Jeg suger kuk.

That's one of the most important Norwegian expressions and it means 'I have been to the shower'. ;)

There were some highlights of the preseason after coming home from Portugal. Let me write something about them.

'The fat wixxxa, Agata and Witek's sweet 18th' - got a bit cold afterwards and had problems with my Achilles tendon. 2 in 1 is always better than 1 in 1 :)

Short camp with Raumar in Dresden (Germany) - 4 trainings and 2 competitions in just 3 days. 63km altogether, quite exhausting, must admit... I managed to take the 2nd place in unofficial German Night Champs (not really championships, but the most important night competition in Germany throughout a year). However, the O-performance was quite poor during the race.

Mixed long course in Barkowice - a very nice and fast technical training. Well... technical might be a too big word. Physical, let's say :)

Mecsek Kupa in Hungary - a two-day competition with WRE long distance as the second stage. 14,8km and 710m of climb. Not yet prepared for that kind of challenge!

Polish University Cross-Country Championships - didn't feel well before the race (some stomach problems), but tried to do my best and had a very steady and solid race. 32nd place (4 places up comparing to the last year's result). The course was the same, but the weather was much worse, awful!

TIOcamp in Sweden with Raumar - great chance to develop technically (it was my main focus). I am really satisfied with the technical shape in Sweden. I am not sure if the terrain was easier than the ones I had tried orienteering in Sweden earlier or I've just become a better orienteer in this type of Scandinavian terrain? Hope it's the second version.

How to do it?

NIGHT


                                                                                         DAY

How to mess it up?

Unfortunately, I got a bit ill due to freezing weather and icy marshes there in Sweden. I took 3 days off and on Friday I had my first easy jog. On Sunday I competed in the 10k street race. Nice topic for another post;-) Afterwards I headed for Szklarska Poręba for a short physical camp with Dominik and in just some days the first nice 3-day competition in Poland is about to begin. Really looking forward to it!

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:-)

Winter preparations - 1st part

It all began on 14th November. Well, began, but only on the paper...

Week no. 1
Illness and only 1 running session (8km).

Week no. 2
Almost no training, but two starts: Warsaw at Night (3rd place) and Grand Prix of Łódź (5km - 18:53). Disastrous feeling...

Week no. 3

The first week of REAL training, running every day. Started on Saturday in Christmas O-competition (middle distance) and took 2nd place.

Week no. 4

Everything went fine and we had a superb technical training session on Sunday.

Week no. 5

A tough training session on Monday (4x500m) and a test on Thursday (1500m - 4:19,4). On Friday to Zakopane.

Week no. 6

Training camp in Zakopane (more than 138km in 14,5h). On Friday back to Łódź to celebrate Christmas with my family.

Week no. 7

The whole week in Jagniątków on a sports camp with my club and friends from Poland. Although I did more than 148km in almost 16h, I am not completely satisfied with my training during that camp.

Week no. 8

It's right now. Fighting against a small illness and taking rest after the camps, but doing all the training sessions.

I hope everything's gonna start on the coming Monday!

Winter training and new Norwegian club

Now I am staying in Zakopane on a winter training camp. It's already the 4th day of the camp and there are still 3 days left. Today we are having a rest day - just a morning jog, aquapark in a couple of minutes and then easy running, some speed-ups and strength exercises in the afternoon. I am coming back on 23th December in the late evening and on 26th December in the morning I am leaving for another sports camp - in Jagniątków.

One more news: I am happy to be a member of a Norwegian club - RAUMAR Orienteering. I joined this club together with Agata, Natalia and Witek. I hope the cooperation will develop great in the future!

P.S. I promise to update my blog during the Christmas time, so watch out;)

Miserable April

April was not a good month for me. I had an awful illness (with huge fever), which forced me to take 6 days off and made my body enormously weak. That's why my physical shape was poor, which led to some mental problems like the lack of motivation and enthusiasm. This had a great influence on my physical shape, which got worse and worse. This caused some bigger mental problems. This ...

As far as my sports life is concerned, I spent some days in Szklarska Poręba, where I started my trainings after the afore-mentioned sickness. The whole camp ended with Beaver Valley's Cup, where my forest performance was very miserable. Surprisingly, I was fast enough in a flat terrain to win the demanding sprint in Bolesławiec!

At the end of April I spent 9 days in Rumia improving my technical skills for the coming JWOC 2011. My technique was quite good. However, fast uphill running was out of reach...

I decided to do something with my running career. There are still 2 months left. Now I am starting from zero.
To hero?

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.

Long time no see!

I was so much into my duties that I couldn't find any time to publish some post here. What's more, there were no interesting competitions and my life was all about tough training and studying. Fortunately, all my exams are over right now and I am able to enjoy my 4th training camp this winter - this time in Szklarska Poręba.

My last post was published 30th Nowember. Since then a lot of important things happened in my sports life, including:

• 1st training camp in Szklarska Poręba (4-12 XII) - for me it was some kind of a preration for the coming demanding winter training sessions. I had some problems with challenging trainings served by Kołczu, because my legs didn't work so well then due to being quite tired just after the beginning of my winter workouts...
• 2nd training camp in Ochotnica Dolna (26 XII - 2 I) - at the beginning of this camp I had to struggle against horrible stomach flu, because I fell ill exactly on Christmas Eve. 4 days of my trainings were completely lost and another 2 spent on some useless jogging. Fortunately, I got over it and could enjoy the last 4 laborious days of this camp. Thanks to it, I came back feeling well and ready for the action!
• the so-called Popular Orienteering Championships (8 I) - I took it as an easy technical training and used the map with no tracks. Moreover, I forgot to take my compass with me and had to come back to the start just after the first control, funny;)
• GP of Łódź in cross-country running (9 I) - it was the 2nd edition of the competition described in the last note. The course length was about 5,13km and my time was 18:20. Unfortunately, the conditions were just awful, since the whole surface was covered with slippery ice. Furthermore, I had sore muscles and felt extremely tired after the hard week of strentgh trainings - a good performance was simply out of reach.
• 3rd training camp in Istebna (15-23 I) - I am incredibly satisfied with this particular training camp! Finally, I got the opportunity to spend some time with my clubmates and managed to do all the training sessions as I had wished to - massive satisfaction!
• technical training in Rydzyny with Azymut Pabianice (29 I) - I succeeded in setting 4 controls in the forest. As soon as I started running the course (in a form of Swiss game), I spotted that my compass was broken (there appeared some little air-cell inside it). I was so frustrated that I wasn't able to focus on the map. That's why my route choices looked like these...
• GP of Łódź in cross-country running (30 I) - this time I felt much, much better than 3 weeks ago. The conditions were really good as well. Thanks to it, I managed to fight for the 3rd place with a much more satisfying time of 17:42 (only some 15 seconds behind the winner). However, I dare for more, much more;-)
• technical training in Modrzew (5 I) - it was just a little part of a much longer running session. I didn't do my best to find all the controls, such as stones of about 30cm... I decided to concentrate on map reading, finding the right flow and choosing the best route choices. It was not that bad, but I just can't wait to face great orienteering challenges in Portugal at the beginning of March!

Now I am lying in my bed in Szklarska Poręba and I am taking some rest between my training sessions. It's really nice to have the opportunity to be completely focused on my running. I am sure these are the camps, which help me make enormous progress most!

My plans for the coming weeks:

- tough winter trainings in Szklarska until 20th February;

- the weekend of technical trainings in Żelazko (26-27 II);

- two weekends of orienteering competitions and some technical trainings between them, Portugal (3-13 III);

- cross-country competition in Ruda Pabianicka (20 III);

- Spring Cup in Denmark (25-27 III).

And then... we'll see;)

Last orienteering journey of 2010

It consisted of Polish Championships in Superlong, technical camp in Rumia with the Danes and Baltic Junior Cup in Lithuania. Oh, I should also mention that it began exactly 4 weeks ago...

The day before the last PC race I took part in Sulejów Cup. The map fell short of my expectations. However, the terrain was very nice and pretty fast;) Everyone took this competition very easily, but I decided to run at full speed and I do not regret it! I managed to win the men's elite class and got... a bottle of wine. Such a prize was worth an effort:)

On Sunday I wanted to pursue one of my pre-season goals: achieve 5 out of 5 possible medals from the individual races during Polish Championships. After a constant and solid performance at this tiring superlong distance I did manage by winning the silver. Rino had a brilliant race and totally deserved the title of Polish Champion.

The funny thing is that this year in M20 class the podium looked the same in all individual PC races: Hewi, Rino and me. We only exchanged the colours of medals sometimes;)

Only some hours after this exhausting competition Pałka, Olej and I made our way towards Rumia in order to take part in JWOC 2011 technical camp organized by the Danes. We got to know really nice people and made friends with them. There were not only the Danes, but also two Swiss girls and Norwegian superstar, Eskil Kinneberg - probably the best junior at the time.

We had lots of interesting training sessions, two of which are especially worth mentioning:

~ O-intervals with mass start and no forkings - we got a great opportunity to compete with great juniors from Scandinavia and made a wonderful speed and strength training!

~ long route-choice course - the course was really demanding and challenging, but the weather was even more difficult to put up with: it was raining, the wind was blowing and my hands froze over...

THANK YOU for all the maps & courses and nice time spent together!

As soon as on Thursday afternoon Olej and I had to drive to Warsaw so as to head for Baltic Junior Cup the following day. The national team was strongly experimental and I was the oldest member of it, I felt pretty strange about it;)

As for the races, I made quite a solid performance during the long distance course of 13,4km. I gained the 5th place, 38 seconds ahead of Olej. Unfortunately, I missed the podium by only 1'33 and felt disappointed about it. If it hadn't been for my tired legs...

The next day the well-known mixed relay awaited us. I was chosen to run the last leg in our first team. My starting position looked quite promising: 5th place, 2'04 to the podium and 1'39 ahead of the chasing teams. Already on my way to the 1st control I passed the guy from the 3rd (!) spot. Then, I made a close-to-clean race (losing only some 35 seconds) to the spectator (12th) control. While attacking the 15th one, I saw the guy from 4th spot and succeeded in passing him at the 17th one. Unfortunately, control no. 19 was a real disaster for me. Olej (who ran the 1st leg) told me about this particular place before the race and I stopped thinking on my own... I lost so much time there (1'15!) and lost my dream bronze medal position:( Later on, I was not able to calm down and lost my concentration completely. On the way to the second last control I decided to do my best to win at least the 5th place for my team and ran as fast as possible. I managed to run away from the other competitor and had 'only' to find one of the easiest controls of the whole race. Being really close to it, I lost my mind and went left to the wrong field. When I turned back, I saw the afore-mentioned guy reaching the control... I ended up on 6th spot, but it turned out that the Finnish team got disqualified and we eventually took the disappointing 5th place.

All in all, my performance at this final leg was terrible and I am very sorry for the whole team. On the other hand, I gained lots of invaluable experience! That's why I am really satisfied with that O-weekend.

Completely fed up with camps and technical trainings...

HD quality, isn't it?

Fortunately, the title of this note is out-of-date right now, but I write posts in chronological order and had a little delay;)

The last 10 days of the 'normal' holidays I spent with our provincial team in Bieszkowice, where we had a technical camp, which ended with a 3-day competition called Grand Prix Pomorza 2010.

We had a wide variety of technical trainings there, like loops, memory training, classic races, maps with no tracks, night trainings, following the line and so on.

I felt that I had had enough of everything and found no pleasure in orienteering at that time. That's why I don't feel like describing all these courses.

I would only like to mention 3 things, which I would call O-FUN:

- sprint in the lake (organized by Tom and Mary; our aim was to punch controls - situated in the lake - in the right order presented on a small sheet of paper)

mispunched at 23rd

- microsprint (organized by Łukasz; he prepared the map on his own! a lot of controls everywhere and a very tricky course, I must say!)

- playing Chinese wispers (again Tom and Mary - thanks! we were divided into groups of 4 people and had to draw the same line on a clean map as the one presented on another one, only by using... check the meaning of this idiom and you'll understand everything!).

At the end of our camp we took part in GP Pomorza. My only goal for this competition was to finish the elite courses. The terrains were quite interesting and very demanding physically. The courses weren't too difficult (probably due to my snail speed). The controls were situated almost always in right places. The control descriptions were almost always the right ones. The tracks were almost always visible on the map.

So happy I came back home on 29th August in the late evening!

29 days out of home!

It's been by far the longest journey in my life. It began on 19th July...

Day 1
Train to Gdynia. Waiting for Olej. Shopping in Tesco. Pizza in DaGrasso. Sleeping at AP's house.

Day 2

Ferry to Karlskrona. Michael (from Nybro OK) takes us to their clubhouse. Wow! We've already been there (Baltic Junior Cup 2008).

Day 3

The best O-training in my life! Normal course, Swiss game, in and out, contours and corridor. Just see how close to the control (a piece of toilet paper) I was during the 'Swiss game' part of the map! Then, sauna in the evening;)

Day 4

In the morning a middle distance course. I was very satisfied with my orienteering. In the afternoon we decided to check if the BJC 2008 mixed relay terrain was really so difficult and we made sure it was NOT. It means that we were poor some 22 months ago...

Day 5

Finally reaching Örebro for O-Ringen! Unfortunately, no tehcnical training, because the map was miserable and it cost 50 SEK. Exaggeration!

Day 6

Short physical training with Photo Orienteering as a part of it. Really nice to look for some small features in the city centre;)

Day 7

1st stage of O-Ringen. 10,7km. 92:34. Started quite good, but lost concentration after some stick stuck in my shoe near the 4th control. What's more, the map near the 8th control seemed just impossible to read for me... Afterwards wrong direction and not using the path on the long leg to the 12th one.

Day 8

2nd stage. 4,2km. 44:10. Great time, wasn't it? I spent so much time walking in the green area just before the 7th control that my only dream was to finish the course since that moment. Obviously, I didn't manage to avoid making mistakes later on...

Day 9

3rd stage. 11,4km. 99:07. Technically, the first half of the course went relatively well. Then, Gustav Bergman caught me at the 8th control and I took advantage of him towards the 12th control. I could have followed him till the end, but I decided to make my own race and let him go. Suddenly, I started to feel dizzy and terribly exhausted. I had problems walking on my own legs during the last part of the course...

Day 10

At last a day off! Generally, we did nothing. We only tried a combination of badminton and tennis - called speedminton.

Day 11

4th stage. 11,3km. 77:23. Certainly, it was my best performance at this year's O-Ringen. 36th place....... Matthias Kyburz caught me at the end of the long leg to the 15th control and showed me how to orienteer in this type of terrain. He is fucking fast, I must say! However, he lost some time to the 18th control and I kept my 'lead' till the finish line. Half a loaf is better than no bread;)

Day 12

5th stage. Handicap. 11,4km. 106:55. There was no transport to the arena because we were told it was within walking distance from the camping. Yeah... more than half an hour to the event centre, 2,5km to the start, almost 2 hours in the forest and more than 30 minutes of coming back. I had enough! My race? From the very beginning my only wish was to reach the finish line.

In the afternoon to Karlskrona by car and then a night ferry to Gdynia. At last!

Day 13

Waiting some long hours in McDonald's for the beginning of the official JWOC 2011 training camp.

And the first technical training. It seemed to be nothing special, but for me it was like salvation. I regained my lost motivation and power in my legs - brilliant!

Day 14

Morning: quite a long course on a map with scale 1:15000. The course included nice butterflies.

Afternoon: map with contours only. Unfortunately, there was no control flags in the forest - ridiculous... And the funny thing, I was sure I found controls no. 42, 38 and 37, but realized I had not after I got completely lost on my way towards the 43rd control. The biggest and most long-lasting parallel mistake in my life!

Day 15

M: a classic race. Our goal was to run the even controls fast and to rest at the odd ones. Very nice, but horribly exhausting training session!

A: some short and boring course in a flat terrain.

Day 16

M: middle distance with lots of butterflies. I could not understand the terrain properly. Fortunately, there is still much time to learn before JWOC 2011;)

A: just some stretching with all the people and taking rest before tomorrow's looong.

Day 17

M: 13,6km. I took this training very seriously, as a competition. I felt really well during the whole course and my technique was close to perfect. I only regret misinterpreting the map at the end of the longest leg and losing some time at controls no. 4 and 15 due to some new fences in the terrain.

A: a very interesting lecture with dr Jeremi Ściepurko. Really worth listening to!

Day 18

M&A: 2 technical training sessions in flat terrains. I started understanding this kind of terrain much better and feel more self-confident right now;)

Day 19

M: middle distance on a map with no tracks. We were bound to run with a competition pace. Unfortunately, I had problems understanding the map in some places and lost far too much time. Nevertheless, my running speed was promising;)

A: sprint in Rumia. I know this map well, cause I took part in some competition there in April this year. So it was only about the fast legs and Papuś was faster by 6 seconds that day.

Day 20

M: I wanted to run the long distance course that day. However, I was forced to make it shorter, because I had a really bad day and was not able to focus on map reading.

A: sprint in Wejherowo. The map quality is ridiculous... Furthermore, we had some closed gates and had to run around or climb up the fences. Moreover, I found a new gate in the terrain (while going to the 2nd control), by sheer coincidence. After all, the sprint was very nice and I had a really good race despite all the adversities.

Day 21

First legs training. Unfortunately, the controls situated in the forest weren't proper to set an interesting and FAIR course. I was far behind Olej already after the first double forking, but didn't give up. However, after losing plenty of time near the 106th control (where the map was just awful!) I decided to jog...

Afterwards the whole team left us and it was only me, Nati and Olej who decided to spend 2 more days in the JWOC 2011 terrain.

Day 22

M: I had a nice freestyle technical training with Olej. I was in my element while running in this forest.

A: We had a short course on a 1:15000 map 'Rogulewo' drawn by AP for us. I couldn't find the appropriate rhythm during this training session.

Day 23

In the morning Nati set controls in the forest for me and Olej. Thanks to her we had an opportunity to take part in a nice memory training. 2 times 3 courses with 2 controls on each of them.

Just after it we picked Hewi from Gdańsk and started our journey to Baniocha, because... Jolanta was organising a party there. It was a fancy dress ball and I decided to be an unemployed;) The party was outstanding!

Day 24

You should know what people tend to do after parties;-)

Day 25

We made our way to Przeworsk in order to take part in this year's GP Polonia.

On the very same day we competed in the 1st Unofficial World Orienteering Championships of Tied Couples. My partner was Nati and we became vicechampions! Incredible success:)

Day 26

1st stage of GPP. I made an enormous mistake (just the same as last year) and lost chances of winning the competition. However, I decided not to give up and finished 2nd in men's elite. Funny;)

In the late afternoon there was a sprint qualification race. I agreed to run in my 'unemployed' shoes (from Jolanta's party) and proved that shoes do not run, because I achieved the 3rd place only some 6 seconds behind the leader, Hewi.

Day 27

2nd stage of GPP. I just loved that forest! It was flat, only with some small hills and the runnability was brilliant. I made an average performance, losing only 1'35 to Włodar - nice!

In the evening the time came for the sprint final. The course was very tricky and interesting. Because of that I took wrong route choices 2 times and lost more than 40 seconds. I should have been angry at myself, but I wasn't, because my speed was awesome that day (winning 5 out of 10 splits) and I lost only 22 seconds to the unbeatable winner, Włodar.

Day 28

Last stage of GPP - sprint. Men's elite class was the last one to start that day, so we had a great opportunity to have a good laugh waiting some 2 hours for our start. The course was really demanding and I made an awful mistake while running to the 7th control, because I didn't see the black wall and had to turn back. Moreover, number '7' is situated in a wrong place on a map, because I thought that a gate under this number would be open... Nevertheless, my time loss to the leader was huge (14 mins) and my time advantage over the 3rd place was big (6mins), so my only goal was to finish the course not being disqualified. Somehow I managed;)
Then, I was ready for the bus journey to Łódź. That night I slept at grandma's.

Day 29
Finally, back at home!!!

Spontaneous decision

Just after JWOC competitions Olej and I decided to visit our provincial team in Skwierzyna, where they had some technical camp before the coming 'Olympics'. It was a wonderful feeling to surprise our girls in the middle of the night, haha!

Our aim for these 2 days was to take as much rest as possible and have a great time with them. However, we took part in 2 nice technical trainings as well. The first one consisted of two short loops at a map with contours only. I made two enormous mistakes, but they didn't spoil my great mood at all;)

On the day of departure the first legs' training waited for us. I had not enough energy and power to lead the race, but surprisingly I managed to win it because of a better forking at the end (8th control). I love this game!