2019 so far

I have been a bit quiet on all social media fronts this year so far, so I thought I’d give an update to what I have been up to.

View over Mariadalsvannet near where I'm living

Since August 2018 I have been living in Oslo, Norway working as an au pair and training for the World Orienteering Championships (WOC) in 2019 which will be held just south of Oslo in August. I couldn’t have worked out better with the family I live with. They are a super fun family and very sympathetic towards my training needs. I’m not going to lie the winter was tough. The amount of snow and the cold was a bit of a shock to the system after spending the last two winters in Australia. A hamstring injury in January 

A popular ski route from the door 

meant I pretty much exclusively cross country skiied for 2 months. This was a great opportunity to learn to ski and in hindsight this may have been a blessing in disguise. If I’d been able to run I maybe would have got injured from running too much in the snow. I learnt and relearnt a lot about training in the cold over the winter. I was able to get back to normal training around the end of March/April but at the start of the season I was a bit stressed as training hadn’t gone quite as planned. Since then I have been really pleased to be able to train as normal aside from a few standard niggles. A big advantage with living in Oslo has been the opportunity to do regular orienteering training with my club Lillomarka OL and the closeness to WOC relevant terrain. Therefore I have been able to get in consistent orienteering training  and races throughout the spring.

At the start of June I competed in World Cup round 1 in Finland. Thanks to an Edinburgh University Orienteering Club holiday in 2015 I realised I had actually spent a week in nearby areas training. Therefore I had an idea about what to expect in the terrain. I was selected to run the middle distance and the chasing start long. This being the first big race of the year I was quite nervous. The races went well for some sections of both courses but I also made some costly mistakes which pushed me down the results list. I felt I had a good strategy to orienteer in this terrain but I didn’t have total confidence in myself or my race strategy. I ended up 57^th in the middle and 53^rd in the chasing start. I wasn't satisfied with my performances but nevertheless I got some good feedback from both races. From the GPS tracking and when running with others in the chasing start I could see that my fitness was good, I just needed to work out how to maximise it and find the confidence to push in the terrain. All maps and results from the world cup can be found here.

Since the world cup I spent a weekend in Østfold with some of the British team. Then I ran O festivalen in Larvik. Quite different terrain from WOC but some good high pressure races and competition. One great thing about orienteering in Norway is that there is often GPS tracking and I have really useful to see where I am gaining time and losing time to other runners. From O festivalen I was able to conclude that when I was orienteering well I was running similar speed to the winners. This gave me quite a lot of confidence in the build up to the WOC selection races the next weekend.

Long selection race map

 I was very excited and also very nervous for the WOC selection races. I knew my fitness was good enough, so I knew I could invest the time I needed to get my route and then it was a case of executing my route to the best of my ability. The long race was probably my favourite race of the year so far. I was really hoping for some long legs and the course did not disappoint. There were some very long legs across awesome terrain and if WOC long is anything like that it will be so much fun. Running on the leg has been my strength recently so the long legs suited me really well, and then it was just a case of being careful in the control circles and finding the controls cleanly. This aspect could have gone better and it is something I will be working a lot on between now and WOC. The middle race was actually my best middle race of the year so far, but I didn’t quite manage to attack the controls head on and was a bit too conservative. Nevertheless it was a stable performance and my results showed I had improved over the last month. Results and maps from the selection races can be found here.

During the middle selection race
(Photo: Martin Nielsen)

After the selection races I spent a week training in Østfold with some members of the British team. This was great fun and the Swedish team kindly allowed us to join in with their training. This really helped us as this gives us the opportunity to do high quality sessions with SI, GPS tracking, warm up map and start list giving a complete race simulation. A relay training on Tuesday had almost 80 runners from all different nationalities. I was really pleased with the progress I made in my own training over the week and must say a big thanks to the Swedish team for such awesome sessions. All sessions from the week can be found on Loggator.

At the end of the week I found out I had been selected for the long and the relay at WOC. These were the races I’d been aiming for so I am really pleased and excited about to be part of the GB team again. Before then though I will be competeing at O ringen and then returning to Oslo to do some final WOC preparations. Thanks must go to Lillomarka OL, West Cumberland Orienteering Club and the North West Orienteering Association for supporting me with training and racing so far this year.

Super excited to be part of the GB team again!