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