Step 1 – Finding the supermarket. The best way to do this is to ask a friendly Italian local. Firstly, try the typical “do you speak english?” and receive the typical answer “no”, or, even better, a blank look. Next, try saying supermarket in Italian with horrendous pronounciation, which receives another blank look. Following this, french […]

A couple of days ago our first race in Italia started with a bang! Venice filled with alleyways, tourists and the all-exhausting heat.  First of all, my hat goes well and truly off to anyone who ran the WOC races. I know I couldn’t concentrate well because of the heat, seriously sapped everything out of […]

It rained and it rained and it rained, the cobbles and shiny pavements of the old town of Trento getting slippier and slippier and the temperature dropping from about 30C at the start to barely 20 at the finish. And along the with the rain, New Zealand’s initially bright hopes in the first ever sprint […]

It rained and it rained and it rained, the cobbles and shiny pavements of the old town of Trento getting slippier and slippier and the temperature dropping from about 30°C at the start to barely 20 at the finish. And along the with the rain, New Zealand’s initially bright hopes in the first ever sprint […]

It been over 30 hours since I left Auckland and I’ve finally arrived Venice at the strike of midnight. Having stopped for 6 hours in Singapore’s Changi Airport, I managed to find amusement with the various gardens, movies and a roof top pool. Surprisingly, they had a butterfly enclosure to explore, though having to bear […]

Right at this moment Helena, Shamboozle and I have our feet up in our hostel in Milan. We’ve got two nights here before heading to Venice for the beginning of the Italy Five Days. What an awesome chance to be here and am feeling extremely lucky. No matter how you say it, this city has […]

After nearly 50 hours of travelling I finally made it to Sofia to meet up with the Norwegians. Some slight confusion about when they were arriving but I spotted a Bulgarian wearing a Halden SK jacket who GPS units to give to the Norwegians and we managed to find them together. We are using these GPS units for each training which is useful for analysing how we ran, but also means the coaches can watch us live out at the forest. Good for discussing what happened right afterwards and also finding those runners who are completely lost.

I got fairly bored during my 16 hour stop-over in Hong Kong so I decided to mission it up Lantau Peak. The airport was fairly lacking in things to do and I felt a bit of an adventure would be a good way to pass the time. At 934 metres, Lantau Peak is the second […]

An interview with Rob Jessop (AK) – team coach for the 2014 New Zealand Junior World Orienteering Championships Team. How did he start?

I just thought I would do a blog to let people know what I am actually doing while I am away for four months! I am currently writing in Melbourne airport after finally escaping the worries of trying to fit my bike and four months’ worth of gear into my 30kg and 7kg carry on […]

Just like that Queen’s Birthday is all wrapped up and we’re into June! I’m leaving at the end of this month for Europe, putting pre-JWOC plans into practice. First stop will be Milan, Italy where I’ll be meeting up with Shamus and Helena. We have a couple of days to find our feet and the […]

This year I am going to be maximising my time in Bulgarian terrain before JWOC. The Norwegian team has offered me a spot on their training camp in Bulgaria, from 30th June to 5th July. In 2012 I was on a training camp in the Czech Republic with the Norwegian equivalent of New Zealand’s D-squad. […]