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While the whole O-world is/was in Portugal, enjoying the snow-free terrains there, I decided to take the good opportunity and travell with KOK’s youth to Evje. My first ever Ski-O training camp!

The camp itself went well: with good trainings, cold weather… I found out that ski-orienteering is one very demanding sport. Unfortunately, I learned it’s secrets the hard way : for example, you shouldn’t read the map while skiing downhill! My Ski-O debut, the unofficial club championship, went bad too, due to slow ski and bad technique. And in contrast with the slow ski, the car was sliding good on the icy road – and even out of it (just once, but straight into the guardrail..,)

Otherwise, the weather in Kristiansand is still perfect for skiing, with lots of snow and good tracks around the city. Kind of boring.

P.S.- The Ski-O maps are in the archive now.

We spent the last weekend in Hovden – one of the biggest ski-resorts in South Norway. Even though I’m not good skier at all, I like cross-contry skiing, so the plan for the weekend was to get some training, and enjoy a nice dinner with my colleagues in Rambøll.

The big deal was the weather. And it was cold! The evening before we travelled, we read about new temperature records up there, but it was not as bad as I expected.

The first training, one hour easy XC skiing, broke my personal record for training in cold weather. It was minus 34 degrees that night, but the enlightened rounds around Hovden were fabulous!

Yesterday I tried something more intensive : long training on ski with Maja Berger. Well, I realised that having two relatives who are among the best in the biathlon world (Tora and Lars Berger) helps. Maja’s easy skiing was quite tough for me…

Now we are back in Kristiansand, and compared to Hovden, it’s summertime here. The temperatures are just below zero, but it’s still lots of snow. I will train more XC skiing next week, I need to get better, so I can hold Maja’s tempo next time!

I dag fikk jeg den glade nyheten at SPENST Kristiansand vil fornye sponsoravtalen sin med meg. SPENST er Norges største og beste treningssenterkjede, og Kristiansandsavdelinga er ingen unntak!

Det spesielle med SPENST Kristiansand er nemlig at senteret i Kvadraturen ligger i samme bygg som arbeidsplassen min. Nå skal jeg beskrive det perfekte hverdagen:

0800 – på jobb (ehm .. OK da, jeg skal være ærlig her: mellom 0800 og 1030 – på jobb)
1030 – tar med ryggsekken og tar heisen til første etasjen. Der venter treningssenter med alt av utstyr for styrketrening (til og med rare tøyingsapparater som er alt for kompliserte for meg). Men det beste er at de har fantastiske muligheter for å trene kondisjon innedørs, noe man trenger i Kristiansand (det regner jo heile tia!) : min favoritt er det spesielle løperommet, med 15 tredemøller og storskjerm. Langtur på mølle, nice!
1200 – back to business, tilbake på kontoret og RETT i kantina!

osv, osv, ferdig på jobb, dagens andre økt, middag … kan det være bedre? Neppe!

Takk til SPENST Kristiansand for muligheten de gir meg! Og dere andre – ta en tur innom SPENST :)

Happy new year! I hope the new year will bring you luck, happiness, more training hours and less mistakes in the forest :)

Here’s my short summary of the last year:
I trained well untill Tiomila, then I got sick, and couldn’t train at all untill the autumn of 2009. That’s it! But I’m positive: it can only be better in 2010!

At the moment I’m in Oslo, enjoying the white winter (the temperature goes down to -20 C!). By the way, my calender for 2010 is updated now (check it out in the menu)

After the good KOK-party on Friday, the rest of the weekend was more serios for the runners. KOK’s Night Sprint Cup was on the plan for Saturday, and a nice middle distance in Bringsvær needed to be prepared for Sunday.

Night Sprint Cup – it’s kind of intern competition in KOK, with prologue, qualifications, semi-final and final, where most of the best runners participated. Interestingly, Daniel Hubmann didn’t made it to the finals, neither do I : on the way to the last control in the qualification, Eirik Svensen parked me and didn’t left me any chance to qualify. Three seconds from the big final, but … I need to train more sprinting in the future!

The B-finals started with semi final : Daniel Hubmann vs. me. My tactic was simple: run as fast as you can, find the controls with no mistakes. I took the lead on the first control, but then I missed my headlamp in a dense forest, which took me a minute to fix. But, I need to be reallistic, and hope that the next time I can lead at least to the second control :) Hubi won clearly, by the way (and as expected).

Today we had a middle distance in Bringsvær on the plan. I was responsible for making the course and putting out the controls, and I believe the training was good. The terrain in Bringsvær is extremely nice, with wet marshes and interesting orienteering. Probably the best terrain in Sørlandet?

My body is fully recovered after the last week’s flu, and now I’m looking forward to my first training camp this year – Camp Norway in Halden. Better late than never.

You can see the maps in my map archive