Group Photo

That was an exciting 3 weeks in Sweden orienteering in areas we can only dream of in South Africa, in conditions we are thankfull we do not have in South Africa (can't have it both ways...). Well done to all the juniors and thanks again to all the sponsors and those that helped make this trip a success.

Final Results

So...
We all survived Etapp 6 and made it home safely.

The final results look like this:

Bradley H14:
128th in 218:37
Winner in 130:27
Wins the prize for the fastest hair.

Salome D14:
113th in 271:39
Winner in 138:57
Prize for consuming the most chocolate.

Sarah D15:
164th in 219:11
Winner in 122:18
Prize for making us think she was Super Elite in that headband.

Jessica Hemer D15:
Not classified due to DSQ on 1st day.
Prize for the longest split - 33min. This was a hard fought competition.

Jessica Lund D16:
166th in 352:26
Winner in 135:44
Most Spanish guys following her (not on the course)

Zoe D17-20:
7th in 330:10
Winner 206:33
Best smile on the finish sprint.

Dylan H20 Lang:
34th in 337:50
Winner 250:06
Wins the green jersey for the fastest finish sprints.

Alex H20 Lang:
35th in 346:09
Winner 250:36
'Please will somebody take a photo of me!'

Craig H35:
68th in 416:29
Winner 196:12
Wins best value for money prize

Richard H45 Kort:
168th in a time of 333:18.
Winner: 138 min
Best eye-wear

Heidi:
Successfully dealt with the mud and rain.
Wins a peace prize for exceptional patience.

Heres a good group photo from the relay at the training camp.

Day 5 - Chasing starts

The final day of O-Ringen is a chasing start course. The start times are based on runners cumulative times from the previous 4 days. To be included in the chasing start, runners must be less than 2 hours behind the leader of their category.

This meant that Dylan and Alex qualified in the H20 Long category. Brad made it for H14, Salome made it for D14 and Zoe made it for the D17-20 category.

Unfortunately it rained heavily in the morning, creating the mud bath we were used to. Below is a picture of the mud on the finishing straight and Sarah (a bit to the left) running in. The number of people you get down the finish chute in 2 min is the number we have at a whole event in South Africa

Dylan started 4 min ahead of Alex. Alex had a runner 15 sec behind him. Dylan made a mistake early on and Alex was ahead at the 5th control. Dylan caught up and spiked the 6th control. Alex made a small mistake and saw Dylan leaving it. Alex then went on to make costly mistakes on the 7th and 8th controls. Dylan made a mistake on 10 but did enough finish well clear of Alex. He ended about 8 min ahead for the 5 days, and 4 min quicker on the course.

Brad had a really good race to finish in 77th in his incredibly competitive age group. His time was 30.55, only 7 min behind the winner. 77 competitors in 7 min!

Zoe finished in 43:38, only 11 min behind the winner. This got her 5th for the day which is her best result for the week.

Salome had a solid run. Her time was 54.23 which put her 131st in her huge age group.

The last thing you want to happen is lose your shoe on the finish sprint. The mud gets a bit sticky.

The rest of the South Africans started day 5 in a slightly different way. They didn't make the 2 hour cutoff so they started their course at 15 second intervals, still in a chasing order. This meant there were many people of similar ability on the course at once.

Craig had a good performance. He finished in 71 minutes, without any major mistakes.

Sarah and Jessica Hemer started the D15 course about 6 min apart. This time Sarah came out on top with a time of 48:43 and in 158th place. Jessica finished in 53:40 in 171st place.

Jessica Lund finished her D16 course in 47:32 to finish in 150th place.

Richard got around the H45 K course in 57:55. This put him in 173rd place for day 5.

O-Ringen Day 3 and 4

Day 3 was a middle distance day with all our team getting back to 1:10 000 maps much better from the 1:15 000 they have been using for the rest of the days. Dylan had the run of the day finishing 27th in his class of 42 or so runners.

Day 3 Results

Day 4 was a change of finish venue and a different type of terrain, easy and fast in the beginning for the longer courses and more complex contours in the middle with a very fast last km or so, Alex had the run of the day beating Dylan by 8 min or so, Salome also had a good run securing her chance to take part in the chasing start list. Alex and Dylan will be fighting it out with Dylan leading by 4 min over the 4 days. Salome and Zoe are also starting in the chasing starts which is all competitors less than 2hrs behind the leader, the rest start at 15 sec intervals.

Day 4 Results

O-Ringen Day 2: Brad has a great run

Today we had beautiful weather, but still plenty of mud.

The performance of the day came from Bradley. He finished 68th out 240 competitors. Well done!

Results Day 2

Unfortunately we can't put any photos up because we're using the computers at Mc Donalds. If we find a wireless hotspot we'll make these posts a bit more interesting.

Symbol change: white means marsh

White means marsh and paths are a drowning hazard.

We had our first race of the 5 Days. It started raining as we left home and hasn't stopped. 11 000 people running through a forest makes things a bit slushy.

It was tricky as most of us are running on 1:15000 maps and the terrain is quite different to what we've experienced so far.

We all came back with smiles on our faces. Fighting through the mud was an interesting experience.

We can't provide any interesting photos at the moment. Here are the result of the 1st day:
Results

Day 13 - A short course and finally a proper sprint

The definition of a 'sprint' is not exactly what we hoped for. Here it means a scale of 1:5000 or 1:4000. It doesn't mean it will be fast. The sprint we did on Tuesday and the 1st sprint this morning were really technical and not very fast. Above is the map of the 1st sprint, with Salome's route in green.
The second sprint of the morning was an urban one. We are staying at the complex next to the start of the map above. The course was fast and there weren't many interesting legs. Jessica Lund drew her route in pink. She had a really good performance, finishing in 16m11, just 3 sec behind Brad.

Unfortunately, we didn't get any good photo's from the sprint because we were all running too fast for Richard's camera!

We're having a rest afternoon, as we have many kilometers of orienteering in our legs. Tomorrow is the camp championship. We will have a course with a mass start and handicaps based on age and sex.

Day 12 - WOC 1989 Long

We had the opportunity to try the WOC womens long final from 1989. The map above shows the course with Dylan's route in green and Craig's route in red. Dylan finished in a very good 1h34 and Craig took 3h01. In 1989 the course was won in 64 min.
In the afternoon, we did a really short technical course. Alex's route is shown in blue.

Day 10 - Middle Distance and Route Choice

Day 10 consisted of two middle distance training sessions, with the afternoons session focussed on route choice. In the evening we had a lecture from Mats Troeng, who is a Swedish national squad member. He gave us some orienteering technique tips and we went over the courses for the day. He also developed Winsplits and we saw the soon-to-be-released version 4. We used it to analyse our route choices.

The group before the afternoon's route choice training session.

Dylan finishing the route choice training session.
Craig finishing the route choice training session.

The map above shows the morning's middle distance training. Routes: Craig (Red) and Alex's (Blue) routes. Alex, Dylan and Craig all made 17+ min mistakes on number 2.

Map above of route choice training session with routes marked by Alex (blue), Dylan (green) and Brad (orange). Everyone had much better results in the afternoon.

Day 9 - Middle and Short

Today we went to an interesting area called Tibro. There were many large depressions that dominated the map. This kind of area is rare in Sweden apparently.

Above we have the course run by the older bunch. Dylan's route is in Green. Alex's route is in blue. They both skipped some contols to save their legs. A local was kind enough to show us how he did it. He finished 5th in Nils in 1.01.30.

Sarah and Brad also filled in their routes on their somewhat easier course. Sarah is in purple and Brad is in orange.

Later in the evening, we did a 'sprint'. It turned out to be a very technical short course. It was in an abondoned mining area. Craig's route is shown. Alex took about 32 min. Dylan took 33min. Brad was next at 36min and Craig took 38min. The girls did a score event in the area. The course was won in 17 min by a Spanish national squad member.

Orientabonito

We've moved south west to the town of Tiddaholm. We've started the Orientabonito training camp. Orientabonito means 'the beauty of orienteering.

Our first training exercise involved a 3 man relay team. The teams were made up of people from all over the world, with a two experienced and one less experienced person.

Above are the maps of the two longer legs. Craigs route is in red on the first map and Alex's is in blue on the second map. We'll get our times and splits tomorrow.

Here's a picture of Salome finishing:

Day 4 - More sprint training

Today we all ran the same course and pretty much raced the courses, Alex and Dylan had a head to head battle with Alex winning by 30 odd seconds.

Map Below: with Routes by Sarah, Brad and Jess H


Map Below with routes by , Alex, Dylan and Craig


Results:

Alex - 19:33
Dylan - 20:05
Brad - 30:03
Craig - 31:24
Salome - 33:59
Sarah - 34:13
Zoe - 34:36
Jessica L - 35:37
Jessica H - 44:00

Day 3 - Stockhom Cards , Sprint Training

We went for a morning run around the forest on our doorstep to start the day. Before lunch we started using our Stockholm cards, which allow us the use any public transport and enter many museums and attractions for free.

In the evening we ran the regional sprint championship courses, which started about 1.5km from where we're staying. We all ran the right courses for our age.

The two maps below show Alex and Dylan's routes on the H21 course and Craig's route on the H35 course.

ElfvikTraining Day 2 Evening 6pm

On the afternoon of the 9th Martin gave us some courses on the east of our island. Craig and Alex's routes are shown below for the course they did.

The girls all did the D14 course.

Below is a picture of the Lidingo Clubhouse where we are staying.

First Training

Martin gave us two courses from a night orienteering event, starting from the clubhouse. These courses were for M16's! We all (meaning sum of us) managed both courses and found the terrain very interesting.

This is a picture of the map and course, with Dylans route in pink and Alex's route in Blue.
This place is beautiful.

We must thank Martin Terry for all the help he is providing with training and the Lidingo Orienteering Club for hosting us.

Written by Alex edited by Jess H, Jess L and Salome.

We've Arrived!!!

We left OR Tambo at 11 o'clock on Saturday night. We landed at Schipol in Holland at 10.00 on Sunday and finally got to Arlanda Airport in Sweden at about 12.00. Martin Terry met us in Stockholm.
We moved into the Lindingo Orienteering Club house. Martin provided us with maps of the island and we went for a 4km run. On the map shown below, the arrow points to the club house. The pink line is the route we ran.
We stocked up on bread, pasta and cereal. A 500ml Coke is 11SEK and we could get 3 banana's for 14SEK.

The Kit

We were presented with our kit at Gauteng Champs. And it looks very cool...

In the picture above we're wearing our running shirts. They're displaying the following logos:
SAOF, Fujifilm, Meditech, Salomon, Husqvarna and the SA flag.

Here we are wearing our tracksuits. They have the following logos:
SAOF, Meditech and Fujifilm.

Wooden Pot Auction
Thanks to Sam for auctioning the wooden bowl. She did a great job of getting a good price. And thank you to Mrs De Speville for getting the bowl from the artist Chris O'Connell. And thanks to Pieter for buying it.

Thanks to everyone
We can safely say you won't be harassed by Juniors at Orienteering events for a while. Thanks for buying food, drinks, raffle tickets, pots, fudge, brush cutters, flap jacks, tea and coffee. We're privileged.

Gauteng Champs

The Middle Distance Gauteng Champs were held at Moreletta Kloof on Saturday.

W16
This is the most hotly contested of the Junior age groups. The 4 Swedish Squad Juniors had to fight it out for the 3 medals. Sarah had a very good run, winning by 11 minutes.
1st Sarah - 33:16
2nd Jessica Lund - 44:20
3rd Jessica Hemer - 48:36
4th Salome - 48:47












W20
Zoe won the this category. The competition in this class will get more intense next year as the W16's will start to move up.
1st Zoe - 1:00:21

M16
Bradley produced a good performance to win this one. He was on the same course as the W16's (which means Sarah beat him...). Connor Tiegs was 2nd, but isn't coming to Sweden unfortunately.
1st Bradley - 34:59
2nd Connor - 57:09

M20
Dylan won ahead of Michael Bratt. Alex was not there for the middle.
1st Dylan - 35:54
2nd Michael - 1:23:29

M40
Our squad father Richard competed in the veteran category and finished 7th. He was on the same course as Dylan.
7th Richard - 50:42


The Long Distance Champs were held at Gerotek on Sunday.

W16
Sarah completed an excellent weekend by winning again. Jessica Lund was second again and Salome and Jessica Hemer swapped places for 3rd and 4th respectively. The girls won't be competing directly like this in Sweden, because they will be broken up into the D14, D15 and D16 categories. Another Junior who competed on Sunday was Dakota Tiegs. She isn't coming to Sweden, but we hope to see her at more events.
1st Sarah - 52:36
2nd Jessica Lund - 56:01
3rd Salome - 1:03:06
4th Jessica Hemer - 1:05:53
5th Dakota - 2:04:05

W20
Zoe had this category to herself again. She finished with a good performance.
1st Zoe - 1:13:29

M16
Bradley was pushed hard by Connor. This time Bradley won by just 13 seconds! Well done to both of them.
1st Bradley - 1:17:36
2nd Connor - 1:17:49

M20
Alex returned to give Dylan some competition, but Dylan won it convincingly by 6 minutes.
1st Dylan - 1:09:19
2nd Alex - 1:15:42




M40
Richard started very strongly, but looked a bit weary by the end.
9th Richard - 2:11:12


Super-Josh
Joshua De Klerk deserves a mention as a Junior on the way up. He is a lot younger than 12, but tore up the M12 course. Well done!










So...
The Champs showed that all the Junior in the squad are fit and competitive. After 2 weeks of getting used to the Swedish terrain, we can expect some decent performances.

Sponsors
Thanks to all our enthusiastic sponsors. We all really appreciate the help



Audiovision supplies us with an LG TV to raffle

Casio supplied us with a CHR100 HR Monitor watch

Coca Cola provided us with cool drinks to sell at Orienteering events

Fleetwood playgrounds donated a jungle gym to be raffled

Fuji Film provided us with money to buy tracksuits and team kit.

Husqvarna provided us with a brush cutter to sell

Meditech provided us with money to buy tracksuits and team kit

Pick 'n Pay donated ingredients for our catering at Orienteering events

Salomon allowed us to sell their shoes to Orienteers for fundraising. And we compete in Salomon shoes.

The SAOF has been very generous in helping to pay entry fees and costs associated with the trip.

Various Spars around Johannesburg have donated ingredients for catering at Orienteering events.

Suunto has allowed us to sell their compasses to raise funds.