can see my maps from 2010: Sprint, micro sprint and long.

Saturday a sprint was arranged in the historical center. I did a solid performance, and my only mistake was a 5 seconds time loss on my route choice to the 8th control. It was difficult to run full speed in the narrow streets with a lot of people, and you needed full focus the entire time to do a clean race without hesitation. I won the race with 7 seconds down to Yannick Michiels. Results

Sunday a shorter long distance was held from the Olympic Stadium on the Montjuic hill. It was the same place as the long distance last time, but partly a different part of the area. It was very hilly and the 8,4 km long course had more than 400 meters of climbing. I did a mainly good race, and tried to take safe route choices and avoid fences and walls that could be difficult to pass. To the 9th control I lost some time in the control circle and to the 10th control I had as most of the other runners problems to understand from the map exactly where I had to run to get into the castle. I was able to win also today (and overall) in front to Yannick Michiels. Oleksandr Kratov came 3rd, with a small margin down to Pieter Hendrickx. Results Long and Overall

I think TICBCN is a really nice event, and it's on a time of the year when the season is over in Scandinavia and the weather can be quite bad. So it's great to come here and run in short pants and t-shirt when it's 20 degrees and sun. Barcelona is also a very beautiful city, so I hope it will be more foreign runners here next time. I have not taken so many pictures this time, but my pictures from 2010 is worth a look. Then I visited some of the tourist attractions, such as the city center, the harbor, La Sagrada Família, Camp Nou, the Olympic Park and Parc Güell with Gaudí architecture.

News on orientering.no:
Feilfritt løp ga seier
Kvaal Østerbø med ny seier i Barcelona

PWT in China – Report with maps and pictures

In the last part of September I participated in Park World Tour in China. I have been in China four times before, three times on PWT and once on Tour de Ski China in cross country skiing, and also this time I got the opportunity to run some challenging orienteering races in combination with visiting some new and exciting places together with a nice group of international runners.

I had a quite though start of my travel, since my flight to Beijing left Oslo Airport three hours after I finished the Norwegian Champs in Long distance (where I came 4th, after a good performance). From Beijing I continued with a flight 1000 km north east to Changchun, where I met the other runners. We were 30 International runners in addition to the Chinese runners.

PWT-1 - Sprint
The first race was already the following day, with a Sprint in a nice park. I did a good performance, and was able to win the race in front of Matthias Müller and Tomas Dlabaja.

PWT-2 - Middle
The next day a Middle distance was arranged from the same place as the Vasaloppet China is held in the winter. The forest was mainly nice, but had partly reduced runability. I did several smaller mistakes, sometimes because I thought it was difficult to understand the map, and ended in 4th position. Timo Sild did a great race, and won with a huge margin. He thought the terrain was very similar to Estonia.

The Great Wall
Now we had three days until the next PWT race, and travelled back to Beijing with high speed train. In Beijing we visited the Great Wall, before we took a flight 1500 km south west to Chongqing where we were going to participate in the Chinese Championships. Chongqing is one of the World’s largest cities, with a population of 28 millions in the municipality.

"100 m Orienteering"
The first race in the Chinese Champs was something called “100 m Orienteering”. The course was actually 900 m, and the terrain and map scale like we know from “Orient show”. The race was held as a knock out sprint, with 12 runners in each heat/final, and each runner got his/her own forking. All the control circles and numbers on the map made the map reading intense. For the international runners the race was not counting as PWT, and we were just running an open course for fun.

PWT-3 - Sprint
The next race was the Chinese Champs in Sprint, held in Wansheng, the smaller city we lived in. The area was really cool and challenging, with a lot of small houses and narrow passages, and the rain made it even more difficult with slippery surface. We where allowed to cross cultivated land, as long as it was not growing anything there, so it made it a bit difficult to plan the best route choice in advance. I did a very good race, and won with more then 30 seconds down to Julian Dent and Máté Kerényi.

PWT-4 – Middle
The last race in the Chinese Champs was a Middle distance. The area was hilly, with a lot of cultivated land. Also this day we where allowed to cross it, as long as it was not growing anything there, but several places I thought it was difficult to know where I could run. It was also raining heavily, and we where running partly in mud. I did not do any major mistakes, but lost some time several places, and finished in 6th position, 3 min behind Tomas Dlabaja. After the race we traveled back to Beijing.

PWT-5 - Sprint
The last race was held in Beijing Botanical Garden. I was running well the first half of the race, and was then close to the lead. But in the last half I lost 5 – 10 seconds several places, partly because I was unsure where I could pass some flowerbeds, since there was some places more of them in the terrain than marked on the map. Afterwards I can see that I should have picked easier route choices (on paths), and not tried to run so much straight. My result was a 5th place, 37 seconds behind Yannick Michiels and Tomas Dlabaja, who shared the victory. After the race I went directly to the airport, to go home for the Swedish Champs in Relay.

In my Picasa gallery you find almost 200 pictures from PWT in China.

News from the races:
PWT-1 Sprint: orientering.no and pwt.org
PWT-2 Middle: orientering.no and pwt.org
PWT-3 Sprint: orientering.no and pwt.org
PWT-4 Middle: orientering.no and pwt.org
PWT-5 Sprint: orientering.no and pwt.org