Training Log Archive: BorisGr

With a rare week-end at home from racing, and DxDeluxe scheduled for Saturday evening, I invited Andrew Quin to come up from Stockholm for the week-end, hang out, and do some training. The first thing we did was join an IFK Lidingö versus OK Linne soccer match, held on one of the fields just behind my house. The game was nine a side, and I was put in to play striker. It had been ages since I'd played soccer, so I was immensely rusty. Additionally, worries about my shoulder kept me from going in for close tackles, which didn't help. The Lidingö team was very impressive, and kicked out butts 5-2. I had a couple of decent chances in the second half, and finally scored in a goalmouth scramble after a corner kick, but that was little consolation for a loss.
Playing soccer really feels like excellent cross-training - being able to change speeds quickly, change direction, be explosive all seem like useful skills for orienteering. If it didn't come with such a high injury risk, I'd definitely play a lot more.

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After a short break, Andrew and I biked over to Nåsten and ran an old course. We planned our routes for each control ahead of time, and tried to execute perfectly and compare the routes. We didn't want to run too had, but head-to-head orienteering sort of lends itself to higher speeds, so we did speed up as the training went on. I orienteered very well and had surprisingly good flow and speed, despite being tired from soccer. And: I finally saw my first Nåsten moose!! It was a female, not too big, and she looked me for a second, contemplated my appearance, and trotted away leisurely.

DxDeluxe
As usual, the DxDeluxe crew surpassed even its own high standards for quality events! A few minutes after the crowd gathered at a huge DxD banner at the clubhouse, we were greeted by a life-sized DxD donkey (as yet unnamed) - a full-body costume made by Mari, who has worked on it full-time for the last week. (Mari is the youngest Troeng sibling, and evidently also not lacking in the eccentric craziness that seems to run through the family. How Mats and Jan must be proud! :) We were then instructed to follow the donkey to the pre-start area, featuring posted start times, huge copies of previous years' maps and results and, naturally, a model event covering a ~30x30 m area with three sample controls set out.
Most of the actual event I actually spent at the real start, where I helped Björn make sure everything ran smoothly and handed out control descriptions. The start, of course, was the real deal, with a -1:00 and -0:30 call-up lines, carefully marked off by tiny taped boxes on the ground, and a 12 meter marked route to the start triangle (though it looked more like 8 meters to me.)
I started late, after most people had already run, and had a decent race, except for a 35 second mistake on an 11-second leg. Oh well. Ended up 23rd overall, almost 2 minutes back of the imrpessive winning times! After the race, there was much socializing, watching the live results appear on the monitors at the finish, and, of course, heckling of racers still out on the course. We then watched the exciting mass-start finals, cheered, congratulated the winners and moved on to the banquet/ party part of the evening. Needless to say, this year's DxDeluxe was a smashing success, and I am already looking forward to September's edition of the event.

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Jogging back home with Andrew after DxD.