Note
I'll write more at some point, but the Academy is turning out to be pretty good. It's equal parts workshops, training and socializing and I've met some interesting orienteers from Turkey, Brazil and Chili. There are folks from Isreal and Japan and Ireland but I haven't had a chance to talk to them much yet. And of course Canada - I'm in a cabin with the 5 Canadians making language easy! The good part about the training in particular is that you can ask to have someone shadow you on a course or walk you through it or whatever and they've got a bunch of topnotch Swedish junior orienteers (Johan Runesson who won three golds and a silver at the most recent JWOC is one!) and very good adults who are willing to help in whatever way they can. I'd highly recommend it to others in the years to come.
We're off to a moose farm this morning and then more training.
orienteering 1:15:00 [3]
After the moose park visit we went to a close by map for more training. These are the Oringen model event maps and Hakan (Academy leader) just prints several copies of each of several courses and we can pick and choose what to do.
Today's map was absolutely fantastic terrain - just wide open and runnable parts with lots of contour and rock detail and then marshes and green patches that were still very runnable. But I just walked and talked with Eva Svensson (JWOC gold medalist in the sprint in 2007) and asked her about what she would be looking for on each leg and what information from the map she would be using and so on. She's injured so didn't want to run but I was happy to walk and just pick her brain and get used to the terrain. Unfortunately, she didn't think much of the actual Oringen courses would be on terrain quite as nice as that.
Note
After lunch we talked a bit about the courses we ran on Thursday and some of the elite runners (Johan Runesson, Matt Speake) talked about what routes they would have taken and what they would have looked for.
This major reentrant that totally stymied me - it was just too steep for me to get down - wasn't worth more than something to check off on their route and they both said they'd just go straight. Not so helpful. But some other things they said were very helpful.
And apparently we will all get individual feedback in the evening after each of the first four stages of Oringen if we want it. And there are some "lectures" planned for the evenings with some elites (Gueorgiou one night and Matthias Merz another!)