O-Ringen 2010
Our trip to örebro was my first trip to Sweden. I had decided I wanted to go to O-Ringen this year and then had a difficult task to convince Andy to come along. The first thing I noticed when we arrived in Gothenburg was how tan and blond nearly everyone was. The sun was shining and it was a lot warmer than it had been in Glasgow!
When we got to the O-Ringen ‘city’ just outside of town, it was a busy mass of tents, bicycles and people. Radio O-Ringen broadcast from right outside the main event centre tent and vendors lined the pavements. Inside the main tent we found a fully stocked grocery store, a registration area and large sports clothing shop—everything we could need for the week.
What most impressed me about O-Ringen was the nearly flawless organisation in every aspect of the event. The organisers had thought of everything. With such a huge number of people attending the event (around 15,000 runners) you’d expect some degree of chaos with planning start times, results, transportation, shower facilities, toilets, etc.
Not at O-Ringen. Fleets of buses carried us 30-40 minutes each day from the campsite to the assembly areas, and back again very efficiently. At the assembly areas there were showers, a food tent, a results tent with laptops for up-to-the-minute results… It was a fun festival atmosphere with the loud commentary, huge numbers of club tents, and the impressive multi-lane run-in to the finish.
I felt pretty good about my first experience of Scandinavian terrain. I ran the ‘Motion’ category, which was non-competitive, probably equating to Light Green at British events. The courses were challenging but not mind-bendingly difficult and the terrain was varied, complex, and fun to run through. I had to stop to pick blueberries and raspberries several times during the races.
Some of the days were more technical than others and two of the days involved a lot of path running. On the technical legs, I tried to be aware of the contours while keeping an eye on the vegetation. While it was mostly white forest, there were distinct open knolls, boundaries between tree plantings of different ages, and significant boulders and boulder-fields that were helpful for navigation. However, the marshes weren’t as distinct and gave me some trouble.
Andy was a bit more competitive than I was. He was really happy with his results up to Day 4, when the mistakes started to pile up. He also came back from one of his runs with a deep gouge in his shin and got treatment from the first aid team. He even got a 10 kroner discount since it was all the money he had with him at the time. He didn’t realise that they also accepted bottles of whisky as payment! 
While I didn’t see a moose, another British competitor saw one while he was lost on one of the days. Camping with the other British runners gave us the chance to meet people and make some new friends while comparing notes on our runs. One thing that nearly everyone seemed to say was that they were running well to get to the control circle, but once inside the control circle they were struggling to find the control.
I had the same problem. Over and over again, I found my attack point and went in, didn’t find it, tried again, tried a different attack point, went out further, tried a different direction, and so on. Getting to the control circle wasn’t usually a problem since I had plenty of paths, towers, pylons, or other major features to go on. There were plenty of good attack points as well. But it was the micro-navigation to the control that was the most difficult, and visibility tended to be low.
The only down side to our week at O-Ringen was the weather—torrential rain for much of the event. The ‘storm chaos’ on the Thursday made the national news. I broke down and bought myself a full set of Swedish waterproofs, which I know will be useful at Scottish events in the future.
I certainly hope to go back to Sweden again for O-Ringen, and maybe get luckier with the weather.
Marieke
Posted on 20th Aug 10
by Lynne Walker - Secretary
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