The Swiss massacre...

Polish Youth Team spent exactly 2 weeks in Switzerland preparing for the coming EYOC in October. We stayed in Solothurn - the most beautiful baroque city of Switzerland. That's also the place were EYOC 2008 sprint distance is going to be held.
Switzerland became the 10th foreign country I have ever done orienteering in. As always we had a lot of fun, the weather was really hot, only at nights some heavy thunderstorms occured. But, in fact, our goal was to train as much as possible. Below you can see the results of our long and hard technical, as well as physical work...

Memory training

We began our technical trainings with a real challenge for our brains. We had to remember the whole course of about 0,8-1,5km consisting of 2-4 controls and then just run the course without a map. We ran 5 such loops and found out that Swiss forests are full of lower or higher blackberry bushes covering the ground. Running with no long socks was really painful! Unfortunately, I have no map of this training session because there were only a few copies.

Tunnel-races

We never got bored during our technical trainings because they were really sophisticated. These tunnel-races may seem quite hard at first but if you think they were the most difficult trainings of our whole stay, you are deeply wrong! Just see the paragraph below...



Swiss games

It would have been a sin if we had run no Swiss game in Switzerland. Actually, the best way to finish that training is to keep the right direction all the time. However, you must take into consideration that sometimes it was just impossible to follow the red line because of vast areas of thick and prickly bushes. I think everyone who had made it to the end could be proud of oneself!

In pairs...

This training was designed especially for the younger runners to learn something from their older friends. I was to run with Papuś (P. Parfianowicz) and must admit his technique is quite good and I didn't really have to make amends to his running many times.

This training takes place at each Polish Youth Team camp. I must say I really like it because we can choose our partners by ourselves and, what's even more important, we can set our own course. Unfortunately, some points looked brilliant only on the map, not in the terrain!

One more time with Zielu but this time it was a kind of rivalry, at least it was supposed to. Actually, we were a bit too tired that day to run at our highest speed level and our running times are not magnificent at all.

Sprint?!

Yeah... it was called a sprint distance. In fact, its length and city part prompted so but what was going on in the final FOREST part? One control was almost impossible to reach with flat salomon shoes. It was only 65m away from the previous control and it took me 2:50 to find it. Isn't it too much?

2 middles + 1 sprint = long

This long distance training consisted of 2 middle loops (4,6km; 3,7km) and 1 short one (2,3km). Altogether it made one and a half hour of nice running. It was also quite funny to have 2 TV controls (thanks to Jacek) on the course.

First legs

That's the training I am always looking forward to because it's full of exciting competition and fast running. There were 5 double forkings on the whole course (controls no. 1, 5, 9, 12, 15).

* 1-4 - nothing special, in the whole group of 6 runners

* 5 - I have a closer forking but a bit more difficult to find, I manage to leave that area as the third one, behind Jacek and Hewi

* 6-9 - fast running with Slavko and chasing the leading couple

* 10 - I am very close to them but don't see them punch the control and have to go back, Slavko and Rino now just ahead of me

* 11-13 - going as fast as possible with Rino, Slavko a little bit behind us

* 14 - deciding control! Hewi has no power left in his legs and we are getting ahead of him, Rino is stronger and joins Jacek, now they are in the lead

* 15-16 - running alone, I can't see Jacek and Rino

* 17-18 - they make a small mistake at the 17th control and now they are within reach of my eyes but are still some 120m ahead

* 19 - they disappear in the forest and win, I am the third one to cross the finish line.



What I actually did there?!



Probably you are interested why the title sounds 'The Swiss massacre' - click on it and you'll have the answer!

I have one question to you as well: did anyone notice that both tunnel-races and both Swiss games were carried out on the same map? ;-)

Tomorrow I am going to publish how successful or not I was during the Aargauer 3-Tage-OL 2008 - the crowning of our entire work in Switzerland.