Vester Torup and Bilbjerg

We went north west again to the two areas we visited last Thursday. This time the scales were switched around: Vester Torup at 1:15'000 and Bilbjerg at 1:10'000. Vester Torup was difficult at 1:15. The detail was hard to read. We set off in pairs and close together on the Bilbjerg training – it was fun to run under pressure at higher speed.

Fredrikshavn

On Tuesday afternoon we drove to the coastal town of Fredrikshavn. We walked and cycled around town. They had bicycles available for tourists.

On the way back we visited one of the 30 blue flag beaches in the province. The brave ones swam in the North Sea...

Barracks Sprint Map

Today was almost a rest day. Everyone has worked hard over the weekend. We had an easy run on the barracks map. It wasn't very technical. The focus was on the 1:4'000 scale and having a trouble free run.

We'll have the afternoon to do some typical tourist things – we're off to the east coast.

The rest of the week will look like this: Middle and Long training on Wednesday, LEGOLAND on Thursday, Relay training on Friday, Model events over the weekend.

Monday - Lundby Bakker

On Monday we ran on the Relay specific Lundby Bakker. We missed the warning about the new mountain bike tracks, so we were all a bit confused on the way to number 2. After adjusting to the new paths everyone enjoyed the slopes and large contour features. We all felt more at home here.

Teams are starting to show up at the barracks. America, Australia, Great Britain, Japan and Spain are here. There's lots of space to play soccer and frisbee.

2 Day event Results

The results are here

Back to Aarlborg

We drove back from the event along the north west coast. We had to catch a ferry across a river mouth.

Denmark is really flat. We've heard that the highest point is 170m and the average height is 30m. So the country-side looks similar on most of our trips. There are lots of wind turbines - 19% of their electrical energy is from wind. The final fun fact for the day is the population is 5.5 million in an area of 43 000 (43 thousand) square km. South Africa is 1 200 000 (1.2 million) square kilometers.

We have moved into the Aarlborg military barracks. The Danish army has fancy accommodation so we're living comfortably. There is also lots of good food.

Husby Day 2

After a solid day 1 we were looking forward to the courses on day 2. Everyone ran the same distances as the previous day. We were expecting to be sent in the unused marshy areas of the map.

We ended running along the beach dunes for a good portion of the race. The 5 and 8km courses were thrown off by an incorrect control number. Apart from that, everyone seemed to have less solid runs than the day before.

The Black 10km course is above (sorry - the link should be fixed)

The 2 day event was good preparation. It is good to get some pressurized running in amongst the training.

Gravers Graversen

The event organisors arranged for us to stay with a club member. His name was Gravers Graversen. He stayed in a big log cabin in the town of Vemb. He was in his late 70's. He is a pilot, sky-dives, sails and orienteers. He runs 10km in 71 minutes. And his English is not so good. Here's an email from him after we left:

"Hi from Danmark
Tanks befor you viset my kontri and my home
Gravers Graversen."

He was awesome and we were really lucky to stay with him. He let us sleep on his floor and use his kitchen.

The people of Vemb were very keen to organise a Denmark – South Africa soccer match. The 10 of us took on 20 kids of all sizes. We think we drew 1-1

Husby Klitplantage Day 1

Into the Husby Forest for day 1 of the 2 day event. The girls ran Black 5km; boys Black 8km and seniors Black 10km. There was a complex path network which helped the South Africans. Sarah was 4^th on the 5km. Everyone else was consistent without any big mistakes. It was a good for the teams confidence.

Brad leading Julia of Britain in...
JP looking good
And the Black 10km course. The shorter courses staying on the path networks in the centre.

Lemvig Sprint Race

We arrived at 17h00 for the 18h00 start. We drove around town for half an hour with lots of other orienteering cars looking for the event centre. We knew we were in the right place because the controls were out. The organisors casually rolled in after 18h00 and said the starts would be from 19h00. They made Witsoc look organised.

We also thought it was a prologue/final format. Apparently no one updated the English instructions, so we all ran the first course keeping some in reserve for the final. We couldn't figure out why everyone was leaving after the first course... no final!

Stephanie won course 3 and all the girls had good runs. Brad won course 2 with Mike and JP close behind. The coaching staff were far from winning course 1. Here's the map of course 1:

Vester Torup

We drove for an hour to the north coast to run on Vester Torup. We did a morning session on a 1:10'000 and an afternoon session on a 1:15'000. We found the light green and green hard going. And the 2.5m contour details is sometimes hard to pick up.We watched the Denmark Japan game in a 'fan park' in the centre of Aarlborg. The Danes were grumpy about losing.

We're doing a light sprint training exercise this morning. We'll drive 2 hours west to the Juteland Sprint race this evening. A prologue at 18h00 and a final at 20h00. It will still be light at 20h00! Tomorrow and Sunday will be 2 proper long distance forest races.

Team Photo

Sarah, Steph, Salome, Zoe, Jess

Brad, Mike, JP, Alex

Coach Nic was already on holiday/training in Switzerland

First Training

The A OK Club House (Aarlborg Orienteering Klub) is situated on a school ground. The schools finish on Friday for summer holidays. Playing playground soccer looks like hard work:

We drove 40 minutes North to the town of Blokhus. The map shows part of the town, the dune forests, the grassy dunes on the coast, and the beach. The forest was thick and light green was hard going. The contour detail is generally small and hard to pick out with 2.5m contours. The grassy dunes were very technical and you can run fast. We did a short line course and an 8 control course.

We have two black stallions, complete with South African mirror socks.

Tomorrow's a double session... should be fun!

The journey

We went into Amsterdam during our stop over and watched Bafana's last soccer match in a restaurant. It was great fun except that we paid 5 Euros each for a coke or glass of water.

We also found a foozball table in the Airport which provided a few hours of entertainment. We finally arrived in Billund just after ten in the evening. Nic came through a few minutes later. We got our hire cars, then drove to Aalborg and found the clubhouse easily. After a quick shower we got to bed at about 3.

Start of our trip

We'll be in Billund, Denmark, 24 hours after leaving OR Tambo. We're going via Nairbo and Amsterdam. We'll meet up with Coach Nic in Billund and drive through to Aarlborg. We're staying in the Aarlborg Orienteering Club House. From there we'll have a few training sessions before heading to the west coast for a 2-day competition.

How to follow us

Follow this blog - we'll try to post our maps, results, routes and photos here.

We'll also use twitter to send out quick updates. Click the links in our tweets to view the photos. Follow us

We'll let you know about live results when the competition gets closer.

Action in the Cape

It's exciting to see how well Roark Robinson, a junior squad member in the Cape, is doing. Check out the Peninsular Orienteering Club website and take a look at some recent results. Roark is still under 16! Laura Troost is also doing well by the looks of things. Keep it up guys.

Long-O

The Long-O was lots of fun and all the juniors did superbly.

On the Blue course Brad won with Michael not far behind. J.P also had a very good run. Sarah was the first lady on the course. Check out her map. Zoe ran impressively taking 2nd place.

On Green Steph showed everyone how it's done by winning the course by over 3 minutes. Jess Lund was 2nd lady and Salome was the 4th lady home. It was also good to see Jess Hemer and Anthony Stott doing well on Green.

There were some notable performances from upcoming juniors with Timothy Chambers winning the Light Green course and Christie Courtnage winning Orange. Well Done!

So we're off to Denmark for the next 18 days. We'll update the blog as much as possible and will probably tweet quite a bit so follow us on Twitter. We'll be doing a 3 day event and lots of training for the first 2 weeks. JWOC officially starts on the 4th of July.

Sprint Training

We headed to Wits Education Campus for out last team training in South Africa. Nicholas is already in Europe so Michele planned the session.

The first exercise was a 1.4km course which focused on in the circle navigation and reading control descriptions. Multiple flags were placed in the area of the control without numbers. The aim was to identify which one was on the right feature and punch it. It was fast and tricky with only 3 people getting all 12 correct.

The next exercise was about 1.8km. It was an interval exercise with some good route choices.

Thanks to Michele for a great session!

There are only 10 days until we leave for Denmark! Unfortunately the team seems to have quite a few injuries at the moment. Hopefully by the start of JWOC we'll be running at full strength.

Looking forward to the Long O' next Sunday!

Laurentia

The second colour coded event of the season was on Sunday the 6th and the juniors had some outstanding performances.

Sarah won her first brown course, beating Tania by 30 seconds. Michael also had a great run on Brown finishing 3rd behind Coach Nic and Manager Alex. Jess Lund finished 11th on the course.

On Blue Salome was the first Lady. An accurate run by her meant she finished 10th on the course despite taking it easy to look after her knees. J.P had a solid run on blue to finish 9th.

On Green Brad, running with a sore knee, finished 2nd by only 2 seconds. Zoe was the second lady on the course.

If you want to read what some team memebers wrote about their races visit their Attackpoint logs. The links are on the right of the blog. Also take a look at Sarah's map and Nic's map with their GPS tracks. The splits are also really interesting.

Moon O'

The Moon O' fundraiser was a great success.

It was loads of fun racing round the Zoo in the dark! The moon wasn't much help as it was hiding behind the clouds, but everyone seemed to make it around the course okay. The soup and hot dogs provided by the moms went down very well as a cold front moved in.

Thank you to the Pillings for helping to organise the event and Richard for printing the maps.