Day 6

A change of scenery (some slightly different trees)

After going to bed rather late last night, all of us needed to catch some zzzzz's, so our planned 8am wake up was delayed by a couple of hours.

We got up, changed into our SA kit and plunged straight into our second successive interview (this time a newspaper interview- so Roark would fortunately be able to think before he spoke...)

The interview seemed to go reasonably well and South African tourism was left intact (no calls from the South African embassy today)

After the interview we got a ride with Anders to go do some middle distance training in a forest just to the south of Eina-bru. Dylan tried to focus on using contours as much as possible, while Roark had a wonderful time exploring the root systems of the local trees (see yesterday's video). Tim enjoyed the orienteering part of it, but not so much the swarm of bugs that followed him around the second half of the course.

On arriving back at the club house, Tim and Roark caught a few more zzz's while Dylan continued his literary adventures under the Moose head.

Sigmund then arrived to pick us up and after a mad scramble of bag packing (Roark only woke up as Sigmund arrived, but still managed to get ready before Dylan), we were on our way to Halden. On our way we experienced another example of the temperamental Norwegian weather (sunny, rainy, sunny, rainy )

We arrived at Halden SK (a club with a reputation almost as big as Roark's imaginary snakes), and were warmly greeted by one of the club members (A WOC medallist in '97) who showed us around and gave us our training maps for our stay here.

The discovery of wifi was then made and after half an hour of the incessant clickety-clack of keyboards, Tim and Roark headed out for a short course around the hilltop that the club is situated on ( Dylan remained behind to further utilise the wifi with a skype call home). The terrain was really nice, with the majority of the forest being a lot more open than what we have previously encountered. Roark managed to get into the map very quickly and enjoyed the mapping style and accuracy.

The showers were then found and to our suprise had only one button (the temperature was fixed and the length of the shower fixed at a rather short 30secs) (Halden has a water shortage problem, though we cant quite understand how with the amount of water we, our clothes and our shoes have seen on this trip so far.

We then climbed up the viewing tower to take some pics of the amazing views (trees trees and more trees in every direction you look) (Wall-E says hello)

By this stage (11pm) we were all rather ravenous, so we got our cook on and rustled up some spaghetti and mince.

After dinner we made an attempt at video editing and put together our 1st (of hopefully many) videos of our trip.

Quote of the day: "Can I borrow your toilet" (though if we tried to speak Norwegian, it would turn out a lot worse)

ON AIR

Day 5

The buzz of an alarm shattered the peaceful slumber of the exhausted orienteers at the crazy hour of 7am!! While Tim and Dylan dragged themselves out of bed, Roark pulled his duvet over his head and clung onto the last few moments of sleep.

By 7:30 we were all ready to face the daunting task of our first radio interview. We’d face this alongside Sigmund and Martin. Tim and Dylan managed to pull off their answers admirably, but Roark fell flat due to his lack of knowledge about anything involving biology, and probably scared off any Norwegian listeners from ever visiting South Afica with his vivid stories of giant boomslang dropping out of trees – he was trying to talk about mambas. (Tim and Dylan say Roark wasn’t that bad).

After the interview we headed out into the pouring rain for a long distance training session in the Eina Bru forest. After a nice warm-up run to the other side of the forest and some lekker banter we arrived at the start and were soon on our way through the spongy marshes. We are definitely starting to get a better understanding of the terrain and today’s training was much more successful. Tim struggled with numbers though confusing number 6 and 9 and ignoring the line from 5-6. Dylan had quite a nice run, but is not a huge fan of all that rain #notacapetonian. Roark had fun doing a running commentary for the GoPro footage of his course.

At the present moment Dylan is reading under the moose (clearly his favourite part of the club house.

Rest of the day to follow when wifi is found again.


Wifi was found...

The second training session was unanimously voted against (everyone was feeling a bit tired), and we instead took a jog down to the nearby cliffs and lake to shoot some 'cool' GoPro footage. We managed to get ourselves and our new kit thoroughly soaked and muddy and discovered that floating islands are not the most stable of surfaces. A brisk run back, a long shower and we were ready to head off to the Vister's home where we enjoyed a delicious Norwegian meal and made use of the wifi to connect back to the world.

On our way back to Einarbu we took a slight detour in the hope of sighting the elusive moose, but to no avail (the moose are clearly winning our game of hide and go seek).

Quote of the day: Dylan: "I'd happily hallucinate a moose"
Fact of the day: South Africa has 5m long snakes that fall out of trees (according to Roark)



Heres a short video of some of the falls and fails captured so far.

Higher res video can be found at: https://youtu.be/dXVb6T1vwTg

OUT OF CONTROL

Day 4

A late start. We woke up at nine for breakfast before lazily getting ready for the long distance training session. We made our way to …. which is apparently the most JWOC relevant terrain we’ve run on so far. A couple of differences between this terrain and our previous trainings include the prominence of the streams which can be used as good linear features much like paths. As well as the open areas which for the first time occasionally were no marshy.

While the terrain was slightly easier and faster to navigate the lack of control flags (hence the title) of and sort meant that one had to be more certain of where they were which increased our concentration when approaching a control feature.

After the training session we headed bake to Eina Bru, on the way picking up Anders (Sigmunds other son) at the airport. We picked up some food on the way home which turned out to be superfluous as a gigantic party had been held at the club house the night before and there was much food, cake, strawberries and reindeer meat (Dylan likes reindeer meat…and nets) left over for us so no cooking was required.

After hours and hours of deliberation we got through most of the first day of our blog before deciding to have a go at coaxing the washing machine to life. This proved to be successful but only after much button pressing and dial turning.

We then returned to blogging and made progress, nearly getting up to date. Before realising it was after midnight (it was still light…what even is darkness…). 

Quote of the day: Flolloped, “it’s a word, have you read hitchikers guide to the galaxy. It’s the sound                              a mattress makes in a marsh." Procedes to find reference. - Dylan

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 ;)

INTO THE MARSHES

Day 2

We woke up bright and early at 8:30 (ok not really, the sun had already been up for close to five hours). 

We fixed a quick breakfast and then made a miserable attempt at blog writing  before heading out for our first session, control picking. The first few controls were in dense forest that was really difficult to navigate through. After that the forest cleared up (a bit, not really) and navigation became slightly easier and we began to get used to the complex terrain.

2^nd session of the day was once again in the highly complex Eina-Bru terrain, but this time a middle course planned by Sigmund’s other son, Martin (who is hopefully going to be in the Norwegian WOC team this year). Tim had a reasonably clean, if not rather slow, run and only managed to slip down one cliff. Roark was slightly slower and struggled with the detail in the circle, while Dylan is still out in the forest (jokes Dylan).

For dinner we were invited to the Vister’s home where we enjoyed a great meal and wonderful dessert of Ice-cream and delicious Norwegian chocolate. We also talked about the day’s trainings and the training's to come, as well as getting our daily dose of wifi (the only thing the club house is missing).

Fact of the day: Moose are violently inclined and occasionally attack joggers (as an unnamed source will attest to).

Awkward interaction of the day:

 Roark bumped into a hoard of young school children who asked him (In Norwegian) what a certain bird was, to which he replied huuuuhhhhhhh??? (or something of the sorts)

NO(r)WAY

Day 1

We arrived in Oslo at midday it was light but overcast, 12 hours later, at midnight, it was still light and overcast….. We still haven’t seen the dark.

We were picked-up by our host Sigmund Vister (who will be looking after us for the first part of our trip) and taken to Indre-Ostfold Club House, Einarbu (for South Africans: Eina-bru). The trip was made extremely long by the horrendous traffic but undeterred (“under turd” - Dylan) Dylan and Tim made use of this time to catch up on some much needed sleep while Roark discovered new things about penguins. 

We arrived at the club house expecting a … well … club house, but instead found an expansive, well equipped wooden ‘lodge’ with a built in moose (Dylan likes the moose).

After settling in, we stepped out the door right into the awesome forest that encompasses Einarbu. Our planned 20min jog on the paths turned into a 45min exploration of the orienteering map (and the abundant marshes). Only two of us lost our shoes in the mud but Tim would soon lose his shoe. +After getting ourselves thoroughly confuzled with extremely technical terrain, we returned (ego’s having taken a bit of a knock).

That evening we headed into the nearby town (Mysen), for dinner, with Sigmund and his son Jorgen. Pizza was the logical choice as the pizzeria served the largest pizza in Norway (which four hungry athletes barely managed to finish).

When we arrived back at Eina-Bru we opened our brand spanking new kit. The new design is really cool and is put to good use on the sprint vests. 

Quote of the day:

“So are there penguins in Norway?” – Roark. (Roark didn’t do biology).

And it only took 3 attempts!