World of O News
[Live from Friday 22:15 CET] NightHawk is working hard to become Norway’s answer to Jukola and 10Mila. There is still a way to go in building up the Jukola & 10Mila atmosphere, but tonight more than 300 runners will head into the night together in a forest close to Oslo, Norway at the men’s start. And in this relay even the women are allowed to run night orienteering – starting 15 minutes before the men.
The setup is a bit different than 10Mila and Jukola. The four first legs in the men’s class (and three first in the women’s class) start together, and the next morning a chasing start is organized based on summing up the times from the night orienteering legs. This makes it a bit more challenging to follow the relay Friday night for the spectators – but for the runners it is a lot of fun. Also, this year the organizers promise a better system in order to understand the actual standings during the night legs.
The start for the women Friday evening is at 22:15 CET – the men start 15 minutes later.
Follow NightHawk:
- Live center (GPS-tracking, live results, live speakersound)
- NightHawk webpage
- Competition instructions
What I fail to comprehend is why are all the big relays happening at night? What’s so appealing in the night? And why exactly relays are taking place at night? There is no night WOC. I personally as an orienteer prefer to run in normal visibility conditions. It would be great if there was a big relay all during daylight hours (and there are plenty of them in Nordic countries in summer). Is there one?
Dark forest has magic of its own. You should try it.
In Jukola the only leg with real darkness is the 2nd. For legs 1 and 3 head lamps are mainly needed for map reading and for the darkest parts of the forest. Jukola is mainly run during twilight and daylight.
Tiomila is held during early spring and the conditions are much darker and also colder than in Jukola.