A short holiday summary

As I was ill and didn't attend school for the whole week, I had much time to complete my computer training diary at last. This year's summer holidays were entirely devoted to orienteering and the results of this hard work are really impressing;)

76 days

39 technical trainings

22 competition races

15 physical trainings

665,16km

which makes a perfect daily average of 8,75km!

...and much time spent on other sports (football, basketball, volleyball, table tennis, swimming, cycling, pool, 'The king', chess, cards and even Scrabble...).

Today I could have taken part at School Championships in Cross-Country Running for about 1,5km in my park. However, I think I had made a clever decision to attend a club training and slowly come back to my brilliant passion.

'Zaran, we're going for EYOC 2008!!!! hahahaha'

a so-called MIND-MAP

While I was sitting in front of my PC and getting bored more and more, I got to know that Finnish Champs in Middle Distance were held last Saturday. Nothing special, you'd say... but the thing Pasi Ikonen (the winner) published on his homepage is really worth seeing! It is a mind-map - not a map that you get just after your start but the one made by yourself with the objects you needed to find your way to each control.

I also attach the Matthias Merz's map (5th place - less than 2' behind) with his routes, just to compare and see how successful Pasi was.

Enjoy!

Predictable? No way!

Polish Championships in Night-O

We started our journey to the Warsaw's surroundings about 5 hours before the first starting time. Unfortunately, some of our competitors didn't manage to come in time and just lost the opportunity to take part in this exciting competition. You'd probably ask why??? The reason was our small car crash in Głuchów...
As far as my performance is concerned, it was my worst orienteering race in Poland this year. My legs were some 8 times too fast for my brain that day! I lost over 16 minutes because of my silly mistakes and missed the medal by only 5 minutes. In fact, I didn't deserve it at all...



Warsaw Orient Meeting 2008 - sprint

On Friday morning I started feeling ill and it was only getting worse and worse. I thought I would have no chances of achieving sth the following day and decided to run quickly enough not to come back home completely empty-handed.

The course was really easy, particularly the route choices between controls 7.-10., which were

ridiculous. There were only 3 runners who managed to run less than 8' (Hewi, me and Rino) and we took the podium places in M16/18.



Polish Championships in Long Distance Orienteering

I woke up... I felt I was unbelievably hot... On the other hand, I was shivering... I had a sore throat... I was coughing all the time... I had a running nose... Was it enough to stop dreaming about the medal this day? I thought so!

My only desire was to finish that tiring course of almost 12km and possibly got a diploma for the 5th or 6th place. The whole race went really quickly as it was very exciting and full of gripping action in the forest all the time.

The first control was set on the path fork - easy? Forget! There were so many small paths there, I was sure I got lost... but I saw a man from the M35 class (he had the same course and started 2' ahead of me) looking for the first control and suddenly getting ready to punch it. I was saved!

The next controls went really fluently, although I was a little bit afraid of the tricky control no. 2.

On my way to the 5th control I saw Zielu, who shouted to me: 'Podzio, there is Rino [started 3 minutes ahead of me] over there! They haven't found it yet!'. I got a bit excited but had to keep my temper not to get totally lost. I saw the control, punched it, started running to the next one and... saw Rino some 100m from the control and told him where the point was.

As I made a fairly considerable mistake at control no. 6, Rino caught me at the 8th control. The rest of the course we went together and co-operated quite well, I think. We passed lots of runners from our class.

On our way to the 10th control Rino threw away his map foil because it got brighter and thought it was not going to rain again...

While we were passing the huge field, it was raining cats and dogs and just after the 16th control Rino said to me quietly: 'Podzio, you have to control the map by your own. Mine doesn't exist...'.

I tried to do my best but my brain wasn't that fresh then and I made a huge mistake at the next control. Unfortunately, Rino ended just some 29sec out of the podium and I felt quite sorry for that fact...



Now I am ill but enormously happy!

6th night race in 3-week time

This was on Wednesday evening. We all gathered in a well-known bar and got ready for the last course before Polish Champs. The course setter was Pasza - that's why it was pretty difficult. The parameters were fairly similar to the today's night race coming in some 8 hours. My running time of exactly 56 minutes wasn't satisfying at all as I made lots of mistakes of about 12'! Furthermore, I didn't manage to find control no. 17 because there was one more same clearing there...



Thanks to this training session I am rich in important conclusions which are hopefully going to help me after 22:45 (it's my starting time for today's PC in Night-O). I am the last one to enter the forest!

...proud to be the member of the 3rd club in Poland!

Last weekend we took part in a very prestigious Polish Club Championships. I must admit some of the best Polish elite runners were absent as they trained hard in Sankt Moritz. Nevertheless, our performance was really amazing in my opinion. We took 9 podium places at the sprint distance and won this competition in overall!
You can see the official PCC standings here.

15 points for my club :-)

We hardly managed to get to the Cieplice Park on time. Our bus arrived just some 40 minutes before the first starter and one of the first starters was... me! Moreover, Hewi was to start one minute behind me and I really had to push hard from the very beginning. I wasn't caught by him on the course but he punched the finish control only 43 seconds after me...



Another 15 pts for my club ;-)

I had thought I am not a guy who is good at middle distance before my great qualification race at JWOC in Sweden. This time I wanted to prove (especially myself!) I am also able to have a really good run in Polish rocky mountains. My pace wasn't supposed to be extremely fast but my technique had to be at its highest possible level... and it quite was, except for my compass at the 8th control. This performance gave me definitely more complacency than the sprint distance.

Polish Tiomila?

In fact, not... Easier and shorter courses, not so many forkings, less competitors and teams but the adrenalin and excitement were almost the same. The desire to finish the first leg on the best place in club relay didn't differ from the one in Polish Youth Team relay 5 months ago. There was only one thing which made me feel more secure - my self-confidence in night orienteering gained in the last three weeks' time. I lost only 39sec (it was the biggest amount of time I lost to the leader during this round of PCC - that's why I am so satisfied with my performance at this well-organised competition) to the winner (Jacek Morawski - congratulations 'cwelu' ;-P) and finished in the first group of 8 runners with advantage of 14 minutes over the next ones!



PCC 2008 summary

Gdynia: 3rd in sprint, 2nd in long, 1st in relay.

Jelenia Góra: 3rd in sprint, 3rd in middle, 5th in so-called generations' realy.

I scored nearly 86 of 904 my club's points. Do you need me? Judge it fairly by your own*

*Yeah, yeah... I know it was not modest...