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.