OLD NEWS >> October 2003

2003-10-27 More from Raid Uppsala:
Photos of our team (from Per Ytterberg).
Article about the race from the site of the organizers (in Swedish)
Article from www.multisport.nu (in Swedish)
The competition season is more or less over and so it is time to analyze, evaluate and plan for the next one. I organize a training camp for my adventure racing team this weekend (31st October - 2nd November) here in Borlänge. The first snow came last week and it starts to be really cold here. I plan for ice-skating season start this week. I have never done it before (using the skates with long blades) but I hope that the technique is similar to inlines. It should be part of my winter training. Yesterday I joined the local cycling club Borlänge CK (finally!) with a goal to improve my MTB-technique and to keep on training even during the winter. The main problem seems to be keeping my feet and fingers warm during biking when the temperature is bellow zero...

2003-10-22 On Saturday (2003-10-18) I competed together with Emelie Tillegård from our team Silva in an adventure race called Raid Uppsala.The disciplines were orienteering, MTB and paddling divided into 8 sections. Our time was 8hours9min59s. We won the women-cathegory and took 5th place totally (40' after the winners in men-cathegory). Results. We were in the lead after 70' and we have beaten many men totally. It seems that some people were quite impressed by our performance (read an article about the race at litepac.com in Swedish) The course was set in the way that it was necessary to navigate all the time except for a short marked MTB and running leg. Mostly orienteering maps were used.
The fact that orienteering was "difficult" was our advantage but even if we navigated better than most of the other teams I still coudn't avoid a few mistakes. But we have taken good route choices (see the maps). In the middle of the race I started to have a lot of pain in my right knee (runners' knee), but luckily it went almost completely over after some time. We lost most of the time on paddling. I was steering and it was far from optimal. The course consisted of a lot technical biking but it was first time I had a feeling that I have it "under controll" and that it is fun. Good team work with Emelie. I had a lot of energy during the whole race.

2003-10-20 During the autumn and winter I plan to train climbing regulary on the indoor climbing wall. Last Thursday (2003-10-16) I took with me some people from orenteering and tried to teach them the basic climbing technique (top rope). I appreciate a lot that we have this facility in Borlänge - we can borrow all necessary equipment (harness, carabines, break device and shoes). Climbing is not only a good strength training for the whole body, it is also a good "mental" exercise. We have taken some pictures.

2003-10-16 Probably my last "proper" competiton in orienteering this year - 25manna - took place in Stockholm last Saturday (2003-10-11). 25-manna is a relay for club-teams consisting of runners in all different olders. Some of the legs are parallel. Our club was planning to have a "pure" team consisting only of the members of Domnarets GoIF but finally we had to "borrow" a few H21-runners from Malungs OK to be able to have a complete team. There were about 340 teams (= 8500 participants) starting. Our goal was to improve the position from the last year (77th). Unfortunately we got disqualified becuse one of the runners got/took a wrong map. Otherwise we could have finished around the 50th place. I ran the second last leg, trying to replace our big star Karolina who competed in cross-country running instead. I did quite well on the very short and fast course (had 13th best time). It is fun to compete in orienteering now! Results from my leg. A few pictures on the site of my club. And map with my course.
This weekend adventure racing is on my programme again. On Saturday (2003-10-18) I will compete in Raid Uppsala in the women cathegory together with Emelie from my team. The disciplines are: orienteering, MTB/MTB-orienteering and canoe paddling. The expected winning time in the men-cathegory (the same course) is about 7 hours.

2003-10-07 On Saturday (2003-10-04) I had an opportunity to compare myself with the world elite in orienteering. I took part in World Meeting in Norberg which was kind of a test race in the terrain of World Championship next year. I haven't decided yet whether I want to try to prepare for the world champs and in this race I wanted to check a bit how it feels to compete in this terrain against the best ones. I know that I cannot run in the same speed as them now but my goal was to run smoothly and avoid mistakes, at least big ones. I managed well and made only one 1-minute mistake. It was actually a cool feeling which I haven't had for a long time - I was highly concentrated and could follow the map with so many details But my legs were heavy... Let's see what I do next year. I finished 31st (out of ca 65), 11 minutes after the winner. Results. And the map with my route choices (380kB)..

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