Archive for the ‘Sport’ Category

Sognsvann Øst

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Yesterday evening we made it out to the Nordmarkskarusellen at Korsvoll school. I went orienteering and then Christine ran home afterwards. My main aim for the evening was just to take it steady and not make any major stuff-ups. I failed!

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New role as women’s pacemaker

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

While hunting around for events to enter we came across Sportsklubben Rye’s Ryeløpet. This is a 5k race around Kongeskogen, Bygdøy. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I arrived yesterday evening, half an hour before the appointed time. The online details were a bit scant. I’d made a bank transfer but wasn’t totally convinced I’d even managed to enter successfully.

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Holmenkollstafetten

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

Over lunch at the IBM office one day I had managed to get myself on to the reserve list for the Software Group team for Holmenkollstafetten. This is an annual 15 person relay around the streets of Oslo which, with a total distance of just 18km, manages to attract a massive entry. If you live in Oslo and are not running yourself you almost certainly know someone who is. As predicted, the drop out rate in our team was pretty high and in the week beforehand I was called up.

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Active week

Friday, May 2nd, 2008

It’s been an active week so far. Tuesday night was an Oslo City Cup race at Godliaparken on the west side of Oslo. A 1:5000 sprint race map again with a mix of fast woodland and open areas around the school and flats. My biggest mistake of the night was at the third control where I was a bit to the right. This cost me a whole 23 seconds but was enough for the guy who started 15 seconds behind me to catch up. I then spent the rest of the race desperately clinging on – my legs tired from two hilly runs at the weekend – only staying in touch by avoiding his small mistakes. Although only less than three minutes down on the winner, I’m still in the middle of the results. I think I’d be pushing it to run 3km in 13 minutes in terrain even if I didn’t have to find 19 controls!
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Svalerød shocker

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

517We were up early this morning for the hour and forty minute drive South to the Swedish border and our first big orienteering event since arriving in Norway. Although, like most events here, there was “kids parking”, this was only for those over two so we were subject to split starts – Christine off first on her D21 course and me last off on H21. Christine came back from her run a little slower than expected which she put down to speed in the terrain. Her report of a hilly rock strewn area with the odd impassable cliff thrown in for good measure didn’t exactly fill me with joy!
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Shopping, sights and snow

Saturday, April 12th, 2008

514It was raining when we got up this morning so we decided to head in to town for a bit of shopping. We finally gave in and bought a English-Norwegian dictionary. Up until now I’ve been struggling along with InterTran via the FoxLingo Firefox add-on but it’s pretty useless failing to translate most of the words that tell you what any sentence is actually trying to tell you. Many of these are compound words which, if you try splitting them up in enough different ways, eventually yield some meaning. Someone that’s just much easier to do with dead-wood though.
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Training slipping

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

I failed to make it to club training tonight. I was going to blame it on the traffic around the city centre but once we’d got past the car broken down in the Ekeberg tunnel it was a clear run home so I was back in plenty of time. It wasn’t even really the pouring rain (which proceeded to stop as six o’clock came and went). I just felt tired…

Sognsvann revisited

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

It was back to Sognsvann yesterday evening for my second crack at the lake. I had a chat with the organiser beforehand and he remembered my e-mail and said he would have another look for my time from last week although he looked a bit hassled. My legs weren’t as fresh as last week and it was bitterly cold (my hands didn’t warm up until after I’d finished). I didn’t have anything left for the sprint finish this time and slipped down in to fifth place. I looked at the results the next day as they weren’t giving out any times and could see why the organiser might have been a bit stressed. There appears to be just one guy listed! However, if I search the database for my name, then someone with approximately the right name, appears to have completed zero laps in 11:17. I timed 11:26 on my watch (as I wasn’t taking any risks this time) so presumably it took me just 9 seconds to do the one lap?