The winter Saturdays...

On Saturdays it is arranged a technical training in my plan. It is one of those days I enjoy most! Now I would like to describe my last (today's) and second last (a week ago) TT a bit. Let's begin with the earlier one...

How to make a course with nearly 400m climb in Łódź?

The answer is here:


The course parameters were as follows:
a bit over 14,7km with 395m climb
and lots of controls ;-)

I needed 100 minutes and some seconds to finish this course, so my effective pace was about 6:48/km. I think it's really good as for the training.
The aim of this particular training session was to reach as many hills as possible and I think I did manage very well! Obviously, I did NOT find all the controls, especially hollows under a huge layer of snow. :)

The first competition in 2009!

I may have exaggerated calling the morning's race a competition... However, I achieved a funny diploma for gaining the first victory in 2009. :-) I hope it's a brilliant prognostic for the future!

As far as the course is concerned, I must admit it was really interesting and enjoyable! I even visited two places (controls no. 67 & 44) I had never been to so far! Congratulations, Piotruś ;)
Finally, I want to emphasize that mine and Olej's route choice were of exactly the same length - 6,915km. Olej took 34-36-37-39-32 at the beginning. Funny, isn't it? :)

I am damned childish!

Yesterday the Golden Needle 2008 event took place in our favourite Łagiewnicki Forest. I decided to compete in the strongest class - Men's Open. It was a kind of scorelauf in which we had to gather 600 points. In fact, there were 3 types of controls: no. 31-38 for 30 pts., 40-47 for 40 and 50-56 for 50.
At the beginning of the course the first choice came - right or left. The first one was followed by Piotrek Ch., Kamil and Zielu, whereas the latter was chosen by Chrupek, Łukasz and me.
Although I realised I would have to take a roundabout way because I lacked some points, I had a fairly good race till the 38th control which I did NOT actually find! I came across control no. 61 which was set for some younger competitors and went mad... I met Łukasz there and he said to follow him... so I did. While looking for 37 we were completely lost and ran like idiots all around. Suddenly, he spotted it and we were able to continue our way to the finish. It turned out that I had to carry out a real fight for the 5th place against Łukasz and some other individual starter (his running was pretty good!). Fortunately, I managed... but it was not satisfying at all.
I think I should have spend a little bit more time on course planning. Just compare the winner's route with mine...



Nonetheless, I am very far from crying. You cannot always win! This time there were 4 competitors better than me and I congratulate them on showing their technical and running abilities.



The only thing that consoles me is my pace during this race, which was even a bit better than the winner's one. However, rules of this particular competition are much different ;-)

[Please, tick 'hopeless!' below.]

Grand Prix Pomorza 2008 and foxoring

The first meters of the first stage...

GPP 2008 took place in Warcino. It is a nice and picturesque region which offered 3 fairly different O-maps. I must admit I really liked them all! Unfortunately, there were not so many competitors in each class, especially mine. I would even say it was a disaster to have only 4 other runners to struggle with... I don't intend to hide that my goal at this competition was to win each of the 3 stages and the overall classification as well. However, there was one small problem I had to cope with - my stomachaches which forced me to get a DSQ at two previous GPPs. Luckily, this year they just didn't occur! Third time lucky :-)

1st stage - middle (3,570km)

I had known it was going to be a very similar course to the first day at Baltic Cup 2008. I only wanted to avoid the mistake I made about 3 months ago. My mind was too hot and I missed over 2 minutes at the first control. This time my aim was to reach the first point perfectly and then just control the whole race... and I did it! It was one of the best courses (if not the best one) I ran this year. I left only about 30sec in the forest.
There was one more thing I really enjoyed while running that day - the very end of the course was situated in a nice park, which let me speed up and made me feel as if I was running a sprint distance race.



2nd stage - long (7,790km)

Probably I didn't really believe I could have had 2 brilliant races in a row because this performance was full of small and unnecessary (I know it sounds amusing but I was so brainless that day!) mistakes. There were only 2 controls (of 15!) + finish which were satisfying enough for my excessive ambitions. It is far too little...



3rd stage - shortened long (6,540km)

It was a comical race, just look at the map below. Is everything alright with the course? I don't really think so... Two controls (no. 4 & 10) are mixed up. While punching the third control I noticed that fact immediately. What would you do in this situation? Follow the red line or the numbers?! Of course I followed the line and it was the only right way to go. I think everyone should remember it but... in fact, if it had been Polish Championship, the whole race would probably have been cancelled.



Warcino Cup in radioorienteering - foxoring

That was something absolutely new for me. I heard about this type of orienteering many times but never had the opportunity to take part in it. In the afternoon after the second day of GPP my dream (not really...:-p) came true.
Foxoring is the easiest form of radio-O. It's a kind of scorelauf with a normal orienteering map. There is only one difference - the controls are not precisely marked on the map. There are only some big circles in which you have to look for your control with the help of a special radio equipment.
After my first experience in radio-O I am sure it's not the kind of discipline I would be fond of competing in. Why? There are 2 easy reasons:

• you're not the master of the whole course, you are not independent, you have to rely on your equipment and have much luck;
• orienteering - I love this game! simple? ;-)

Nevertheless, as the form of entertainment and relaxing from 'normal' orienteering radio-O is worth recommending!



What I achieved...
...and a red boxing punching bag.

Another scorelauf and JWOC 4 years later...

Firstly, I must admit the party was really cool and I had a really good fun till 5:30. The details, I think, are inappropriate to publish on this blog. However, now it's time to come back to normal life and my daily routine called... running!

So-called scorelauf from the mountain (yesterday)

I hadn't thought we could manage to attend this training after only 3 hours of sleeping but we DID! And for that reason we are the true winners!

As far as the training is concerned, I made almost the best route choice (5,43km) but almost makes a great difference. I should have taken control no. 31 at first and finish my course with the leg 40-39. This way (330m shorter) was chosen by Piotrek and Kamil who beat me by about a minute.

My running speed was quite high. I hadn't thought I would be able to run that fast after such a night. My biggest mistake (2 minutes) appeared at control number 40. Unfortunately, I can't say why I made it. Probably my brain was just too tired and lazy to think after about half an hour of strong running (having had only 3 hours' rest). Then I lost my motivation and slowed down very much. I couldn't really feel my legs working at all. They became so heavy that I had problems carrying them!

My running time was about 34:40. Taking into account my tiredness, huge mistake and not the best way taken, I think the time of 30 mins was within the reach of my legs.



JWOC 2004 (Gdynia, POL) middle distance final

Jacek didn't want to be worse than me and organised a nice training for me today. We ran the middle distance final from the JWOC 2004 in Gdynia.

Jacek started 10 minutes ahead of me to hang white A4 sheets of paper where the real controls should be situated. Ula was with us there as well and helped to gather those 'controls' afterwards. We left no rubbish in the forest!

Unfortunately, that was the worst day after the party. Although I slept 3 times longer, I felt at least 5 times worse than yesterday. As for the technical aspects I must admit it's a quite tough type of terrain here. It becomes really easy after couple of trainings but for the first time after over 2 months it turned out to be very difficult.

The course parameters were 4,61km long and 230m up-hill. My running time was 37:31 and Jacek's one was 29:34 (he ran this course for the second time now) while the winner's (Audun Bjerkreim Nilsen from Norway) time was about 27 minutes.

My pulse rate was really high as for me (avg 176, max 187) and it only stems from my enormous tiredness, not my fast pace.

Below you can see today's map and the deep analysis of each control.



S-1
I think I chose the best possible way. I could only shorten it a bit by avoiding running to the path's bend. Unfortunately, several metres before the control a group of boars whizzed in front of me and I got a little bit scared.

1-2
I confused the re-entrants. I thought that I was already on the right spur. If there had been no ditch there, I would have lost much more time!

2-3
There were two possible ways to reach the control and as you can see on the map both of them were used during the today's training. Jacek's one meant running further from the red line but almost no up-hill running and easier part of the map to read. I must admit it was immensely better!

3-4
No problems finding the control but lots of dry branches lying disorderly on the ground made me run too much to the left from the third control.

4-5
Really easy control. Normally I would choose the same way as Jacek did but today I was probably so tired that I wanted to avoid as much up-hill running as possible.

5-6
I lost accurate contact with the map just some 30 metres before the control but fortunately easily gained my concentration back.

6-7
Nothing special. The easiest control of the whole course.

7-8
There was one small path more there. I thought that's the one I had to cross and started looking for the control too early. But that's NO excuse! I should have looked much more on the contours.

8-9
Good one for me;)

9-10
If I had run as Jacek did (I mean the fact that I ran too much to the left about 100m before the control), it would have been a perfect route choice!

10-11
After beautiful white forest it also came time for some struggling with the horribly green forest.

11-12
Jacek had known there is a new track just some meters east from the control. I hadn't...

12-13
Looking at the split times, it was my best control of that course. It was a kind of central Poland's running (so flat), maybe that's why...?

13-14
I forgot I was not in Sweden, where such marshes are easy to run through, and my legs got drowned (to the knees). Furthermore, I hadn't checked the control description and didn't know it was a tower. It made me feel a little bit unsecure just before the control.

14-F
It was extremely hard for me to force myself to run at the highest speed but Jacek did his best to help me:)

Jacek's (JWOC 2008 middle distance gold medalist, click on his name to check this out!) short summary:
Having run this course in May, I wanted to make it better by avoiding mistakes I had made that time. The first step was to choose another route choice to 1st control and this time it was successful (in May I missed there about 0'45). The next controls were really nice (especially the long one to number 3) until number 6 where I missed about 10 seconds. 9th control was another 0'10 left, but the final part of the course was almost perfect. To conclude, I am really happy with my performance, because I managed to avoid big mistakes (which was not difficult when running the course the second time :-). However, I know that I am a little bit slower than in May because of the JWOC gold medal race ;-).
When it comes to Podzio, I am not disappointed with his performance, because he is really tired this weekend (after a hard night training on Friday) and I hope it was a good lesson for him which will result in better races in the future.