Another 3 days in Sweden this year

There were lots of discussions about the participation of Polish EYOC competitors in Baltic Junior Cup 2008 in Kalmar and Nybro as the very long and tiring journey followed it. However, it was not that bad. The Swedish terrain is the one I really enjoy! It was a nice opportunity to take delight in forests with a very good runnability before the coming Swiss blackberries and other difficulties which make every runner wanna cry.

Our journey began on Friday with a short flight from Warsaw. Unfortunately, there appeared some unexpected problems while landing. My tooth hurt so much that I was very close to bursting into tears.
Then we attended the model event course in Nybro. Pasza offered to run with me and see if my technique is satisfying enough. In spite of the fact that the map was really easy and quite poor in details, I didn't manage to avoid some silly mistakes. However, I was looking forward to run the following day.



On Saturday the long distance came. It was quite weird and surprising that all the starters on 14:00 were Poles: Wels, me and Jacek. I had a horrible race with over 10-minute mistakes. On the course I didn't think it was that disastrously! When I arrived at the finish, I got to know I lost almost 13 minutes to the leader. I was certain it was because of my weak legs after the long-lasting illness. In fact, terrible mistakes + not the best shape meant the third place... counting from the end!

In the evening the annual orienteering party during BJC was held. Each country was asked to prepare a short performance or game for the other countries. We organised an O-quiz consisting of 5 questions. Two of them sounded: 'Which control did Emil Wingstedt not punch during this year's World Orienteering Championships sprint distance race?' and 'How many spikes are there in one Integrator shoe?'. I wonder if you'd know... Personally, I took part in an egg-throwing competition with Drągu.

The next day we were to run the mixed relay [the rules for this kind of relay are fairly complicated; if you want to know how it is organised, visit BJC 2008 website] and especially the first leg runners (including me) were forced to get up very early, about 6 a.m. Each country was allowed to complete 5 relays. Our trainers decided to build one very strong team to fight for the victory and 4 equal teams with more or less the same possibilities. I was in the first of those 4 teams as my Saturday's performance was too bad to enter the best one. To the other first leg runners from Poland belonged Slavko, Patela, Hewi and Duduś. It was a really interesting race in a quite demanding and wonderful terrain. In the middle part of the course I was running with Slavko, who finished third. Unfortunately, I lost some time on the forking in the detailed stony area and didn't manage to catch up with him again. What's more, on the way to the very last control I jumped over the knoll and wasn't able to change my 'flying direction' and my tibia hit a sharp stone. I've become the lucky owner of 5mm deep wound!