More Trainings...

Now based near Aalborg, the team has been going for day trips to the training maps to further hone our orienteering skill in the Danish terrain.

The weekend running in the Vestjysk 2 Days has left everyone with something to work on. One huge difference to this terrain compared to NZ is the route choices which normally involve a track to the left or the right and or straight through the forest. It is almost alway quicker to take track routes to avoid the dense forest but knowing where to cut corners is a skill to be perfected. Despite a fairly cruisy approach to the races the team did extremely well with Duncan posting the fastest time on the 8km course and Angela was the fastest girl in the sprint race on Friday evening.

We were treating the 2nd race (Sundays race) as preperation for JWOC by simulating race starts and running at race pace to the 6th control and then completing the rest (or not) at an easy pace. For the boys this did not quite work out with two of the controls being swapped. However despite this mistake in the courses the boys handled it well and continued with the rest of their courses, except Matt who sprained his ankle.

We have been going out training on the official training maps Blokhus yesterday and Molleparken and Vester Torup Nordos. These maps are very similar to the JWOC maps had will provide us with very valuable terrain knowledge.

Getting ready for JWOC...trainings, rocket man Ross and some tired legs

With JWOC only a week away the team has been training very well in the glorious Danish summer. We have been primarily training in the Tisvilde Hegn Forest which was only a few kilometres from where we were staying. The map itself was very different from the maps back home. Lots of inconsistent vegetation made running difficult at times and very little contour detail meant we were using our compasses a lot more. The map had hardly any hills and was dominated by small blocks of dark green which we tried to avoid in our route choices. This is very similar to the JWOC maps that we will be running on in a weeks time so will provide us with some valuable terrain experience.

Our trainings have focused on adjusting to the terrain, so they have been quite low intensity also giving us time to recover from the long flights. To do well at JWOC we will need to be aggressive in the terrain as this can easily push you off your line or slow you down. Technically we will need to focus on the usual so map contact, control flow and route choice. The team should be very well prepared for JWOC with the coastal parts of the forest very similar to the coastal areas in Woodhill forest.

Yesterday afternoon we got to witness Carsten and Ross race a 3km time trial at the track. We could see that both Carsten and Ross were pushing very hard which was reflected in their times. Ross smashed his PB posting a time of 9 minutes 4 seconds. This was motivating for all the team and hopefully we will be able to take this into our races at JWOC.

Frikedeller - Danish Meat Balls

We are writing this post from the kitchen of the Bramming's in Odense. For those of you who don't know, Maja Bramming is Ross' girlfriend. We just had an uber sweet lunch of frikedeller and are about to leave to go to the Vestjydsk 2-dags where we will be running in the sprint at about 7pm danish time. The weather has been really warm and sunny, and at the moment its the same. Hopefully it stays this way. The team are pretty excited to race tonight with the Ross tip of the day being "when your not reading your map, read your map". The sprint race will be around a town with some parks and alleys and things. Carsten says it is quite hilly so should be a hard sprint.

Where the races are take some travelling from our early training base at the Tisvilde club house. We started at about 10am this morning travelling by train to meet the two vans. From there we drove around 2 hours on a very fast freeway crossing a massive bridge (see video) to get to Maja's house. We still have another 2 hours to go, but everyone is feeling good, and today we picked up both Jula and Scott (whose luggage is lost).

I am also meant to write about our first encounter with Danish culture. On Wednesday night we went to Mid summer party. This was at the beach where they light a big fire and burn a fake witch. There were heaps of people there as the town we were staying in is known as a holiday destination. At this party we watched the sun go down at 10.30 which everyone thought was very odd. It still didnt get dark for many hours after.

So summing up, everyone is ok and just about adjusted to the time zone, accept Scott who just arrived. We will try and put another post up later today on the race and talk a little about tomorrow.

Denmark

This is just a quick message from Denmark to the parents to say that we all died on our flights.

Na, we are actually fine and most of us seem to be over jet lag very quickly. The weather here is sunny and we have done some easy training. We don't have internet where we are staying and most cell phones arn't working so this is sent from Carsten's parents house.

But I'm very hungry now so I'm going back to have breakfast

Gene

One Last Bash

The last training bash in Woodhill before JWOC has been and gone for Gene and Matt. Today we went with Tom to white lightning for a fast technical session followed by a run out to the beach over the huge dunes. The training was going good until suddenly the trees ended... It turns out most of map has been felled and our speedy orienteering session was brought to a stop.

We completed the last part of the training and met up at the finish for the anticipated dune run! This involved conquering some unreal terrain including mighty sand banks and unique grassed dunes. We eventually got to the beach and after some photos ran back to the car.

A place sure to be visited again in future missions…

Final Weekend of Training

The Aucklanders are doing their final training sessions in NZ - mainly orienteering sessions. This last week has involved training on Telephone Track, White Line Beautiful Hills, and White Lightning is on the agenda for tomorrow. All of these a Woodhill maps so easily accessible.

The most important thing about these sessions on top of their physical benefit is the chance to tighten up all the loose connections in our orienteering without the pressure of racing. We have done a variety of exercises in different difficulty areas to work on many technical elements including control flow, long legs, map contact, and speed.

We are also making good use of the sand dunes that are so relevant to JWOC in Denmark. We have run in this terrain so much now that running over sand and pin needles feels like the road once did. And whats more doing this with a map never seemed so simple.

Great work all the ABOT squad!!!