WOC 2014 Italy

Quite many days, trainings and also some other competitions have passsed since this year's World Orienteering Championships held in Italy. And some big competitions will start in a while (WUOC in Olomouc).

But let's take a short visit back to beautiful Venice and amazing Italian mountains.

On this Championships I ran two disciplines - sprint and middle.

SPRINT

Due to the changes in rules, sprint was the only discipline left with qualification and then final race. After a smooth qualification in the village of Burano I had really big troubles in the final in Venice St. Elena. My first WOC final. I was a bit nervous on the startline and was not able to cope with those feelings, which then resulted in taking wrong routechoices and doing mistakes. I am really upset about my performance.

But still it showed me my weaker sides I can now work on.

Nevertheless it was something special to run orienteering in Venice! Amazing experience!

MIDDLE

That's what I focused on in my preparations for the middle distance then - finding the optimal prestart balance. Self-couching, positive thinking..here we go. It felt good! I wasn't paying big attention to Fanni Gyurkó while passing her with 2minutes already on the second control.

But then it came again.. lack of concentration, fast running, not being able to tell my legs "you have to slow down right now! and take a closer look at the map!" - 3minutes mistake to the 6th control. "**** that! It's past now, continue and do your best", although it was a bit harder then.

Gaining that speed on the field again, passing through the arena.. "okay, how we do this.. concentration! all the time, till the end! map is the priority.. orientering hela vägen, right, that's the clue" and I'm hearing cheering "You're doing really great! C'mon! It's really good!" "what?! I did like 3+minutes mistake, what are you people saying, are you blind or" "**** what are you thinking about, focus!" ..3,5minutes mistake to the 12th control, the one right after the arena passage. And I'm upset again.

Yet again I got a valuable feedback from myself what to focus on in the next preparations and competitions.

offical WOC 2014 website

TV broadcast České televize

What doesn't kill you makes you stonger!

Each big orienteering event is a challenge for me, it's always amazing to take part in and fight with the best ones for the best possible results. Especially WOC is a HUGE portions of motivation for me. With the atmosphere and emotions it reminds me why I love the sport so much and why it's worth it to squeeze yourself a bit harder in every training and work on your skills.

Let's work hard for Scotland's WOC 2015!:)

TC Italy

In one word, last days were hectic! All the travelling back and forth, finishing and handing in my thesis, writing school essay in a PR time, moving to a new appartment,.. It all resulted in a catastrophic performance on Czech champs on sprint, luckily I was still fast enough to take 6th-7th place. Try to run when you feel like your brain refuses to perceive any further stimulus.

So training camp in Italy came a bit like a salvation. Beautiful landscape, challenging terrains. Days consisting of training, eating and sleeping, while enjoying the feeling of being in the mountains, priceless!

We came to Italy on 8th May with the Czech team to prepare for this year's WOC. We cooperated on some trainings with the teams of Sweden, Norway and Poland, plus Thierry Gueorgiou joined some trainings as well. It was much more fun to run with all the people and good possibility to compare our performances.

Here you can find detailed summary of trainings with maps and results (in czech)