Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

One man relay. Organized by Dorothe and IF Thor. A cold and windy day out in the snow. On the long version of the race we had 3 forked loops and then a common finish loop. I was pretty satisfied with my effort and my navigation in the urban areas was good as well, but too many small mistakes in Norbyskog. Was outsprinted in the end by Johannes, and Olle was about 5 minutes faster than me too, despite showing up as a DSQ in the results for some reason.

We were supposed to treat the cliffs as if it were an ISSOM sprint, and I was not sure about one of the routes on my first map. I climbed the cliff on a side that looked narrow, and thus okay. But on the second map I chickened out and ran all the way around to avoid the issue.

Then there was a really good lecture by Oskar. He spoke a bit about his growth and what it took to jump up to the Swedish national team. His answer was to train better not more. And to have priority trainings in your week and to be properly rested. It seemed like a useful training tool to record how tired you feel every morning and evening during a couple of standard weeks, and then to visualize that with a color coding system. If you aren't feeling fresh enough before your priority trainings then you need to rearrange things. Good stuff.

2 hour run on the small trails in Nåsten with Johan... how could I resist :) It was tough conditions out there. The snow has settled somewhat, but it's still pretty deep and slippery. I wore my new VJ bolds (seemed like it was time to get a pair, considering that so many people like them) and by the end they seemed to be fitting just fine.

I struggled quite a bit to keep with the pack at times... the snow just saps the energy away from me, but it was reassuring to notice that it was hard work for everyone. I had two or three sections where I needed to do about a 1 minute sprint to close the gap... discussed afterwards with Olle N how that is good mental training, to learn basically that even when the pack seems too far ahead to catch, it's possible.

Then straight back out for the Trivia Orienteering course. It was the 20th year celebration for OK Linné and the day was full of fun things. The orienteering quiz was a course where each control had a multiple choice question (one from each year 1995 to the present) with the answers 1, x, or 2 and then three control circles on a map snippet corresponding to the 1, x, or 2. Niklas, Johan and Oskar convinced me that it was cooler to do the course in the super hard mode, doing it all by map memory. That worked well until closer to the end when the map snippets started being strange scales, with only lidar contours of unknown dimension..... I spent a great deal of time struggling on the last two real controls :)

Cold and hungry afterward.

That was fixed with sauna and a 2 hour fika buffet :)

The 20 year party was very much all organized by Sam. She put a lot of effort and worry and detailed work and planning into it. Countless emails and working to recruit and direct the many volunteers. She did great :)

We also had a special treat and got to have a wonderful lecture with Hans Rosling where he was discussing both his work and also how it related to maps and visualizing on maps. I was able to get quite a lot, despite it being in Swedish.

I also nerded out a little bit and asked him to sign a Hittaut map. He did me one better, he opened up the map and circled his house before signing it :)

C • Hans 4

I got invited to go curling with some of my work friends. I love new experiences, so this was fun, but it was also really challenging and seems to be a great sport to maximize the physical, mental, and social aspects.

It helped that I was fairly competent, and was coordinated enough to slide without falling over, only a very few of the stones that I cast slid out of bounds. It also helped that my team won 8-3 after 6 rounds :)

Think it would be fun to play again while it is still relatively fresh in my mind. :)