Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Park World Tour in China

In the last half of October I spent a week in China participating in Park World Tour. This was the fifth time I was going for PWT in China, and it has always been one of the seasons highlights:-)

The tour this year was called Vasa PWT Orienteering Festival, and was arranged by Nordic Ways, that are organizing a lot of different events on China in typical nordic sports such as skiing, running, orienteering and biking.

The first races was held in Changchun, 1000 km north east of Beijing, where I ran PWT last year and also participated in the Chinese Vasaloppet in 2011.

PWT-prologue, Changchun
The first racing day it was held two competitions, and we started with a Prologue in the morning. It was 3 km course with a combination of middle distance and sprint character. I did an OK performance, but I lost some time to the winner Mårten Boström the last half of the course because of the route choice to the 8th control, a small mistake to the 9th control and generally to slow running speed.

Østerbø nummer 9 i Kina, orientering.no

PWT-1 Sprint, Changchun
In the evening the first real PWT race was held as a Sprint in Changchun Sculpture Park. My race was again OK, even if I lost some seconds several places, but I felt the winner Yannick Michiels was running very fast.

The PWT China tour 2013 on the way, pwt.org
- Manglet litt fart, orientering.no

PWT-2 Middle, Changchun
The following day we ran a Middle distance in a really nice forest with mainly great runnability and several counter details.

My speed was good enough to fight for a top position, and I did also a good technical performance, but a huge parallel mistake to the 18th control destroyed a good result. I left the valley one spur earlier then I had planned, and was quite confused when I came to a control with code 48 in stead of 47. The control I came to was the 20th control, that I should have on the second loop, and in total I lost 1 minute on the mistake and a possible to 3 position. Edgars Bertuks won the men's class, and in the women's class Karolin Ohlsson won all the three first races.

China tour continues with middle distance, pwt.org
Parallelfeil ødela for topplassering, orientering.no

After two intensive days with three races in Changchun the plan was to fly to Beijing the next morning, and have the last race the same evening. Unfortunately it was very foggy, and we had to wait on the airport for 7 hours before we could fly to Beijing. The last race was therefore postponed one day.

PWT-3 Sprint, Beijing
The race in Beijing was a sprint held in the Ruins of Yuanmingyuan Park. It was a great area for a sprint race, and the water and bridges made it passible to make complex route choice legs.

After being too slow in the first sprint race I tried to open more offensive today, and succeed quite well. Unfortunately I lost a few seconds on some of the route choices in the first part of the race, but I did well in the control picking part and managed also too keep up the speed in the easier last part. My result was a 2nd place, 6 seconds behind Yannick Michiels, and it was great to end the tour with a good result.

PWT China tour 2013 concluded in Beijing, pwt.org
Sekunder fra seier, orientering.no

The Great Wall
After the race we went directly to the Great Wall. The weather was quite bad, compared to last year, and most of us was running on the wall to avoid getting cold. The wall is partly very steep, and it was quite slippery on the wet stones. In the evening we had a Beijing Duck dinner.

The following day I spent shopping and in the evening we had another fun night with good food and happy people. The last day I got a haircut and had a short run before the flight home.

I want to thank Nordic Ways (with Gåvert Wååg as General Manager), Jaroslav Kacmarcik (who had contract with the runners and fixed most with maps and curses) and all the runners participating for making this great trip possible!

In my Picasa you can find 200 pictures from PWT in China. My pictures from 2010 and 2012 can also be worth a look.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Busy autumn season

The last two month has been really busy for me, with a lot of competitions and several training camps. The short periods I have been home I have spent my time working, and unfortunately not had time to update this blog with maps and pictures.

Since the beginning of September I have had this program:
  • WOC 2014 training camp with the Norwegian National team in Asiago in Italy
  • Norwegian Champs on Kongsberg
  • Races in Alta Badia and WOC training in Asiago in Italy
  • Arranging and running Lidingöloppet home on Lidingö in Stockholm
  • World Cup final in Baden in Switzerland
  • WOC training camp with IFK Lidingö in Asiago in Italy
  • 25manna relay in Stockholm
  • Park World Tour in China
  • Smålandskavlen relay in Oskarshamn

Now I have my season break, and will finally have time to publish some maps, pictures and short reports. Yesterday I wrote about IFK Lidingö's victory in Smålandskavlen, and tomorrow I will write about PWT in China. I had planed to make some updates from China, but since many apps and websites (like Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and Picasa) are blocked there it made in difficult.

Monday, October 28, 2013

Victory in Smålandskavlen with IFK Lidingö

Last weekend I ended my orienteering season competing in the traditional relay Smålandskavlen in Oskarshamn south east in Sweden. The terrain was really nice, and I got a good feeling after Saturdays training.

Anders Carlsson and Filip Dahlgren gave us an excellent start of the relay, being 4th and 1st on the two individual night legs, and Niklas Serrander could start the first day leg in the lead. Niklas has been sick this autumn and is not in his best shape, but did an impressive performance doing almost none mistakes.

I started out on the 4th leg as 3rd runner, 3 min behind Scott Fraser (SNO) and 11 sec behind Jacob Lööf (Malungs). I lost 10 - 30 sec to both the 2nd, 3rd and 4th control, and got caught by Jere Pajunen (Kalevan Rasti) that started 50 sec after me. He held a good speed, but to the 7th control I passed him, and after that I was mostly first of us. I was accurate in my orienteering, and felt I ran pretty well.

The 14th and 15th control was forked, and I took over the lead, passing SNO and Malungs without knowing it. To the 17th I was running to the left of the march, and just before the control I met both KR, SNO and Malaungs who had been running to the right. To the 18th I ran too much to the right, and needed to use the last longer leg to catch up a 15 sec gap to the others. I managed to pass Malungs and KR in the run in, and could change over as 2nd team, 3 sec behind SNO.

Fredrik Johansson did an excellent last leg. Together with Malungs and SNO he managed to run away from Thierry Gueorgiou (KR), who was tired, and in the same forking where I took over the lead he took an other route then the others, increased his speed, and managed to come alone to the finish. It was a great feeling to end the season winning one of the big relays together with my mates in IFK Lidingö! Results and GPS tracking

Fredrik Johansson avgjorde Smålandskavlen, orientering.se