Har du røyka sokka dine?

The title is one of the most useful Norwegian expressions (apart from morra di) I managed to learn some days ago. The time between 16th and 26th February I spent in an orienteering PARADISE called Portugal! What's more, it was my first camp with my new Scandinavian club - Raumar Orientering.

Some facts about Raumar:

• all of them can easily speak English
• they fight to get as many 'silly points' as possible
• the head coach Ståle is one of the funniest and most spontaneous coaches in the world
• his daughter Caroline is as crazy as possible
• Torben is a Facebook maniac and listens to all kinds of music (try it loud from 2:02)
• the taller Eirik is a sprint specialist and behaves quite similar to Jacek M.
• Alex (newcomer from Germany) used to be fast like a shark (5000m in 13:38 - eee?!).

In Portugal:

• I ate the most expensive dinner in my life (16,5€), but not the tastiest one...
• we slept in a *** and a **** hotel (with no hot water, from time to time)
• we had a nice photo session at the Atlantic Ocean.

Portuguese O-training diary:

16 II - arrival, just a short jog and some stretching

17 II - long distance training (map), my time limit was 75mins, so I had to shorten the course a bit, running slowly all the time, the terrain was covered with stones, rocks, stones and rocks and stones, didn't manage to find the 29th control, wrong direction, loser!

middle distance training (map), I was supposed to run fast and I tried to, however, it was not that easy due to huge climbs and dense vegetation, awful mistake to the 8th control...

18 II - POM long (map), not allowed to run fast, so I focused on my O-technique, had problems finding the 12th control (a really tricky one!), apart from that - I handled the terrain quite well;

POM night sprint (map), congratulations to the course setter! the 3rd and 4th controls were very interesting, I managed to spot the right route choice to the 3rd one, but got caught at the next one - I should have gone the way I had begun to run and then up the stairs, really difficult to notice while running at full speed! all the way I had problems with my headlamp, which did literally everything to get out of my head... 5th place - nice one;)

19 II - POM middle (map), my aim for this race was to run the 3rd, 6th, 9th (and so on...) fast, I succeeded in winning 4 (out of 6) these splits, to the 6th I took the wrong route choice, I think, and to the 12th one I went too much down... ridiculous mistake to the 10th control (the slow one!), I realised that I found the 14th control (instead of the 10th one), but was not able to find the 10th one anyway...

night training (map), this forest was a real jungle! the mistakes to the 29th and 4th one shouldn't be named 'mistakes', just look at the 12-16 part, I think it's a big favourite to win the AMBA of the year 2012 competition;-) funny that I got to know about a different map scale only at the end of the course...

20 II - POM middle WRE (map), it was the most important competition of POM for me (for all, I think), I could not find the right rhythm at the beginning, then I caught a good flow until the spectator control, afterwards I got really tired, stopped thinking and lost almost 4mins on the last loop, shit happens.

sprint training (map), if you had had no control descriptions, you just shouldn't have entered this training session, I got disqualified at the 11th control (not the right side of the fence, even if I had checked it, strange...) and made a huge mistake to the 14th one, almost all of us had problems finding the entrance to the 16th control from the street (it was funny looking at the others' confusion there:))

21 II - POM long, chasing start (map), the most interesting course and terrain of the whole stay, I think, fortunately, I ran at low speed, so I could easily see all the features in the terrain, had only problems on my way to the very 1st control because of the aforementioned low speed (I just couldn't recognize the distance), moreover, much more stones in the terrain there than on the map;

sprint training (map), another amazing city for a sprint distance! unfortunately, the map was wrong in the area of the 3rd control (at the bottom of the stairs), very bad route choice to the 4th control (not planned before...), the rest of the course went flawlessly.

22 II - leaving Viseu (rocky mountains area) and moving forward to Quiaios (sand dune area)

technical training (map), Vetle made the courses for us, there were no controls in the forest, so we had to be really concentrated all the time, only some minor problems;)

23 II - Quiaios Hotel relay (map), I ran the 2nd leg in Raumar's 'foreign' team, managed to jump up 8 places, forgot to start my Garmin watch and realised it just after leaving the 7th control and then a huge mistake to the 8th one - seems so easy to lose concentration (watch out later in the season!), the terrain was incredibly fast! note that Scott Fraser ran this course (6,6km) in 30:30, I did it a bit (4mins) slower;)

middle distance training (map), one of the most pleasant training sessions, such a nice terrain it was! use your compass and have fun:) I had!

24 II - contours (map), my favourite training session of the whole camp! I ran it from the behind and if it hadn't been for the 12th control, it would have been a perfect workout;

shortened middle distance training (map) - I ran the first part with Nati and tried to teach her a little bit, from the 6th control we split and I made my own race, on the left side of the map there begins the... Ocean!

25 II - XIII MOC long WRE (map), was a bit afraid of the distance (18,7km) on the last day of the camp, but it turned out to be no problem for me;) the terrain was so magnificent to run that I enjoyed every second of the race, made only 2 major mistakes to the 8th and 17th control (about 1'15 each) - not that much taking into account the running time of 1:48:36, got a really satisfying 5th place and beat the other Raumar boyz!

MOC night sprint (map), we were a bit late for a start, so I didn't manage to make an appropriate warm-up, however, I felt quite well (I think I had warmed up long enough in the morning!), this one was the easiest sprint of all I ran during this camp, made almost no mistakes and placed 3rd - 1st international podium place as an 'official' elite runner:)

26 II - 17 hour long travel back home.

To sum it all up, during these 9 days I did almost 137km with a map in my hand and spent nearly 15h in the bushes.

Last but not least, I must (want to) admit that it has been one of the best camps in my life so far! I had a wonderful time. The trainings were really challenging and the company was brilliant! Nati, Anne, Marie, Line Maria, Caroline, Ståle, Torben, Alex, Eirik, Eirik, Vetle, Anders - thank you very much for those amazing 10 days!

Takk for your attention:-)

Sinusoid. It's all in your head.

Fortunately, my good health let me execute all the plans presented in the last note.

My last winter training camp in Szklarska Poręba in the middle of February was expected to be quite tough. And it really was. I managed to do 21 trainings during 9 days (3 of which were technical sessions).

At the end of February my club made his way to Żelazko in order to spend some time with a map in our hands. At the weekend I got the opportunity to run 4 technical trainings (using even 5 maps, in fact). I had a really good flow and my orienteering technique was quite promising.

Then, the highlight of this training period - Portugal!

After arrival in Crato we spent 2 days training on the model event maps for Portugal 'O' Meeting 2011.

The competition itself was a great success for me. I managed to win both middle distance races and place 3rd and 2nd in long ones. In the overall classification I gained the 1st place ahead of Jan Petrzela (CZE) and Olej. It was unbelievably satisfying and boosting to defeat the previous European Youth Orienteering Champion. I felt that everything is on the right way!

Afterwards, we trained for some 3 days in a bit different terrains and prepared for the coming competition - International Meeting of Arraiolos.

Despite making some silly mistakes, I managed to win the middle distance again. Nevertheless, I had no mental power for the last day - long distance of 13,7km. At the first 4 controls I lost a total of 11 minutes! 5 of them already at the 1st one... And the rest of the course I jogged. At the end I remembered about my bet with Olej concerning the finish. Although it was very muddy, I decided to run the last 300m as fast as possible and... won this split with the advantage of 5 seconds over the next competitor (not only in my class, but in all competition classes). Funny;)

One week later I took part in the popular cross-test in Ruda Pabianicka. I achieved the time of 28:58 on the course of 8,08km (3:35/km). Looking at my last year's result, it was 51 seconds better! However, Olej was really fast that day and beat me by 27 seconds - congratulations and recover!

Last weekend I took part in the Danish competition, which is considered as the opening of the orienteering season - Spring Cup. The night relay on Friday was a real fun for me and I enjoyed the mass start very much. Nonetheless, the most important race for me was Saturday's classic. Generally, I made an awful performance and lost as many as 6mins due to my mistakes! It wouldn't have been that bad, if I hadn't lost more than 10 minutes to the winner - Eskil Kinneberg from Norway. In my opinion, he is the best junior right now, but losing so much time is not acceptable! I must have had a really bad day...
This painful failure made me lose my motivation, self-confidence and belief completely. That's why I had no fun running the 1st leg of Sunday's relay and came 7 minutes behind the leading group (making no more than 1min of mistakes!).

My mental state during the last days was so poor that I wasn't able to find any motivation for running and my life was so dull... I don't mean that I avoided trainings. I did them, but with no commitment and willingness. On Wednesday I was close to tears when I finished almost all the intervalls behind the runners who are actually not faster than me. At the same day I had a long talk with Łukasz and it must have helped me really a lot, because - although the beginning of my Thursday's training wasn't good - I managed to overcome my problems and ran with a huge smile on my face!

THANK YOU, ŁUKASZ.

XI Meeting Orientacao Centro

28 II 2009

Dia 1 - middle WRE
I made quite a good race that day. Although I made some minor mistakes, I managed to avoid a mistake of more than half a minute. Unfortunately, the weather got a bit worse and it wasn't as sunny as it used to. It got colder and it rained a bit...:(

Urban Night Sprint in Alcobaca

The map looked pretty interesting and it was a really fascinating sprint distance course. Especially the surroundings of the 14th and 15th controls! There were ruined walls in a complete darkness at night. It looked amazing, so I decided to stay there 1 minute more than I should have;)

1 III 2009

Dia 2 - long
In comparison to the last week's long distance, it is like comparing heaven to hell. I was easily able to break a magic border of 100 minutes. My time was almost 30min better than at POM! I am particularly happy with my performance at the longest leg and the very end of the course.

Just after the prize giving ceremony we returned to our bungalows and started getting ready for the following day's journey back home. All good things come to an end... don't they?

SHORT SUMMARY
10 days in Portugal
187,73km run
9 competition races
7 technical trainings

1 physical training
19 new maps
193 - highest heart rate
56 conclusions drawn

Sophisticated technical trainings in Pataias

On our way to Pataias a beautiful well-known town was situated - Fatima. We just couldn't miss the opportunity to visit it! We took some lovely photos, lit two candles with intention of Polish Junior Team, eat some rice or pasta in a cosy Chinese restaurant and drove away. We reached our final destination quite soon despite some localization problems;-P We settled in two spacious bungalows and started enjoying a carefree life of orienteers;)

25 II 2009

3 loops with moderate intensity
Each of us got a special objectives to pursue during this particular session. I was told to take the first loop easily as a warm-up, run the second one at full speed and the third one with an average pace. In the beginning, I was a bit taken aback that we were going to run so fast just one day after such a long and tiring competition. However, eventually, it turned out it was quite a good idea and I enjoyed the courses very much!

Memory training - in pairs, only 1 map
We all got a bit shocked as we heard the rules of this training (described on the map). Nonetheless, it was a really fantastic training, in my opinion. I felt as if I could go on forever... Hewi and I managed to gain a great speed at the legs and even our O-technique wasn't that bad:)

'Circle' - no north, no compass!
None of us was sure if we were going to run the difficult-looking course easily. Neither was I, but had a great time in the forest finding all the controls with enormous pleasure and crossed the finish line shouting 'What a crit training!'.

26 II 2009

Middle on WMOC 2008 long distance map
Our coach wanted us to run the course as if it was a competition. I didn't feel well enough to run at the highest speed and orienteering level. The reason was heavy legs and exhaustion after 5 days of tough orienteering. That's why I made lots of stupid mistakes on the course...

Just after this training we spent almost an hour pulling out our car from a huge sandy hole. Afterwards we had to clean our hands a bit. It turned out that the nearest place to do it was the Atlantic Ocean:-)

Sprint - save your neck!
I must admit Nazare is a very interesting city to organize a sprint competition in. However, no control flags, crowd in the narrow alleys and two threatening dogs spoilt the whole O-fun:[

27 II 2009

1st & 2nd Model Event
I took both Model Events very easily and tried to take some rest before the coming competition races. In spite of a meagre pace I did not succeed in avoiding mistakes. Nevertheless, these mistakes are actually the thing we learn from!

The following day we were going to compete in the next competition...

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...

Maps from sunny Portugal, enjoy!

1st competition...

Model events, technical trainings, warm-up maps, bib numbers etc...

2nd competition...

Klusek, I know I promised maps would appear at 9 p.m., but... put the blame on HER;-)