Hadeland

Day 3- The day of the wrong map (courtesy of Roark Robinson)

The day began with a drive North to Hadeland where we were all competing in a local middle distance event. All of us were rather unsure of our orienteering abilities in the Norwegian terrain (Roark more so after the first few controls of his course), but luckily this terrain was a lot simpler, as well as more runnable, than the terrain we ran in yesterday. 

Roark however did not take advantage of this fact as he was confused about his gender and took the wrong map, resulting not only in a dsq, but also some rather confusing moments when he hit controls perfectly only to find the wrong numbers (he’d taken the correct control description).

Dylan had some trouble on his 2^nd control, but managed fine after that. Tim had a good run with only 1 significant mistake and managed to take his 1^st win in a non-south African event (though there were very few competitors). 

Sigmund also had a good run and missed out on 1^st by 30secs.

After the event we drove through to Sigmund’s cottage up in the mountains (in a town called Sjusjoen). 

We had lunch and then headed off for a training session higher up in the mountains. We were ecstatic at the sight of small patches of snow all over the area and preceded to run through as many of these patches as possible.

The actual training was very beneficial as it is probably quite similar to the terrain we will see at JWOC. The marshes here were much more obvious as well as more runnable than those we had seen previously, thus making them useful navigational aids.

After the session we convinced Sigmund that we had to go visit the larger snow patches up near the top of the mountain. Here we preceded to run, jump and slide around and in general make fools of ourselves in front of some bemused Norwegian onlookers.

We then headed back to the cottage and after having a warm shower and putting on some non-snow-soaked clothes, we drove down to a nearby city- Lillehammer- where we had dinner and then walked around the town finding moose statues and looking for free wifi. Once free wifi had been found and the appropriate amount of time spent desperately messaging family and friends we started our journey back, on the way visiting the Olympic ski jump, biathlon and cross-country skiing stadiums.

Facts of the day: Snow is cooooooollllllldddddd!!!

                             Moose are BIG!!!

                             D 17-20 means women (luckily at JWOC they give you the map)

Quote/conversation of the day:
Dylan: “Are you allowed to run around the forest catching moose (mooses? Meese?Moosen?) with a net?”

Sigmund: “No ways! that’s illegal, you’ll get arrested” (and deported) (but you can shoot them???)

Dylan: “That’s fine, I’m Irish- I can’t be deported.

Tim: Well then you’ll have to carry your passport while you’re out moose fishing ;)