| 3 december 2007 (Av Boris Granovskiy) | | Adventurous Fall Planning Weekend at Stigtomta | | OK Linné's fall planning weekend this year took place in Södermanland, the site of the 2008 Swedish Championships races. | Sleep-deprived and tired, we started the fall planning week-end by arriving at the Nynäs nature reserve half-way between Trosa and Nyköping in Södermanlands on a cloudy Saturday morning with a touch of drizzle hanging in the air. The 21 camp participants slowly made their way out of the cars, changed into tights and orienteering shoes, and disappeared off into the forest, to orienteer on fantastic terrain, consisting of large, detail-rich hills of open forest separated by marshy valleys. While the Linné gang was out training in the forest, the worst event of the week-end took place: some evil thieves broke into Amelie’s car and stole some things, including her mobile phone. Despite this awful start to the week-end, Amelie managed to maintain excellent humour for the rest of the trip and did not let the actions of a few bandits keep her from having a good time.
After a short drive to Stigtomta and a shower and sauna in OK Hällen’s clubhouse, a hot, tasty lunch followed. Once everyone was happy and full, it was time to start dealing with the main purpose of this camp, season planning for Linné’s senior runners. After Tomas began with a few opening words, UK representatives from the men’s (Jan) and women’s (Ulrik) sides followed with a talk, accompanied by colourful graphs, summarizing the club’s many successes in this past year, both on an individual and a relay level. Then we got down to business and talked about goals for the next season and took a look at the 2008 calendar, highlighting important events and discussing planned and potential trips, including January’s ski week-end, February’s trip to Portugal, and a possible summer camp in the beginning of July, to follow up on 2007’s successful trip to Latvia.
With the planning out of the way, it was time to start Phase I of the week-end’s extensive social program. This was a get-to-know-your-clubmates game, where each person wrote down something about themselves that they suspected no one else in the club knew about. The cards with people’s “secrets” were then read out loud by Tomas (both in Swedish and English!), and everyone else had to guess which person the statement belonged to. At the end of the day, Patrick took the crown by matching the most secrets with their owners, showing us that it doesn’t take a long time with OK Linné to get to know the club’s members quite closely! And the rest of us got to learn who it was that got held up by Swedish customs for smuggling; who was put in school detention for pouring a glass of milk over a classmate’s head; who was a chess champion at a young age; who believes in ghosts; who once drove a friend’s car into a ditch; or who was perhaps a little too curious about the opposite sex as a small child.
Before a very tasty dinner, we were split up into three groups to discuss a few questions about camps, trips, runners’ and trip leaders’ responsibilities, as well as talk about possible ways to improve communication with the older kids and juniors in the club. Phase II of the camp’s social activities consisted of post-dinner baking. Many gingerbread cookies and lussebullar, baked with varying degrees of skillfulness, were created and happily consumed with large amounts of warm glögg. Finally, before going to bed, teams were selected for the camp’s most important challenge, which was to come on Sunday.
Sunday began rather innocently, with a breakfast of oatmeal and sandwiches and a training run on OK Hällen’s clubhouse map. After packing up, driving to Oxelösund, and enjoying a taco buffet for lunch, Phase III of the camp’s social activities, and the true highlight of the week-end, began. We went to Boda Borg, an “adventure house”, where teams of 3-4 people spend hours trying to climb around walls, solve frustratingly challenging puzzles and fit into ridiculously small spaces, all for the purpose of completing some of the 15 offered adventure courses, the only award for finishing which is a small stamp you can put in your “adventure punch card” for the purposes of showing off how clever, strong, or fast you are to the other teams. This was both a great experience and a fantastic team-building exercise. The team members really had to work together, sometimes just brain-storming to find the solution to a puzzle, sometimes coordinating their movements in unison, and other times just holding, pushing, or dragging each other along to make progress. I am proud to say that, by the end of the four hours that quickly flew by at Boda Borg, Team CaveBears, of which I was a member along with Mats-Apan, Lasso, and Lelle Jr., emerged with 11 completed courses, more than any of the other teams. At the end, everyone was happy and exhausted, with the four hours of physical and mental problem-solving seeming like a much tougher workout than the morning’s orienteering training.
Thank you to the organizers and all the participants of this week-end. It was a fantastic and unforgettable experience, one that I am sure everyone who was there really enjoyed.
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