From 10 cm snow at Venabu to heavy snowfall in Högbo

Last weekend we skied among grass and branches on the marshes at Venabu, this weekend it seamed like it would never stop snowing in Høgbo. A challenge for the organizers at both places. (Picture: Sindre Haverstad and Christian racing in the deep snow after todays training)

The races in Høgbo were good for both of us. We both decided to ski less hard at the mass start saturday morning and prioritize the WRE races saturday evening and sunday. Christian did good orienteering technical races and is slowly closing the gap to the best. I did two good, stable races. In the sprint I missed a crossing and lost some time, but els I am really satisfied with my race. Sunday I did my first orienteering technical 100% race this winter, no map reading mistakes. I finished 2nd, behind Josefin Engstrøm, saturday and won the race sunday. Results, maps and gps tracking can be found here: Swedish Ski-O tour.

A small mystery: Christians gps was already collected when Christian wanted to pick it up sunday, and it was used during the competition.. After analyzing the start list and gps tracking, we have identified a suspect..

Christian training in Høgbo

We will stay in Høgbo to train today and tuesday with parts of the norwegian and swiss ski-o team. It is still snowing heavily, but the organizers are doing a great job and we had really good conditions at the corridor orienteering training this morning. This afternoon we will do a line orienteering session with head lamps and tomorrow morning a sprint training competition.

Venabu

The races last weekend was characterized by very little snow and strong wind and the organizers did a great job organizing the event. Because of the wind, the little snow in the terrain ended up in the scooter track and made it very difficult to spot the tracks, this resulted in a lot of short cuts and we often just skied straight at the controls. Christian did a bad race saturday with several misstakes and an OK race sunday. I skied well saturday, but a major mistake on the fifth control sunday made me unfocused the rest of this race and resulted in bad rout choices and bad map reading flow. Results and gps tracking from Venabu can be found here: Venabu Open.

Christian skiing at Venabu

We travelled to Venabu with our club Wing, and had a really cosy weekend at my aunts cabin. And ski-o world: better watch out for New zealand and Great Britain at the Ski WOC!

Helen Palmer, new British ski-o star and team mate from Wing OK, ready to start