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.