Much has happend

Much has happend since our last update.

Christmas we spent at Christians parents place in Switzerland. It was nice to finally meet all the family again. After to days in Dottikon we travelled to Silvaplana in the Engadin valley (with a stop in Davos on the way up and down) for some days of skiing. The conditions in Davos were perfect. A lot of snow and blue sky. In Engadin there was quite little snow. But we had some nice trainings around Pontresina. The training in high altitude was a good preparation for the worldcup in the USA for Christian. Beside the training we enjoied the good food in the grison-region and of course the company of Christians partents.

 Marte skiing in Davos

in the Roseg-valley, Pontresina

 waiting for the train in Bever

At New Years Eve Martes Parents and Sigrid visited us in Trondheim. We had an nice Tapas dinner after some skiing earlier the same day. It's always nice to have visitors at our new home.

Sigrid and Christian skiing "Vårløypa"

The first weekend in January the competitons in Konnerud were cancelled due to lack of snow. We decided to travel to Östersund instead and compete in J-H-cup. It was a very good competiton. Thanks to Torgny for the organisation. We had both quite good races. The shape seems to get better.

The week after the norwegian champinships were held at Budor. It started with a very demanding (both physical and o-technical) long distance mass-start on Friday. Marte won with quite big margin. Christian started well bot lost a lot of time on the second half.

The middle distance on Saturday was much the same. Another gold for Marte and another bad day for Christian.
On Sunday the relay was held. We skiied as last year with Christian on the first, Marte on the second and Lars Moholdt on the last leg. Christian lost some time on the first leg, but we were still in contact with the other teams fighting for the medals. Marte skied well until the last control, which she forgot to punch. So we were disqualified after coming in as the second team.

All in all it was a good weekend for Marte, a bad for Christian, but it was good training for the rest of the season.

Results and some maps can be found on ski-o.com

 Christian on the last meters in the middle distance

Marte starting her relay-leg

Now Marte is prepearing for the Norwegian championships in xc-skiing in Voss next weekend and Christian is on the way to the worldcup in Lake Tahoe.

Season-opening

Last weekend the season finally started. We took part in the races in Evertsberg in Sweden. Evertsberg is past by the Vasaloppet after about 45 km.
On saturday we skied a sprint in the open areas around Evertsberg. It was quite challenging and a lot of misstakes were made. Marte reached the second place while Christian was a bit longer down on the resultlist.
The middle-distance on sunday was mostly in the forest and on marshes with very little snow. We both lost quite much time to the winners. There is still a big job to do.

Christian discussing routechoices with Christian Spörry

 

On monday an tuesday we started to do our job by joining the Mora skigymnas at their trainingscamp at Idre Fjäll. We skied a line-orienteering, gladiatorslingor and a middle-distance testrace. It was great to train that much ski-o and I think, we took a step forward. Thanks to Ekan and Ola for the perfect organisation.

Christian at the test-race

Finallly!

This year we have been waiting and waiting and waiting. Praying for snow week after week. We do enjoy both rollerskiing, biking and running, and the preparations for the ski-o season has been going well, but there is nothing like snow and skiing. But it seams like winter is comming late to Trondheim this year, and as winter is not comming to us, we come to winter. The last two weekends we have travelled to find snow. Last weekend Beitosdølen with the Norwegian ski-o team, this weekend Dombås together with Sindre Haverstad and Audhild Rognstad. Finally snow! It feels great to ski again and we have had some really good sessions. First ski-o goal, after cancellations and little snow till now, is Swedish ski-o tour in two weeks. Hope to see you there!

MTBO WOC relay gold for the swiss women

After a good start of the MTBO WOC Christian was selected in the first team. A strong team, good enough to fight for a medal. Unfortunatley they got a bad start and never really got into the medal fight. Because of hugh forking differences it was an exciting relay, and nothing was clear until the last small loop of the last leg. In the end the Swiss men finished seventh. Denmark won in front Czech Republic and Finland.

The swiss womens team, with Maja Rothweiler, Ursina Jäggi and Christine Schaffner did a great relay, leading from start to finish. Congratulations!

Swiss team, Maja, Ursina and Christine

To day we will end the championship with a sprint in the village Sossano.

New 10th place at MTBO WOC

Another hot day in Italy and another 10th place for us. Today in the womens category. Despite lack of map reading flow, I did a good race and finished 10th. I am happy with the result, but most of all that I was much closer to the podium today. I found it hard to read the map on the small tracks and ofte had to stop to read it. As I also did a few smaller misstakes I did not have a good feeling during the race, and although I could push pretty hard during the race, I was somehow surprised by my good result.
Christian also felt lack of map reading flow to day. He also did a few misstakes during the race, over seeing tracks and doing misstakes in some of the intersections. All in all this costed him to much time and he finished 19th. Hopefully we can both take another step forward on the sprint distance.

Tomorrow relay is on the program. The swiss team selection for the first team will be done this afternoon. Christians results the last days might give him a place in the first team, but he will also be happy to bike in the 2nd team. As only norwegian I will have an extra rest day before the sprint.



Middle distance results will be published here: results
Maps from both races can be found here: maps.

10th place at MTBO WOC

In 36C and baking sunshine Christian finished as number 10 at the long distance at the MTBO world championships in the hills of the Vicenza region. Best ever WOC result for him, a small mistake in the end of the race costed him the 7th place, but after all he is happy with his performance. The competition was steep, hot and long with challenging route choices. Christian biked alone the whole race but feels he could push the whole way and did a good orienteering technical race. Samuli Saarela won (2:00:12) in front of Erik S Knudsen (2:04:47) and Ruslan Gritzan (2:06:27), Beat Okele was the best swiss as number 4.

Christian punching the last control.

I also biked the long distance, but had some more problems than Christian and finished on a 20th place. I lost time on both route choices and unsecure map reading. Hopefully I will be able to improve a lot for the middle and sprint distance. My best Bike-o result is a 9th place at the European championships in Denmark, would be great with another top 10 result. Rikke Kornvig won the long distance in the incredible strong time 1:47:59. (Im am indeed impressed!), Ingrid Stengaard was number 2 (+ 6 min) and Laura Scaravonati was number 3 (+10min).

Results: BIKEO WOC LONG

Today rest day is on the program. We did a short (1 h) easy bike ride, a short sightseeing the the city of Vicenzia and have had some ice cream at a gelateria, sure great in the heat! We will bike middle distance thursday, relay friday and sprint distance saturday. We are both looking forward to the rest of the championships

Short update

Here a short update over the things that happend the last few weeks:

Three weeks ago we finally moved to our new home. Nice to finally have our own place. We are enjoying the trainings in Bymarka, which starts right outside our house. A real trainingsparadise in summer and winter time.

To weeks ago we were in western Norway hiking up to Slogen (1564m) together with my parents and Sigrid (Martes sister). A steep top with a great view over the mountains and fjords in Sunnmøre. To bad I deleted all the pictures from my computer. Maybe we will update with som pictures later.
After 7 hours hiking we stayed at the famous Union Øye hotel. The hotel was built in 1891 and all the rooms are original and unique. We got a really tasteful four-course dinner.

Tomorrow we will travel to Italy for the World Championships in MTB-O, which are held in the region of Vicenza. You can follow us here.