Christmas in Trondheim

The autumn in Stockholm was nice, and after the competition season in orienteering ended my time was filled with training, working and seeing friends. I can not remember a single day with minus degrees or snow, so the conditions were great both for general running training and orienteering in the forest. IFK Lidingö have got several new runners the last month, and we have a big group of both boys and girls who are training well and having fun together.

The last one and a half week I have spent Christmas holiday in Trondheim. The weather has been variable, but the skiing conditions have been stable and good, so I have been skiing a few hours almost every day, in addition to some longer runs, interval sessions and strength training. It has also been nice to see my family and several old friends, and the days in Trondheim have passed too fast.

WOC training camp in Switzerland with IFK Lidingö

Last week I spent in Switzerland with my club IFK Lidingö. In five days we did 8 training in relevant terrains for the World Orienteering Championship 2012. The camp was well organized with help from our Swiss runner Ines Brodmann, and challenged us in all the types of terrain we will meet next summer. I am glad I am running for a club that priorities to help the runners to prepare well for the international championships like WOC and EOC, and not only focus on the big relays.

Friday Night we participated in the first race of the night orienteering league Bern by Night. The terrain was steep and the fog made it difficult to have a good overview. I did a quite stabile performance, and was in the leading group until the second last control. There I lost 3 minutes in an area where the map was a bit strange. My club mate Filip Dahlgren handled it well and won the race. Results

In my Digital Orienteering Map Archive you can now find maps from all the training. On some of the long distance trainings we were testing route choices and I was not always running where I thought was fastest. Some places the vegetation had also changed since the map was made.

Øystein trives i VM-terrenget, Orientering.no

Smålandskavlen

Last weekend I was running Smålandskavlen in Mariannelund, my last competition of the season. IFK Lidingö won the relay last year, and we wanted to perform well also this year. Unfortunately we lost some time on the two night legs on Saturday and I started 10 minutes behind Kalevan Rasti on the restart Sunday morning. I missed the second control with more than one minute, but ran well the rest of the leg and could keep the distance to KR and catched up several teams. Filip Dahlgren and Fredrik Johansson ran well on the two last legs, and we could finish as 9th team, 7 minutes behind KR, after being the fastest team on the three day legs. Results

Blodslitet in Fredrikstad

In the middle of October I was running traditional race Blodslitet in Fredrikstad. This year the Open Norwegian Championship in Ultralong distance was included in the 25 km long mass start race, with 3 forked loops in the beginning and a long common loop in the end.

I did some mistakes in the forked loop, and was running alone the last one and half short loop. On the long last loop I stared out 5 minutes behind Anders Nordberg, and 1-2 minutes behind a group of several good runners like Olav Lundanes and my club mates form Lidingö Filip Dahlgren and Fredrik Johansson.

I stared quite offensive on the last loop, and held the same speed as the runners in front of me for a while. But after running a long time without seeing any other runners I started to loose some motivation. I was also really tired, since I have only been able to do a few runs longer than one hour since July because of the trouble I have had with my back. I finished as 12th runner, 13 minutes behind Nordberg who won with a big margin. Results, GPS tracing from the forked loops and the last loop

25manna

The second weekend in October I participated in the big relay 25manna for my first time. The relay was held in Södertälje, south west of Stockholm, and I was running the second leg for IFK Lidingö. Flip Dahlgren sent me out as 2nd runner. I stayed in the leading group for the whole leg, and changed over as 3rd runner. My only mistake was that I was running in 90 degrees wrong direction out of one of the last controls. After 25 legs Lidingö finished on a 6th place, 6 minutes behind the winner Tampereen Pyrintö. Results

October – World Cup, WOC training, 25manna, Blodslitet, EOC training and Smålandskavlen

October has been a busy month for me, and the last five weeks I have been participating in the World Cup final and two different WOC training camps in Switzerland, 25manna in Stockholm, Blodslitet with Norwegian Champs in Ultralong distance in Fredrikstad, EOC training camp in Mora and Smålandskavlen in Mariannelund.

Maps from all the competitions are now available in my Digital Orienteering Map Archive, and during the coming days I will try to write a few words from each of the different activities.

World Cup final and WOC training camp in Switzerland

After the World Cup in Liberec the Norwegian team went directly to Switzerland, were we had a training camp in relevant terrains for WOC 2012. We were training both in the Jura Mountains, Mittelland terrain and a nice old city.

The first weekend in October the PostFinance Sprint with World Cup Final was held in La Chaux-de-Fonds.

In the middle distance I missed the first control with almost two minute. The rest of the course went well, except a mistake to the 11th control. My result was a 32nd place, 5 minutes behind Thierry Gueorgiou. Results, splits and GPS tracking

The sprint was the race I had the biggest expectations for. But unfortunately my shape has not been the best this autumn, partly because I had problems with my back for more than one month after WOC, and I did also several small route choice mistakes. My result was a 27th place, 1 minute behind Daniel Hubmann. Results, splits and GPS tracking

In the overall World Cup I finished on a 22nd place. Daniel Hubmann won for the forth year in row.

After the WC final five of the Norwegian runners participated on a sprint training camp in the area around Zurich organized by the Swedish team. In 3 days we had 6 sprint trainings on different maps. 3 of them in competition speed. In total we were running 14 courses, with lengths from 1 to 3 km.