ROAD TO ITALY

Selected for the WOC for sprint and middle :]

a bit more here


maps from the selection races:

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)

10Mila, Eksjö 2014

Great event and experience as always!

Tack allihop!

This year I moved from running the first leg (as I was used to for past two years on both 10Mila and Venla-Jukola) to running the last one. It was quite a change but I was really looking forward to fight the last 9,2 km for the team.

Unfortunately, we got bad luck this year and things weren't going as we had expected. Our first leg runner Frida twisted her ankle quite badly in the begining of the leg, but she was tough! She fought till the finishline. Then it was on us. I think we all did a good job. And we were climbing up taking up the places. We finished 39th.

My performance could have been better. I'm upset about the mistake I made to no.5 and then no.7 (while I got a  bit stressed from the previous one). Otherwise I really enjoyed it! 

                                       

 GPS tracking

Following the mens relay during the night was fun as well. Boys were running really good on each leg and I was so happy to cheer for them as they were finishing on the 3rd place!

by Urban Larsson

EOC 2014 - short look back

European Word Championships were held this year 10th - 16th April in Palmela, Portugal.

Due to tough schedule decided to focus on two (out of three) distances - middle and long.

Further you can see maps with my routes and a commentary for each race.

Middle qualification

  

Two rather stupid mistakes caused that my qualification was not as smooth as I expected. (But it hadn't meant anything in the end as the whole race was voided due to some wrongly set controls and a problem with the map in one place. So all runners who started in the qualification were then allowed to run in the final.)

The race started quite well for me and I felt confident in the contours. (tack Räkan)

First stupid mistake came to control no.4. I switched my thinking and started mapping already to the no.5. Took me some time to realize, fortunately I could come out of this mistake rather fast. The next thing was not to get stressed and keep the head cool. Which I managed till control no.8. While seeing the control flag from far distance I was ignoring map and also my compass. And while thinking about kind of stupidity of this control, I was the only one being stupid there as I was running towards the control which turned out not to be mine.

Long qualification

  

My tactic to this race was to try to avoid all green bushes that were  in    90 % of cases incrossable. To control no.11 I wasn't so  precise in the very first part of the leg which meant that instead of to the yellow part I came already above the green rose bushes. I countinued to run following a small path while trying to see any possible passage through. I was naïve. My performance was yet enough to qualify safely.

Middle final

I was really looking forward to this race. The terrain promised really fast race and there was almost nothing else on the map but contours. I believed in my speed as well as in my contour reading skills. But unfortunately things went bad. And I delivered a performance that I feel really ashamed of.

My legs were perfect, physically I was prepared really well. But again I destroyed any chance for a good result with my head. I did many big mistakes. Running fast not using my brain.

When I took the broader look on this race I had to admit that I was probably overmotivated. I was not able to indetify and solve this before the race.

Long final

In spite of the former problems with this course on the organizers' side. The final course that was prepared for us was really nice. Still a lot of fast running due to the character of the terrain. Although I made some mistakes and my legs were definitely not fresh after the middle final, I managed to deliver performance that led to 25th place.

Relay

The okej run from my side but I felt quite tired in legs. Running the second leg for the second team.

Unfortunately we lost bigger chances to a good result on the first leg.

 To sum it up simply, I was hoping for more.

BIG CONGRATULATIONS to all the team mates who delivered amazing performances and took great results!

official EOC 2014 website

GPS from races

Stony Slovenia

In the middle of march I attended a TC with the Czech national team in Slovenia. It was a week

of good quality training in challenging terrains and also some nice sprint training in the cities

of Izola, Koper and Vipava.

Three stages of the competition Lipica Open 2014 were also part of the camp. Really stony

and demanding terrains but amazing experience, I have to say. We ran a few trainings, as well

as those three stages of the competition, together with runners from the Norwegian team which

was beneficial in the sense that we had more data to analyze afterwards and it was a good comparision, although quite early in the spring. 

more maps, results and analysis here
/ mapy, výsledky, rozbory a české komentáře na webu Reprezentace

link to Lipica Open results

Climbing to new heights

The O-season starts quite early this year which is also the reason why I'd attended two map TCs already. That, I have to say, were both of top quality. And I hope they helped me to finish this another step onto the next level in my orienteering skills, the step that I'd been trying to make for so long without achieving it. So let's see if I managed to make a proper and stable step forward and what will it brig this new season.


TC in Alicante, Spain

• A week spent on the maps near Alicante. Some terrains were especially challenging.
• Great trainings with the team-mates from SNO
• Interesting presentations from Jonas Leandersson and Scott Fraser as well as from the cyclist Bernt Johansson, winner of the olympic gold in Montreal
• thanks to SNO and Performance By Health

 


TC with the Czech team in Slovenia

• a week in karst terrains in south-west part of Slovenia
• stony challenging terrains; nice sprint trainings
• more reading on this camp will come..

Reading for the long winter nights

What we found under the family Christmas tree.