O-fun and the second half of Orienteering Festival 2008

Great fun at supersprint on the outskirts of Olomouc!

This additional competition was completely free for all the competitors of OF 2008 and was organised by Gigasport (large sports company) after the 3rd day of struggle in WOC Public Race. The course was very, very short and running lasted only about 8 minutes but it was a great pleasure to find easy controls situated on the area including huge supermarket and extensive parking place. I must admit that it was a brilliant change after looking for much more difficult controls in Czech forests.




OF 2008 - fourth day (middle distance)

Even before arrival in Czech Republic I checked my minutes on all 6 stages and situation around me. There was no day I was 'in danger', apart from today! Rino was to start 3 minutes behind me and we even talked about it during our warm-up exercises. I felt quite secure because 3' is a vast amount of time, I think. Despite some significant mistakes at 2nd & 4th control and the fact that I (unnecessarily!) started looking behind me, I met Rino only on my way back from SI-card reading point.
Remember! There's no need to look at the others, you just need to focus on your own race.




OF 2008 - fifth day (middle distance)

Just look at the parameters: 4,8km and 260m climbing. It was bound to be a tough, hilly race. I planned to run less than 40' and expected that this time would allow me to reach the top 10. How wrong I was! The 'Łódź beginning' (really flat) let the runners reach high speed and save a lot of time. There were only two very steep slopes to climb (controls number 9 and 11) and it forced us to slow down incredibly. It was rather walking than running towards these controls. But it didn't prevent the winner from achieving the time of half an hour! And mine wasn't much worse... ;-)




OF 2008 - sixth and last day (middle distance)

As it was the last opportunity to run in Czech forest for now, I was very determined to do my best and gain my best result at OF 2008. Just after the race and tiring long finish, while staying in a really long queue to read my SI-card, I was very disappointed because I knew I had made two large mistakes. But when I got my split times, these two mistakes turned out not to be that large and I ended on the 6th position less than 2 minutes behind the leader.
Furthermore, it was really impressing to run the same finish and search for controls in partly the same terrain as the WOC 2008 long distance final participants did!