Progress in Norway

Sightseeing in Trondheim

I been have  in Norway for just over one month now and things are heading in the right direction. This year I will be living at Ronningen, a folkehøgskole in Oslo, Norway. Here I will be training for orienteering, going through an intensive Norwegian course, and also experiences norwegian culture! 🙂

Orienteering-wise the past month has been filled with the struggles and successes that come with adjusting to Norwegian terrain. My first weekend here I was able to run leg one of the Oslo Region Relay Championships. The terrain was very heavy running and it was a hot summer day.

First leg results against the Senior teams

About half-way through the race I looked around me and saw most of the top runners and laughed to myself thinking they must be doing poorly. Though after finishing I found out it was the other way around and that I actually came in just behind top senior teams: Halden 1, Nydalen 1, and Bekkelaget 1!

A little too smiley 🙂

The next week I joined my first Scandinavian Orienteering Club: Fossum IF! I was super excited about having teammates to train and race with. During the Club Championships that week I lost a bit too much focus and ended up having a pretty poor first run with Fossum.

A week later we drove down to Halden to race the Norwegian Long, Middle, and Relay Championships where I had to race in the H21E guest class *only the Swedish and Finnish senior teams were in it so really no competition :P* 

I came out of the NM weekend exhausted and yet excited to head up to Trondheim in two weeks time for the Norges Cup and Junior National Relay Champs.

The uglier the finish the better the result! (Norges Cup Finale)

The Norges Cup consisted of a Sprint, a Middle Finale and then the NM Junior Relay. For these races I focused on my mental states for large races to rebound off of my previous rough results caused by giddiness. Each race I brought myself into the mental state of zero pressure, have fun with the positive message, “Let’s see what we can do today.”

Will add my GPS shortly

During the Sprint my positive mood helped me maintain a strong focus which kept my running speed up and brought me home with a semi-victory! Semi because while running through the long spectator control I forgot to punch because of focusing on the route choices for the next control. Whoops! Never less, I came out of the Sprint pretty darn happy: because to come first in H19-20 in Norway is also top in the world!

Taking the lead to the 9th and 10th controls

After a smile filled and fairly light sleep it was time for me to find out if I could maintain the zero pressure, have fun mental state. The first couple of controls went through beautiful, grassy forest and as the raced progressed the forest became more and more dense. That lead to me taking safe, fast routes which worked fairly well.

Final kick to the finish

Strava Segment>Diploma

Sadly though after a set of mistakes I was pushed down to 7th place and had to fight hard to come back up. From my hard kick up the final hill I was able to take back one place and win a sixth place diploma!

Splits: Link

Awards!

I was lucky enough to be allowed to run in the relay and I had one other Fossum runner in my team: Sivert Kverme 🙂 And though we were the fourth team with only two runners we planned on winning (or something like that)!

Sivert, my first leg runner, did an incredible job and brought me through in 20th place just a few minutes behind the leaders. I ran hard with intentions of having fun and seeing how far I could move up. And even though I ran alone for nearly the entire race I only lost a couple of minutes on the top runners and was able to move us up to 14th!

Excited about my results and yearning for more!

I am now on my way over the Austria to compete in the Junior European Cup (JEC), and then train in Hungary for JWOC next year.

To find everything JEC go to here: Link

And if you would like to see how I am doing there will be live results (I am not sure about GPS).

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Thank you for reading, I hope that you have enjoyed this blog post 🙂 If you are interested in hearing about updates from my orienteering career please subscribe!

Contact me by email at naessjanerik@gmail.com