Icebug24
On Thursday did I travel to the mountain village Hemavan, in the north west of Sweden. Here it was time for a mountain running competition, in two different classes where the teams are made up by partners 2 and 2. The original plan was competing with a (for me) unknown partner, coming from Gothenburg, in the class 24 hour non-stop. In 24 hour you can pick as many checkpoints as possible, 30 CPs were scattered all over the mountain area.
Anyway, Fredrik had has problems with a calf so we could only participate in the shorter 2 day mountain marathon class instead. The distance in the 24 class became about 81 miles, with backpacks of 20 lb. For us it was about 15 miles and 3000 ft a day, with backpacks closer to 8-10 lb.
I hadn't met Fredrik before and didn't know his skills, and that became our biggest disadvantage. I was stronger and faster then him, so I did the orienteering but still had to wait for him and we finished 3rd, 10 min after, for day 1.
Day 2 it was a pursuit start from day 1, so we started 10 min after the leaders and did our best to chase them. We gained time on every mile but it wasn't before the last hour we saw them just 3-4 min ahead of us and at the 2nd last CP we were three teams in 2 min. Now it was just steep downhill, along the ski resort area and we finally reached the first team w/ 200 m left to the goal, but in the dirt and bushes we still didn't quite make it :( We finished technically 1s behind and lost the winners prize of 5000 SEK. The winners had been Swedish champion in road running a couple of years ago, but still - grr... I was so dissappointed! We'll se what's coming up next. Maybe a kayak vacation next weekend if the weather is nice enough.
A week @Herräng
The public accommodation is basically a school where they have placed a lot of bunk beds in every room, gym and everywhere. Outside there a lot of big tent halls with dance floor, where classes are held as well as in the building "Folkets hus". I love the "camp" feeling, with people living everywhere, sharing kitchen and all that. You meet so much happy people and everybody is there for one reason; they love dancing! There are also tent and trailer areas next to the school.
Classes usually begin at 10 or 11.20 am and a common amount of classes are 3-4 each day. Between the "holes" in the schedule, we tried to have some food and constantly taking a shower because the heat and lots of sweating.
The last class ends at 7.20 pm and at 9pm an evening meeting take place, that is kind of a talk show for about an hour. Then two different (free) classes take place, without skill demands, which can be something different such as shag, beginning balboa, air steps, latin dances or something else. Around midnight most people have started social dancing at Folkets hus and the three dance floors plus the bar, keep lots of people happy, even if it's often too crowdy really swinging out the first couple of hours. They keep playing as long as they have people dancing, but usually I left between 5 and 7 am and it was always lots of people on at least one of the floors.
I was in the intermediate-advanced level of classes and they fit me pretty good overall, the advanced level request you do the try-out but is then divided into three groups and personally I think the worst dancers in group 3 probably were less skilled than a lot of us in the int-adv level. The days at Herräng felt very busy and the lack of sleep didn't help, but if you don't want to skip classes there are some things happening during the week that may give you a short break. One forenoon a cultural day take place, one of the nights a cabaret show happens (I participated in the first number, where we did Steven Mitchell's choreography) and Tuesday is blues night while Friday is the "big" night when everybody dress really nice. The book signing with Frankie Manning and a talk show with Frankie, Chazz Young and Dawn Hampton was also appreciated.
It was very interesting and useful having all different kind of instructors, from having some kind of street routine by Stephen, to a fun courteous-to-girl routine by Frankie Manning but also experience the "buggified" lindy the Swedish teachers are teaching. I think it also was very cool with the cabaret, because our number was first we met a bit earlier than the other, and just hanging out in the bar talking to Dawn Hampton about "the old days" for 45 min before the show started was a memory itself!
Overall, it was a long time ago I had so sore legs and such a tough camp with so good dancing! Some of the musicality lessons with Andy and Nina was very needed by me, and by getting lots of good dances with very good dancers really made me pawing the next level of dancing, after struggling at the same level for a while! The rhythm and musicality definitely progressed and I also got a bunch of dances with mostly girls but in following position that really gave me more perspective of leading and good ideas. I can't say anything else then lots of creds!!! to Herräng and I recommend every lindy hopper to visit the camp at least once in their lifetime! Now I've added friends to my list coming from Lithuania, US, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium, England, Norway, Spain, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, China, Denmark and Finland among others!
Keep dancing and feel the swing, yeah!!!
Eyes are better, adventure race and soon Herräng begins!
During the week just finished I've started training again and felt good enough going to Åre this weekend, where the nordic Championship in adventure racing took place. The competition began with 25K kayaking where rivers of class 2 were included. I hit some rocks but the kayak is still alive :) I have a stable sea kayak and because of that, the kayaking is slow for me (stable=slow). So far I can't afford a faster kayak but now I'm definitely looking for faster ones.
After the water we kept going by running 4500ft to the peak of Åreskutan and down to Huså, a map distance of 15K and finished by a mountainbike ride of 35K in the forest back to Åre. I ran about the same time as the leader group and lost about 10-15 min on the biking, so with a faster kayak I should be top10-top15. There are really fast participators and the winner get a free entrance to the famous competition Coast-to-coast in New Zeeland.
It felt really good competing and actually doing my best time ever (5h52m), despite the kind of bad loading for the competition. And I've only trained good for the race since I came back to Sweden, 7 weeks ago. Now it's gonna be more dancing though, with dance marathons Wed-Fri I hope, for me, and then I'm leaving for Herräng one week. Yay! I'm excited!! And the weekend after that, my schedule again tells me to compete endurance. It's a 24hour non-stop running race, in couples. So two and two, you are supposed to do orienteering and pick as many checkpoints as possible in 24 hour and no-one is supposed to make all of them. I'll see if I can start, my companion had some probs w/ his calf but I hope we will make it!