Tuesday Apr 29 |
 | Running 45:00 [3]5.63 km (8:00 / km) | |
| shoes: Asics 2007 |
| Hanging controls for the sprints. |
Monday Apr 28 |
| Running 1:25:33 [1]12.22 km (7:00 / km) | |
| (injured) shoes: Rob's shoes |
| An afternoon jog with Sandra to scout control locations for the Tuesday's sprint training. |
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| C • How'd it go? 4 |
Sunday Apr 27 |
| Running 10:00 [2]1.67 km (6:00 / km) | |
| shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| A bit of a warm-up while waiting for Brendan. |
| Orienteering race 1:54:25 [4]*** 16.6 km (6:54 / km) | |
| spiked:20/23c (injured) shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Tiomila 2008.
Mikkel got here on Friday evening, but it did not begin to feel like something very special was about to happen until Saturday morning, when I found Biggins, Kenny, and Will waiting for me as I came out of the shower after my morning jog with the Linné boys. For the first time since Jukola 2006, CSU was gathering in full strength to take on another challenge. Once again, just like two years ago, the exact set of people who received the original email with the idea of traveling halfway across the world and running Tiomila all turned up and ran the legs they were assigned back in October or so.
The weather this week-end was very un-Tiomila-like: 15-20C during the day and well above freezing even at night. We watched the women's relay in the afternoon, getting to cheer for Sandra as she ran away from Simone Niggli on her leg. (By the way, is the 23rd place Sandra's team ended up in the best ever by an American at Tiomila?)
After Ross' start I went back to the military tent and crawled into my sleeping bag outside under the stars, relaxing and listening to the reports from the forest. I dozed off for about the half-hour it took the leaders to get from the spectator control to the finish, and that was all the sleep I got.
After Ross and Matthias ran the first two legs, Brendan did a solid job in hir first-ever Swedish orienteering experience and exchanged to me in 293rd place and 88 minutes behind the lead, just a couple of minutes behind Jesus Orienteering Klubb, catching which became my first goal.
Somehow, right from the start of my Long Night, I felt great. My legs felt light, and it took very little effort to focus on the orienteering. The constant pain in my glute was the only reminder of my less-than-impressive orienteering season 2008. The brand-new lamp battery I bought two weeks ago gave me confidence that I won't run out of light, but I turned it to low power on all the trail and road sections anyway. Leaving the start triangle, I saw a bunch of lamps heading left across the field, taking the around route choice on trails. I went right instead, running by myself, and stuck closer to the line, taking the small trail north from the first aid station. There was a moment of self-doubt when I cut into the green forest heading to the northwest and towards he control, but that was replaced with a boost of confidence when I saw the reflector and JOK's Ian Cumpstey punching just ahead of me. On the looong leg to 2, I didn't really see any route choice and went pretty straight. I drifted a bit off line trying to catch the road to the southwest of 2, but recovered fairly quickly. Was careful on the short legs to 3 and 4, but didn't lose any time. Saw the two route choices to 5 and went left, on the roads and trails, rather than risking going through the fields to the north that could, for all I knew, contain waist-high grass. Passed one more guy shortly after getting on the road, but was then alone in complete darkness, just running along and enjoying the feeling. As I was contouring along from the trail towards 5, I suddenly looked right and saw a sea of lamps (10-15 of them) coming in from my right. Wasn't sure if I caught them or they me (probably the former), but it didn't matter. I decided to shake them. Saw that they went more-or-less straight to 6, contouring along the steep slope, and so I took off on the trail route around, through the small field on top of the hill. A couple of guys went with me. Spiked 6 and saw the group of lamps coming in as we were on the way out.
Another route choice to 7: northern road past the shooting ranges or southern one with the indistinct trail as an attack. The guys I was with tried to convince me (in Norwegian!) to go south. I went north and never saw them again. All alone the whole way to 7, through the empty spooky shooting ranges and along the hillside. Careful again on the short legs to 8-11, not losing any time, but hitting my knee hard on a rock on the way to 8. Annoying. Feeling great running through the meadow down to 12, trampling the occasional flower and spiking another control. Finally, climbing the hill on the way to 16, I realized I was very tired. Lost focus twice on this leg, for a total of nearly 2 minutes lost. Stopped when I found the control and regrouped, forcing myself to concentrate harder in this tricky area - would be a shame to ruin a good race towards the end! Orienteered well to 17-20, but moving slowly, and staying with a small pack of a couple of guys I caught. Screwed up 21, going too far right and not being sure of myself. About 50 seconds gone. From there, all that was left was to slog along through the mud to 22 and 23 and then leave it all on the run-in. As I was finishing, I realized that it was starting to get light. I had been out for 114 minutes and exchanged to Biggins in 254th place. I was very happy with my run, even though my time was not particularly impressive (177th on my leg is nothing to write home about.) Still, I survived, orienteered well and ran mostly by myself. More importantly, I had a blast - long night at Tiomila truly is something special, and I am really thankful to CSU for giving me the opportunity to run it!
The rest of the weekend was a pleasant blur. Watching the team climb in the standings, cheering for Daddy-O and Will, not being particularly upset that we ended up mispunching. Eating some pizza, hanging out on the big rock outside my house, and just enjoying being around the CSU gang, which, as always, felt more like a family than I could ever have imagined possible. Thanks to Ross, Matthias, Brendan, Biggins, Kenny, Mikkel, PG, Ken Sr., Will, and Bubo for an unforgettable experience! This was a definite bright spot in otherwise dismal season for me. Thank you also to Kat and Sandra for being CSU's fans and cheering us on at all hours of the night and morning!
It was also cool to have so many OK Linné people, both runners and organizers, ask about how CSU was doing and wish us good luck all through Tiomila. This definitely added to the excitement.
What's next for CSU? Stay tuned.
Results: http://www.10mila.se/2008/resultat/herrar.html
A handful of pictures, including my map: http://my.opera.com/borisgr/albums/show.dml?id=520...
A tired me: http://picasaweb.google.com/bubo2008/Tiomila2008CS... |
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| C • GREAT REPORT! 5 |
Saturday Apr 26 |
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| Event: Tiomila 2008
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| Running 35:15 [2]5.88 km (6:00 / km) | |
| (injured) shoes: Asics 2007 |
| Morning jog with a whole gang of Linné boys down in Hågadalen. A beautiful, sunny morning. Now the CSU forces are starting to arrive. It's nearly time! |
Thursday Apr 24 |
| Strength 30:00 [1] | |
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| Core and stuff at the gym, and then watching Sandra show some of the strength exercises to me and Kat. Will start doing these when/if healthy. |
| Running 20:00 [2]2.86 km (7:00 / km) | |
| shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| To and from the start. |
| Orienteering 44:31 [4]*** 6.4 km (6:57 / km) | |
| (injured) shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| Training on Vedyxa with Linné. We split up into pairs and then did loops, starting at the same time with your "team-mate" and doing the loop in opposite orders. Very good training, even if my butt hurt a lot after a particularly painful massage by Kat the night before. I paired up with David Schneider, which was kind of intimidating. Luckily, he made some mistakes in this Scandinavian terrain, and so we weren't so far apart. Fun training, gorgeous day. |
Wednesday Apr 23 |
| Running 5:00 [1]0.83 km (6:00 / km) | |
| shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Warm-up |
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| C • Tiomila 1 |
| Orienteering 40:58 [3]*** 5.94 km (6:54 / km) | |
| spiked:8/11c (injured) shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Wednesday Day-O on Lunsen.
Did the middle course and tried to run hard. Orienteered surprisingly well, making only a couple of small bobbles, but not much speed to speak of. Really fun to be out in nice spring weather!
Results: http://www.oklinne.nu/onsdagsnatt/results.php?id=5... |
Tuesday Apr 22 |
| Running 1:03:09 [2]10.52 km (6:00 / km) | |
| (injured) shoes: Asics 2007 |
| Easy run with Sandra and Kat on trails in the nice afternoon sunshine. Butt hurt. |
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| C • You ran very well at Jukola... 1 |
Sunday Apr 20 |
| Orienteering 1:00:00 [1]***** | |
| (injured) |
| What a beautiful day! Spring weather has hit Uppsala, even if for just a day. Today it was OK Linné's turn to arrange an event, the long distance part of Uppsala Möte, with excellent courses by Jan on a newly-drawn Ekdalen map. One of my tasks today was putting out SI units, and this involved waking up at 6am. We drove out to the early morning forest and ran out through the ice-cold (it was below freezing overnight) marshes and soft hills - all alone in the beautiful, quiet woods, with nary a moose to disturb the peace.
The actual race day was spent helping put up results and socializing, the highlight of which was meeting Asplövet in person for the first time after reading his awesome blog for a long time. As he wrote today, we mostly talked about the state of my butt, and its effect on the prospects of CSU's Tiomila team.
Afterwards we went out and picked up SI units and controls, but this time, the chilly marshes were almost refreshing in the afternoon heat.
A fine day and a great event, with around 1300 competitors.
Oh yeah, Linné's Tiomila teams are now up: http://www.oklinne.nu/index.php?page=uk/uk_main.ph...
Looks good! Don't think I could have made the second team in the form I am in now.
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| C • That's funny... 6 |
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| C • 10mila - CSU vs. Rastivarsat 13 |
Saturday Apr 19 |
| Running 20:00 [2]4 km (5:00 / km) | |
| shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| Warm-up |
| Orienteering race 39:23 [4]***** 5 km (7:53 / km) | |
| (injured) shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| Uppsala Möte Middle Distance, IF Thor
The new Ekdalen map.
I don't know if it was the warm day or what, but my glute felt pretty good after a long warm-up, and I was excited to get going at nearly full speed right off the start. Of course, since I hadn't orienteered at full speed in a long time, I started making mistakes almost immediately and ended up losing tons of time, a total of 7-8 minutes for the course. No matter - it felt so good to run fast without much pain, even if just for one day, that I was happy at the finish anyway. |
Friday Apr 18 |
| Orienteering 1:12:00 [2]***** 7.2 km (10:00 / km) | |
| (injured) shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Orienteering training with Kat and Shep on the Tjäderleksberget part of Lunsen after the end of a two-day workshop on modeling complex biological systems that my adviser organized and i got to attend. Started out shadowing Kat a bit, but I was really not concentrating well and not feeling good, so I decided to run off by myself and force myself to focus better. That went pretty well, though I was still hobbling along pretty slowly. Shep cooked us delicious Indian food afterwards. |
Wednesday Apr 16 |
| Running 1:07:25 [2]9.63 km (7:00 / km) | |
| (injured) shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Easy run on the muddy trails on Nåsten with Kat. We planned to pre-run this Sunday's event at Ekdalen, but someone took the club car when we needed it, despite the fact that we had booked it. Grrrrr. Nice, sunny day for once, very pretty in the forest. |
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| C • club car 1 |
Tuesday Apr 15 |
| Orienteering 1:27:16 [2]8 km (10:54 / km) | |
| (injured) shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| Night-O training on Rävsta in Sigtuna, the most Tiomila-relevant map in existence, I think. Shadowed Kat and went quite slowly, but we orienteered rather well, including through the tricky green bits. Definitely pleased with Kat's navigation tonight. |
Monday Apr 14 |
| Biking 30:00 [3] | |
| (injured) (sick) |
| Feeling a bit sick today. Sat on a stationary bike in the gym for half an hour before getting bored. |
| Strength 15:00 [1] | |
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| Hamstrings, quads, calves mostly. |
Sunday Apr 13 |
| Running 20:00 [2]2.5 km (8:00 / km) | |
| shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| Long "warm-up" in the freezing rain. Nearly missed the changeover. |
| Orienteering race 50:36 [4]*** 7 km (7:14 / km) | |
| spiked:10/15c (injured) shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Rånässtafetten, OK Linné 3rd team, 3rd leg. Micke Nordström and Marcus Phersson led off very well for my team, and I started out in 10th place. Felt very good physically for some odd reason, and ran really well in the beginning (3rd on my forking after ten minutes). Then the mistakes came. Missed a minute on the long leg to 4, then ran hard to catch a pack (up to 8th place by now, i think) and came to the wrong forking, while everyone in the pack punched and went off. Lost maybe 20 seconds, as my control was very close, but again made the stupid mistake of trying to run full-speed to catch up. Sure enough, got stuck in the green and lost the pack completely. Another 45 seconds lost. Then another three careless mistakes towards the end, for a total of 5 minutes missed on a not-very-difficult course. Exchanged 15th. Best time on my forking was 41:40 or so by Ulf. Oh yeah, this was a totally miserable day with 1-2C and freezing rain all day. About the worst weather I've ever experienced during an O-race. |
Saturday Apr 12 |
| Running 25:00 [2]4.17 km (6:00 / km) | |
| shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Warm-up |
| Orienteering race 39:03 [4]*** 5.3 km (7:22 / km) | |
| spiked:15/19c (injured) shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Lännasprinten middle distance, H21-1 class. Very tricky terrain, with large areas of low visibility and a lot of tough footing and lots small climbs and drops the whole way. My glute felt awful, the worst it's been so far, I think. I orienteered ok most of the way, though, making a couple of 45-second mistakes and a couple of smaller ones, which I think is ok for this terrain. Running quite slowly, though - just couldn't go any harder without extreme pain. Ended up 8th out of 50-something in the class, but got slaughtered by Mats Fröberg, who ran an awesome 33:30. |
Thursday Apr 10 |
| Biking 55:00  | |
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| Spinning. Glute felt really sore last night and this morning, so no running today. Got my second massage from Mari tonight. It hurt. |
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| C • 10mila 2 |
Wednesday Apr 9 |
| Running 5:00 [1]0.83 km (6:00 / km) | |
| shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| A purely nominal warm-up |
| Orienteering 1:11:54 [3]*** 9.28 km (7:45 / km) | |
| spiked:6/10c (injured) shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| Wednesday Day-O on Hagby/Ekebysjö. Freezing rain falling down and +1.5C.
Isn't Swedish spring lovely? Cold and wet the entire time, which did not make the glute happy. Not running particularly well, but orienteering ok. Happy I didn't do the 15.8km version that was on offer - I'd still be out there. |
Tuesday Apr 8 |
| Biking 55:00  | |
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| Spinnin' |
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| C • You forgot to do something ... 1 |
| Note | |
| (injured) |
| Got a nice massage from phiggins' favorite physical therapist. She didn't make me cry, but wasn't too far off. We'll see if it helps. |
Monday Apr 7 |
| Strength 40:00 [1] | |
| |
| Modified circuits at home with Kat. Casba looked horrified when he walked in to see the living room transformed into a bizarre sort of gym. He is just lucky there isn't enough room for Kat to do jump rope...
The day's other highlight was Tomas coming over and having a chat with Csaba and me about training, camps, relays, and so on. Very cool of him (as the new herransvarig in the club) to take the time to do that. |
Sunday Apr 6 |
| Running 10:00 [1]1.67 km (6:00 / km) | |
| shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Warm-up |
| Orienteering 1:25:59 [2]*** 12 km (7:10 / km) | |
| spiked:28/30c (injured) shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Tiomila training at Kairobadet in Väsby. Nice long course. Took it easy and orienteered very well. Really enjoyed it and caught myself thinking a couple of times during the run how much fun this was. |
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| C • I am so jealous... 1 |
Saturday Apr 5 |
| Running 20:00 [1]3.33 km (6:00 / km) | |
| shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| Warm-up/cool-down |
| Orienteering race 36:38 [4]**** 4.7 km (7:48 / km) | |
| spiked:11/15c (injured) shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| Kolmårdsdubbeln, middle distance.
It was a lovely spring day, and the terrain, map, and course were excellent, so I am really glad I ran this, even if I didn't push all out due to the glute and was quite tired from the previous night's night-O. Started orienteering sloppily - took a while to get used to 1:10000 after the 1:15000 on Natträvarnas. Finally started hitting controls after the first 4 and was very clean the rest of the way. The result was, unsurprisingly, not impressive - 50th out of 87 or so, but it was a lot of fun, and the orienteering was really nice. We started with a loop in detailed hill terrain - a bunch of steep hills with rock details on the sides, then had a bit through low visibility small-contour stuff and finished off with a loop in wide-open pine forest with tough, soft running - and all this in one middle distance course! |
Friday Apr 4 |
| Running 15:00 [1]2.5 km (6:00 / km) | |
| shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Warm-up for Natträvarnas. Felt pretty good, actually, by the end of it. |
| Orienteering 1:07:57 [3]***** 6.7 km (10:09 / km) | |
| spiked:9/13c (injured) shoes: VJ Falcons-Fall '07 |
| Natträvarnas Natt is a night race that advertises itself as "putting challenging orienteering ahead of comforts at the event center and good spectating" and having "day-difficulty courses at night". The event was quite true to its mottoes, starting with the event center consisting of a parking lot surrounding a cement mixer in the middle of a huge landfill. The course itself was very hard, both technically and physically. The first part went though typical terrain for these parts - detailed hilltops surrounded by vague, marshy flat areas in which it's very easy to get off-line. Then, we had a long leg through a beautiful area of small hills and swamps, reminiscent of the best parts of Lunsen, and finished up with a bunch of controls in an area with a lot of brashings, making for tough runnability and a lot of cursing from all sides. I took it relatively easy, especially in the more technical parts, and stopped quite a bit, This didn't prevent me from making one 5-minute mistakes and maybe three 1-minute ones, but I avoided complete disaster, which was entirely possible in this terrain, and ended up 11th out of 55 or so in H21 regular. However, the times run by the best guys on H21 Lång were simply mind-blowing: under 74 minutes for 11km in this terrain! |
Thursday Apr 3 |
| Biking 55:00  | |
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| Spinning at F&S |
Wednesday Apr 2 |
| Running 20:00 [1]3.08 km (6:30 / km) | |
| shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| Running from home to and from Hågaby. |
| Orienteering 48:06 [3]*** 5.3 km (9:05 / km) | |
| spiked:7/9c (injured) shoes: 2007 model Falcons |
| Wednesday night-O on north Nåsten. Didn't feel good all day and really wanted to stay home, but Kat dragged me out. Orienteered ok, but focus sort of kept coming and going the entire way. Glute hurt. Lasso ran this course in 44 minutes. |