Portugal "O" Meeting 2009

We started our long journey to Portugal at about 12 on Thursday. I met with Olej at the Fabryczny railway station and made our way to Warsaw. I ran a bit with Jacek there and had a nice dinner prepared by the house owner;-D it was really tasty! Then, Slavko visited us as well and accompanied us in our bus trip to the national airport. After some time spent on waiting for the others to come we went to check-in desks. Everything went just superb until one of the 3 guys (Jacek, Hewi, Mały) tried to put his baggage on a special scales. It turned out they had their flight reservations for 16:50 or so... and we all got REALLY confused! In the end, we had to board our plane and they had to wait and see what happens. Firstly, we were told we are obliged to pay almost 5000zł for them to travel with us. Fortunately, the airlines owned up to their mistake and arranged a flight to Lisbon through Brussels for them the next day in the morning. We sighed with relief...

Consequently, we arrived a bit too late in Mora and didn't have enough time to find the Model Event area, so we decided to go jogging and picked lots of fresh oranges straight from the trees. I already started to love Portugal!

21 II 2009

Model Event
The map looked really demanding before the training. However, it turned out to be a great fun to run with! The weather was just beautiful and we were all full of energy to compete in the coming races :-)


Dia 1 - middle
It was such a pleasure to run with SI-card after such a long time! I made a decent warm-up and started my course. It went quite well taking into account the long winter break in orienteering;)

Urban night sprint
It was my very first time to run in this type of competition and I must admit it's a really funny thing! Nevertheless, it is NOT the same to run a sprint distance in the daylight since you do not see the objects that are far away...

22 II 2009

Dia 2 - long WRE

On the one hand, I was looking forward to compete in this particular race; on the other hand, I was a bit afraid of my shape and didn't know if I would manage to perform well. That's why I ran very carefully and didn't succeed in avoiding stupid mistakes... Moreover, I didn't like that day's terrain at all!

23 II 2009

Dia 3 - middle
Incredibly fast and lovely terrain! Although I had some problems with my right foot after the previous day's long distance race, I felt strong enough to made a really good race and lose only 5:44 to Matthias Merz, whose performances are unbelievable at the beginning of the season:)

OriSHOW
It was the first and LAST(!) time I was disqualified this year. I only wish I hadn't missed the chance to win 100 Euros;-P and would like to congratulate Hania and Mały for winning the silver medals and... 50 Euros... to spend in Silva store.

24 II 2009

Dia 4 - intermediate distance
The terrain was the same as the previous day and I just had to compete well:-) Meeting Wojtek Dwojak on course just helped me speed up and orienteer more confidently. But don't you think I followed him all the time! Read the race analysis before making a judgement. Certainly, it was my best race in Portugal, but I still hope to get into a better shape to set a new record!

Just after the competition we came back to our school, had shower and jumped into the cars. Final destination - Pataias...