Graham Gristwood

Fantastic 56th place at Oringen World Cup!

2008-07-22T19:13:00.002Z

Ok so not my best day.... bit hard to motivate myself after Sunday and long travelling day yesterday, but it is beautiful up in Sälen running in the fjälls. Tough course, but I am looking forward to tomorrows long distance.

Yeah baby - World Champion!

2008-07-20T15:15:00.000Z

Memorable middle distance at WOC

2008-07-19T06:53:00.003Z

What an amazing day of orienteering! My third attempt at the middle distance at WOC, I finally qualified for the final which was a nice start. I had a good race, my only time loss was a safe route choice to the 3rd control. I was 1 minute behind the best on that control. I finished 2 minutes behind the winner of my heat in 8th place.

The final we suspected was going to have something special, and that was proved right as soon as I picked up the map at the start. I reverted to point to point navigation, and I was doing really well for the first 8 controls. I caught Tsvetkov up 6 minutes at number 4 which was a nice boost, although I lost him at number 7 already. Number 9 I just lost contact slightly, and had to go almost out to the ride to relocate. 1 minute lost, but almost acceptable in that detail. Then we left the rock labyrinth and entered the more familiar stuff. I identified immediately that 13 was going to be possibly the hardest control on the course, and then read everything along the slope until I got to the green - then at the last minute as I plunged in, I misread the clearing before the green, thinking I was just below the wrong one, and hence 50m too high up the slope. Nice little parallel error in the green/white veg changes, then out to the ride to relocate. 2 minutes lost. After that stormed round, maybe lost 10 seconds at 22, but otherwise really pleased. A quick split analysis shows that I dropped from 11th to 27th at number 9, and then down to 36th at number 13. I managed to climb back up to number 26, including 5 places from the spectator control to the finish, and 2 of those on the run-in! On a really tricky course, I nailed 23 of the controls, lost 10 seconds on 2, and then had 2 bigger mistakes which really punished me. Physically I was really happy, and my best splits were mostly in the last loop, so there are a lot of positives even if the result is not quite as good as I would have liked.

Bring on the relay!

Results and splits from qualifier
Results from final

Final map

Qualification map

Very disappointing WOC sprint

2008-07-14T08:58:00.002Z

WOC sprint final, 22nd place. Very disappointing performance and result. I didn't feel great warming up - legs felt a bit heavy from the morning and felt a bit tired and lethargic. Warmed up well and tried to get myself worked up. Guess I was slightly worried about the will there be a thunderstorm / won't there. I decided there wouldn't be and put on my racing flats. The thunderstorm hit me at number 2 and continued nicely for the majority of my race, including all 8 'technical' controls in the gardens. Picked the correct route to the first control. but I was obviously off the pace immediately, losing 14 seconds to the best. Started well in the gardens though, and when the heavens opened I was doing ok. Got a bit stressed coming out of number 4 and made a rushed panicy decision to go up and over which was a big mistake. Started to get a bit flustered but managed to calm myself down. Ran ok through to number 10, but I picked the wrong (longest but simplest) route choice to 11. 12 - 14 was simple, but I lost a few seconds on 14 on running speed. 15 I had planned, but then coming out af 14 I started to rush a bit, and bananad big style. Corrected myself, but that combined with the less good route choice anyway cost me at least 10 seconds and probable around 7-8 places. Dammit.

I let the storm over - affect me. The lack of grip was a problem, but it seems like my running speed in the technical part was ok - lost a little time running on the longer legs.

Need to think about recovery and refueling between two races in a day a bit more, especially before Thursday.

Summary- I was definitely one of the worst hit by the weather, but I should have dealt with it better. Very frustrating performance and result, but on the plus side, it is really positive that I consider 22nd a disastrous days work at the World Championships. The qualification was basically perfect, and I had the potential to take a place on the podium or even the bronze on the day with a good performance.

Splits here

WOC Sprint Qualifier

2008-07-13T11:53:00.003Z

WOC got off to a good start for me this morning with the sprint qualifier. I had an early start, and finished 5th in my heat - 14 seconds behind the winner Lubina. Looking at the splits, I lost 10 seconds on the 13th, and 5 seconds on the 14th controls. This is probably because I chose to cross the fence at the crossing points rather than climb it - it was pretty high for a short - arse like me! Apart from those 2 controls my speed was good enough to win the heat, so that is a good confidence boost for this afternoon.

Results here

WOC here we come

2008-07-11T16:06:00.002Z

Last night the GB team arrived in Olomouc, Czech, for the 2008 World Championships. The excitement starts on Sunday with the sprint, the middle is on Thursday, the long and the relay next weekend. I am running sprint, middle and relay.

The boys room
View from the balcony - WOC accommodation

View in the other direction
The team hit Sumperk for some sprint training

O-Festivalen and last Czech WOC Camp

2008-07-03T08:06:00.005Z

After some really bad middle distance results in World Cup recently, I finally had a decent race. No big mistakes, just a couple of small errors in the circle gave me 16th place, which was my best middle distance result since the World Cup Final in France when I was 15th.

Results

The long distance was a bit manic, chasing start based on the middle distance results. I had a long line of people to chase to start with, and I managed to catch a few places by the butterfly. Unfortunately I made a 2min mistake at number 8, and then another big mistake at number 17, and after that I ran the rest of the race in the pack of runners from position 13-20th. On the way to 31 I started getting cramps in my hamstring, so I had to slow down, and I couldn't fight with the rest of the pack. I managed to just stay in front of the next runners so I finished 20th.

Results

After O-Fest it was off to Czech for the final WOC preparations. We took part in the Swedish long distance test race (but I didn't run), and also the Finnish and Czech sprint and middle test races (maps below). I had a really good race in the sprint (beating all the Finns), behind only Dlabaja and Smola, but the middle race was a bit of a disaster. Really cool technical area, I managed to make 2 big mistakes - one 5 minutes! Can't remember the last time I made such a big mistake. Now I am back in Stockholm for 2 weeks before WOC.

Good performances at Forssa and Jukola

2008-06-16T09:15:00.011Z

Jukola

Jukola! Once again I was running the first leg for Lidingö. This time the forest was a bit rougher though, and we watched the girls make mistake after mistake. Everybody went off hard as usual, and I hit the first control fine. Then I made my biggest mistake - instead of taking the nice track route round to the left with an easy way into the control, I ran straight with Peter Öberg through the green area. This was a bad idea, and we compounded it by missing the control quite badly. Luckily I relocated pretty quickly, and within a few controls running really fast, I was back at the front. I ran in the front pack for the next few kilometers, and slowly people dropped away until I was only aware of 3 other people. At 19, 2 of them forked off to a different gaffle, and then it was just me and Peter. We had some different gaffles, but I ran well and at the TV control with 800m to go I was just in the lead. He was seriously motivated to win the leg, though, and the came sprinting past me - I was too tired to respond, and so he took the leg victory and I was 2nd, but almost 2 minutes in front of 3rd. A good start. The rest of the team was a bit up and down, some guys ran really good, others lost a bit and we finished 11th. It is disappointing to be outside the top 10 in both Jukola and Tiomila this year when we showed so much promise.

First leg results here
Relay results here

You can see my full map with tracking here (select 1st leg and Lidingö)

Forssa Games

Thursday was the Forssa Games, a high quality short distance race in Finland which many runners use as preparation or just some fun before Jukola. I made a bad start when I didn't pick up control descriptions and got to the start wondering where they were - not on the map either so I was slightly cautious. Didn't get a great line to number 1, but ran well to number 2. Number 3 I missed maybe 30-40 seconds, and then Jörgen Wickholm caught me at number 4 running really fast. We took different routes to 6 and 8, but we came together at the controls, and we had a really good speed. He missed number 9, so I took that first. I was a bit confused at the last control (actually there were 3) - especially without codes. Really pleased with 8th place, 1.10 behind Pasi Ikonen. I won a gas barbecue!

Results here

World Championships Test Races and Selections

2008-06-11T08:11:00.002Z

Photo: Digisport

At the weekend it was back to the UK (Shropshire to be precise) for the WOC test races. I had a bit of an epic journey, with my flight so delayed I had to buy a new ticket at the airport on Friday night, and drive up from my parents house in Surrey on Saturday morning in time for a 9.20 start time in the sprint.

First off was the sprint around Shrewsbury - a really nice old town sprint, reminiscent of some races in Switzerland or Italy. I (along with about 25% of the field) ran down one dead end and lost 30 seconds, but apart from that I ran well and finished 2nd behind Scott.

In the afternoon was the middle distance on Weston Heath. That is a beautiful area, but not at this time of year with head high bracken. I was really tired and made lots of mistakes, and finished 6th, around 3 minutes behind Oli.

Sunday was the long. I was struggling with motivation at the start, felt low in energy and my achilles was a bit sore. I made quite a few mistakes, but then I had some energy gels and caught Speakey, and started to push quite hard. When JD caught us both, I ran really well racing with him, and I finished 4th, about 4 minutes down on Jamie.

Results for sprint and middle here

Long results here

I will put some maps up sometime soon

UK Cup final standings here

WOC selections here

I have been selected for Sprint, Middle and Relay which was my goal.

Maps and pictures from European Champs

2008-06-05T17:28:00.004Z

Well it wasn't my best championships, DNQ by 1 second in sprint, 27th in long (new PB in long), DNQ bye 30 seconds in middle, but ran well in the relay after a mistake early on to come in at the back of the 2nd to 5th place pack on 1st leg. Team finished 7th. Maps and pics below.

Long final
Long qualifier
Middle B final
Middle qualifier
Relay

Mixed start to EOC

2008-05-27T13:53:00.003Z

Well I didn't qualify for the sprint which was disappointing. I could point to the fact that my calf was a bit sore, or that the EMIT without most recent version cards doesn't really allow for fast punching and I fumbled a couple, or that I was in the toughest heat (within 30 seconds of leader to qualify compared to around a minute for the other heats), but at the end of the day I wasn't fast enough and I missed out by 1 second. I ran well and I thought I had good speed. I missed maybe 10 seconds on 1 control but I was surprised to miss out.

Today was much better. The calf was sore during the warm up, but felt ok on the course. I had a good race, lost around a minute and finished 2 minutes behind to qualify 8th in the long. Ran some of the course with Baptiste and Erik Ohlund. Times were much faster than expected, but the forest was nice, tricky in parts, but very fast running. Looking forward to the final tomorrow.

EOC Website

Second place in first Stockholm City Cup

2008-05-15T06:45:00.004Z

Last night was the first race in the Stockholm City Cup, held in Humlegården near Stureplan in Central Stockholm. As you can see the area is tiny, the race was a bit contrived and still the winning time was under 11 minutes. I finished 4 seconds down on Anders Skarholt, having not missed anything really (pretty hard to miss in that park). Didn't really have enough grip on the wet grass in racing flats.

Just looking at the splits, Anders and I had the same time at 16, but I lost 8 seconds to him from 16-19 and that was game over.

Results here

On Saturday I ran a 12km 'cross-country' race. Results here

On Sunday I ran middle distance at Roslagen, was pretty nice. I was very scrappy. See map above and results here.

Stockholm Distriktsmäster!

2008-05-08T09:37:00.003Z

Last night I won the Stockholm District Sprint Championships. My stomach was a bit bad during the day, but I felt good on the warm up and decided to run hard. The course was good, with some interesting route choices and a good mixture of urban and forest orienteering. I was a bit scrappy on a couple of controls (3, 5 and 6), losing 5-10 seconds on each, but in general it was good and I chose good routes. I finished 5 seconds in front of Peter Hemmyr.

Results here and splits here, Winsplits here

GB training in Latvia for EOC

2008-05-05T15:17:00.004Z

On Thursday I flew to Riga for a short training camp with the British team. We based about 30km east of Riga in some cabins really close to some fantastic sand dune terrain (see some map samples below). We also did a session with a couple of the Norwegian team which was good.
So what did we learn about Latvia (or at least the terrain near Riga)?
Fast, vague in places, but the dunes can also be large and obvious. Where it is sandy it can be really sapping, and it will be very easy at high pace to lose contact, especially on the longer legs.

I can't wait for EOC!

Getting into the eastern european groove

Some training maps

Sprint KM and back into good training

2008-05-05T14:51:00.003Z

So I was feeling much better after Tiomila, and started to train hard again. On Tuesday was the club sprint champs. I got the fastest time, but I can't claim victory really as I made the map about a month ago...

Here are some other cool trainings from last week, a large scale sprint and a really technical forest north of Stockholm.

Tiomila map

2008-04-28T09:14:00.002Z

This weekend I ran leg 9 for IFK Lidingö at Tiomila. The club ran well through the night and I started in 8th place. I had been sick the previous week, but I knew I was in good shape, and my cold was feeling OK. I caught up 7th place by the first control, but Simonas Krepsta started just behind me and he caught us as well. I ran quite a lot of the race with him, although we had slightly different gaffles. I made a small mistake at 13, when I misread the contours slightly. Simonas got a small gap there (maybe 30 seconds), and although I ran well after that I didn't see him. We passed the TuMe team on the way to the 8th control, so I changed over in 7th place.

My team finished 13th, which is a little disappointing as we had very high hopes, but it is still a massive PB for me at tio.

Results here

Selections and sick

2008-04-22T09:39:00.002Z

Yesterday Lidingö's Tiomila team was picked, and as expected I have a nice day leg (but not last). Our team is really good, but a couple of guys didn't make it due to sickness and injury which is a real shame - hopefully they will be back for Jukola. Follow / watch online here.

Today selections came out for the British team for a few things, I was selected for everything I wanted - EOC, EOC training camp and World Cups.

Downside this last week - on Wednesday I picked up some stomach bug. Tried to do a race in the evening, felt terrible, ended up walking quite a lot, got a bit cold and tired. Then after the race I felt awful and basically got sick. Spent the last 5 days in bed, missing British Long champs in Scotland (gutted). Started to feel a lot better now though, should be fine for the weekend.

Czech training camp

2008-04-14T18:20:00.004Z

Last week the British team had a training camp in Czech, in preparation for the World Championships. We stayed in the Pension Athena, about 20 minutes east of Prostejov where the sprint qualifier will be. We had a hard training week, training with some of the Russian and Estonian teams, and at the end of the week we took part in the Moravian Championships. The terrain and competitions were very relevant and there were many national and club teams taking part from across Europe. I ran very well in the two sprint competitions, placing 5th and 4th against some strong runners. I was too tired to run the classic, and I was still tired for first leg of the relay, in some really hilly terrain. Event website here. I am back in Stockholm now, but on Thursday I will fly to Scotland for the British long championships. Unfortunately I cannot run the relay championships as I intend to run the Swedish champs later in the year.

JK and Gothenburg

2008-03-30T14:15:00.008Z

A bit late I know, but I have been in Gothenburg with the British junior team all week, preparing for JWOC. The JK long distance went really well for me, I felt very strong for almost 90 minutes, and it was my best race technically of the weekend. I chose some good routes, and I missed less than 1 minute on the whole course. This was partly a reflection of the course, which was not overly difficult, without many shorter technical legs. It is a lovely place to run though, and I was pleased to get past the 14th control before Daniel Hubmann (my 3 minute man) caught me. I hadn't really decided on a strategy for when he came past, but I decided to stay with him for a bit (to 15 and 16), then I ran straight to 17 when he went along the road. I missed the control a bit and got about 15 seconds behind, but then I caught him again on the long leg to 19, and it was easy to run together from there to the finish. I finished 2nd behind Daniel, and also for the weekend overall. Only slight problem was I strained my calf a little bit towards the end of the race.

Results and routegadget etc here

The relay was the conclusion to the weekend. My team OD finished 5th (3rd British team) which is pretty good. Luckily I was able to cruise last leg a bit as we had a bit of a gap, so I could rest my calf a bit.

Then it was off to Gothenburg, where there was about 30cm of snow. I did some control hanging etc, trying to protect my calf a bit, and now I am back in Stockholm. I am going to rest my leg for a few days now, so it is better for the GB camp to Czech coming up soon.

JK Middle distance map

2008-03-22T21:05:00.002Z

Can't seem to get it working in previous post, so will try here

Tricky start to the JK

2008-03-22T20:33:00.005Z

So far this weekend, there have already been two competitions in the JK. This year, the competition is in the South East of England, and yesterday things kicked off with a sprint race at the University of Surrey. This was the venue for the World Cup Sprint Qualification in 2005, so many of the runners were familiar with the area, but the planner set some really technical courses, with plenty of route choice, and tricky legs almost constantly. Nobody managed to have a clean race, but Hubmann managed to hold it together best, in front of Scotia and Øysein. I was 5th, 26 seconds behind having had a very scrappy run, no big mistakes, but small errors cropping up all over the place - fantastic start to the weekend though in terms of orienteering.

Results here, splits here, photos here, routegadget here.

Today we returned to Leith Hill, scene of the World Cup Middle race in 2005. Back then I had a shocking run, and today I was hoping for an improvement. Again it was a middle distance, but today we were using a combination of the same area, and also a different part to the east. The weather has been pretty mixed so far, and true to form, just before I started, it started to snow, and half my race I had snow, sleet and hail, and then bright sunshine later on. I knew there was

going to be a lot of short technical legs, and lots of changes in technicality and runnability, but I was also planning to go out hard. I ran quite well at the start, a little bit scrappy again, and I lost about 30 seconds on the tricky 5th leg. The 8th leg, I managed to run past the control without seeing it, and lost around 40 seconds. Then I proceeded to miss the 10th control. After that I gave myself a mental slap, and tried to focus well for the second half of the course. It worked well, and I motored round the rest of the course, with barely a second lost. Having been a minute down on Baptiste at 10, I managed to just pip him for 3rd on the run in, just 15 secs behind Hubmann and 30 secs behind Scotia, who is on fire so far this year. So in summary, I feel fitter than I have ever been before - I won the long leg with the big climb to 14, and I when I am focusing well I am orienteering pretty well, but still too many small errors. Happy with the position - might get some good ranking points! But slightly disappointed with ~1.45 time loss.

Results here, splits here. No pictures or routegadget yet.

As a 'local' runner, I have been asked to do loads of publicity stuff for the event, you can see an article on the BBC website which is quite cool, and I was interviewed on local radio yesterday morning - I had about 30 seconds warning... You can listen here.

Tomorrow is the long race in Ashdown Forest. Start list is a reverse of today's results, so I am off 3rd last. Feeling pretty good for a good result, but it will be tough to win overall...

Hard training week in Scotland

2008-03-04T11:00:00.005Z

Last week I was in Speyside in Scotland with the British team. The last few years we have tended to travel abroad for technical training camps, but this year we looked north and I have to say, it was one of the best training camps I have ever been on. There was a really good group of guys, we were training on some of the best maps and in some of the best terrains in the world. The weather was mixed, but it was never really cold, and we only had snow on one morning (although not where we were training). I had a slight problem with my knee for 2 days, so I got some hours in on the bike as well. Below are a few of the maps we trained on, and some pictures from the week. Got to be one of the most inspiring places for training.

Speyside

2008-02-28T19:22:00.001Z

Jag bor i Bosön nu

2008-02-20T16:06:00.003Z

I morse vaknade jag klockan halv åtta. Efteråt jag frukost, ja gick till skogen med mina kompisar. Sedan sprang vi i skogen en och en halv timme. Efter, jag gick tillbacka hem, och jag duschade och jag åt lite lunch. Sedan, tog jag bussen till skolan.

For those uneducated people, that is Swedish. Which I now learn. With some Africans and Asians. Every day. Between 12.15 and 3.45. Which is nice.

I came back to Sweden last week, moved into my new flat in Bosön sports campus, basically a place for elite sports people who are students in Stockholm to live. Its really nice and pretty cheap, and perfect for training. My knee is feeling much better, and apart from some niggles in my calves, training is going well. I will put up some training maps soon.

We had 3cm of snow last week. But its gone now.

Ouch

2008-02-02T14:33:00.001Z