Today we headed down to Samakov to run on the feared ‘Vazrajdane’ map (Translation from Bulgarian is “Vicious Great Danes”) If you have not already read NBH’s blog “Who let the dogs out” https://www.orienteering.org.nz/junior-world-championships/dogs-out/, then you need to read this to get background on why we approached this map with fear and trembling! It is a unique area to have a sprint map – where you see a horse and cart ‘parked’ outside the local store, and the area has a very derelict feel.

Rob had set a 1.6km (straight line) course amongst the concrete block buildings – which everyone sped around, spurred along by the barking dogs. It was an excellent chance to get the legs working at quicker pace after all the slower forest running.

At lunch time we celebrated Becky Gray’s 20th birthday, decorating the dining room tables with balloons and rounding off the meal with 6 containers of icecream. We had no room for the birthday cake, so we saved it to eat at the evening team meeting.

A Bulgarian car rally has blocked the streets leading to our hotel, so we were confined to hotel activities, rally watching or in the case of the manager’s – two trips to the event centre at the Iglika Hotel to sort out to organise the accreditation. The car rally made the journey to the Iglika quite a challenge with detours around all the taped off roads. On our second trip we were trapped by a heavy downpour, necessitating buying a poncho so that we could keep all the bulletins protected from the rain. The streets will be blocked all day tomorrow – fortunately it is our planned rest day so will not impact on training.