Victory in Svalandsgubben

On Sunday I took part in Svalandsgubben, a 27 km terrain race in Birkeland. This was the 36th time this traditional race took place and I really looked forward to running it. One main reason was that my boss in Ramboll, Oystein Halvorsen, ran it in 1978 in 1:47'52 which is about 4 minutes down the record set by Knut Alien in 2003. That same year Holger Hott ran in 1:44'29 which is the third best time ever and Bjonard Valstad in 1:49'02.

The weather conditions the last days were not so optimal to run a fast race because it rained a lot. Kristiansand was the wettest place in Norway on Saturday with 33.5 mm. The old boys remember when the swamps were icy and it was possible to run on top of them...

The race started quite fast on the first 3 km on the road and I was wondering if it was not too fast for me. But when we started to climb I felt that I could keep the speed of the leaders (Holger and Øyvind Heiberg Sundby). After 5 or 6 km Holger took the lead and we ran away from Øyvind in the technical trails and wet marshes.
Quite often we had water up to the knees and some times higher up... It was a challenge to find to "driest" place to run. It was so wet that the organizers had to shorten the course in one place(- 700 m) because a river was impossible to cross.
At km 10 I took the lead as Holger tried to "swim out" a swamp. I felt quite good then and increased the speed a little bit. We passed Svalandstarnet (332 m, highest point of the race) together. In the downhill Holger started losing some seconds and I could open a gap of about half a minute.
I was a little afraid of the last 7 flat km mainly on big paths and tried to concentrate on having a good speed when I hit the asphalt. Even if the cramps were not far away most of the last 5 km I could cross the finish line in 1:45'21, 1'30 in front of Holger.














So I reached my goal to beat the time of Oystein by 2'30 and more important really enjoyed running this race.

Results
Best times ever

PS: There will be a lot of discussions about the length of the course and the weather conditions tomorrow at work ;-)

130 swampy kilometers

In order to prepare WOC 2010 I spent 6 days in Trondheim. With Antti N, Fabian H, Hannu A, Philippe A and Sara L we had some good sessions. Here are the main training of each day:

Wednesday
We took part in the NTNUI night cup. At the start it was a surprise to get a map with only curves. But the terrain was really open and it was fun to run there.













Thursday
In the afternoon we went to Vassfjellet and run a "downhill" course.





















Friday
We used the map "Nordmarka" to make some downhill-O. Each of us put out the controls on one loop running up and had 4 loops to orienteer down. Fantastic terrain.




















Saturday
See Fabian's web page

Sunday
As the weather during the week was "good", the snow melted and it was possible to run up to Vassfjellet (710m). The controls up helped to get strong physically, the controls on the top to get the motivation for orienteering and the controls downhill were challenging technically.














Monday
With Fabian and Hannu we ran the camp championship, 5 short courses. The first 3 loops were just the warm up and each of us could start with a 20sec lead on the two other. On the forth loops we had massstart deciding the position for the last loop which was run as a chasing start. As they were no controls in forest the last control provoke some discussions about the exact location and the results had to be canceled.








All in all we trained really well during those days and could get more knowledge about the WOC terrains. I'm really looking forward to come back to Trondheim.

Go hard or go home

Last week-end we spent 2 days in Oslo with Andreas. We had some good trainings there and made the most out of the those 48 hours.

Saturday
Morning run
First session of the day: 30 minutes morning run around the most famous training place in Oslo: Songsvann.

Furumomila
The goal of the trip was to run Furumomila, a 10km race in Modum. It was a very nice course on paths through a beautiful forest. Andreas won the race and show that he deserves running Nordic Champ in cross country running in the beginning of November in Finland.

Night-O
After some rest we headed to Puttasen for a night-O. The beginning was set in open forest while the end of the course went through more dense and rocky areas. This was my first night-O after Jukola and some automatism were still a little rusty.





















O-talk with BSK coach
In the evening we met BSK coach Martin Schälli in the city for some chatting about orienteering clubs and runners.

Sunday
Oslo Bratteste
The night was short but long enough to be ready for the steepest hill in Oslo area, Tryvann. We run the course of the already famous Oslo Bratteste organised some weeks ago by Slevik IL.














O-Intervals
After a deserved breakfast it was time to run an O-intervals training in Krutthuset. It was good to run fast in order to get warm in the cold and rainy morning weather.




















BSK-trening
The legs started to be a little tired but before heading back to Kristiansand, we enjoyed the nice forest in Stensrud.




















Now I’m in Trondheim training for next year WOC. An other week of training is in front of me…