Goats and Boats

2 July

Today’s training was at Bjåli for relay training. We all had similar courses with forking and did a mass start at every three controls or so to simulate running with a lot of other people around.

The chase is on!

The map has several small hills with lots of contour detail on each, lots of marshes (as always), and a few ski trails criss-crossing the map. The forest here is a bit thicker than it will be for the actual relay.

After training, some of us played around on one of those big web pyramid play structures.

We got back for lunch and had cake to celebrate Emma Sherwood’s birthday.The cake, made by Pia and Emma W, was supposed to resemble an orienteering flag. Pretty accurate!

Happy birthday Emma!

Some of the team went out again to walk a bit on the sprint training map at Krossen in preparation for the sprint on Sunday, the first race. According to Alex, the sprint should be fairly strait forward since it’s in a typical small town. But because of this, the organisers will put up some artificial barriers to create traps and interesting route choices. The course will also have more climb than most of the team is used to as well as a forest element (approximately 30% roads and 70% streets).

After dinner we quickly checked out the petting zoo. Lots of super cure bunnies, ducklings, and goats.

Baaaaa!

We then walked down the lake to fool around with some boats on the dock. Alex and Robbie learnt how to steer a rowboat while Jan Erik and Raphael kept ramming into Emma S, Emma W, and Pia. Caelan and Trevor got a little lost though.

Pia went for a swim

Much later into the night, while Michael and Robbie were catching up with their blogging, they noticed two guys run out of the Irish team’s cabin and jump onto the roof of the girl’s cabin to try and steal their flag. But we managed to scare them off before any damage was done.