Holiday camp in Ustka

This was a kind of a sport camp especially for young children, who have to learn the very basics of orienteering and for some a little bit more experienced runners to improve their skills. I think (and hope!) we belonged to the second group. I don't really think that trainings were tough enough to satisfy my legs and brain but it was a great opportunity to take some beneficial rest after really demanding 2 months of strong running in Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic and Switzerland...

Unfortunately, this camp's trainings can be easily divided into two parts. Why? 2 maps mean 2 parts...

Fast running through the white

The first and friendlier for orienteers map was bordered by a Baltic See. It was quite rich in details as far as contours and knolls are concerned. The biggest advantage of this map was its pretty good runnability. That was like the Eden for my legs, which really screamed for flying through the forest, not high-jumping like in Switzerland.

Bushy and marshy...

The latter map was fairly boring and didn't give so much pleasure. Fortunately, our trainings were really sophisticated there and didn't make me sleep while running ;-)

To conclude...

Not so many kilometers run but a great amount of time spent on laughing. As several times I played a role of a teacher, I hope I made the young competitors understand the basics and simply love orienteering!

No words needed...

Aargauer 3-Tage-OL 2008

Just before I left home for Switzerland I had checked the course parameters for this competition. The first stage was about 4-5km and the last two ones about 7,5km, so I was prepared for a middle distance and two shortened long distance races. However, you must take into account that I checked the class I am used to running in, that is M18... but during our O-camp it turned out that all older boys are bound to run in HAL (men's elite). Don't think I was anxious or sad about it! I was delighted I would have the opportunity to spend more time in Swiss forests and just learn more:-)

1. Etappe [German version] - middle (5,8km and 180m climb)

At the beginning of the course I had some technical and physical problems. My legs weren't working as I would wish they did. Luckily, in the middle part of the race I saw Zielu in the forest and it gave me so much power and determination I thought I could fly then and the rest of the course went almost perfect. As I stood in front of the results table and saw I had beaten Hevi by over a minute, I knew I had a really good performance. Only the last Polish starter - Rino - conquered me... by a second. Undoubtedly, it was my best race during this 3 days' competition.



2. Etappe - long (10,2km and 155m climb)

I knew it would be flat as a table and was prepared for very fast running and speed thinking. There was only one thing (or frankly speaking - millions of them) which made this prestart assumption much more difficult to put into operation. Ditches, ditches and one more time ditches... Furthermore, the map scale was 1:10 000 and our course was over 10km long. For that reason I really often had problems finding the next control on the map I should have looked for.
In addition, I would like to say I think I've never had so many controls (29) before and I found them all! That's my personal record;-)

There was one more trouble we had to cope with during this 2nd stage - control descriptions. I have quite a good eyesight but while running they were just impossible to read for me. I had to stop for a while and remember about 3 controls in advance not to waste time later.

3. Etappe - long, chasing start (10,1km and 290m climb)

After 2 previous days I had such an enormous time advantage over Hewi that we were forced (?) to run together. I started the whole 3 seconds ahead of him... I didn't really feel like running a chasing start race that day as I felt a quite intense pain in the very upper part of my calf because of yesterday's race. As far as the terrain and course are concerned, they were really interesting in my opinion and the forest was fairly... friendly.

All in all...

I ended on the 11th place in men's elite of over 30 runners and the 3rd of 7 Poles. I think I could easily make it to the top 7 (only 2 minutes behind after 3 days).

Furthermore, this was a so-called observed competition in reference to the EYOC 2008, so I think I did quite a good job in my way to success:)

The Swiss massacre...

Polish Youth Team spent exactly 2 weeks in Switzerland preparing for the coming EYOC in October. We stayed in Solothurn - the most beautiful baroque city of Switzerland. That's also the place were EYOC 2008 sprint distance is going to be held.
Switzerland became the 10th foreign country I have ever done orienteering in. As always we had a lot of fun, the weather was really hot, only at nights some heavy thunderstorms occured. But, in fact, our goal was to train as much as possible. Below you can see the results of our long and hard technical, as well as physical work...

Memory training

We began our technical trainings with a real challenge for our brains. We had to remember the whole course of about 0,8-1,5km consisting of 2-4 controls and then just run the course without a map. We ran 5 such loops and found out that Swiss forests are full of lower or higher blackberry bushes covering the ground. Running with no long socks was really painful! Unfortunately, I have no map of this training session because there were only a few copies.

Tunnel-races

We never got bored during our technical trainings because they were really sophisticated. These tunnel-races may seem quite hard at first but if you think they were the most difficult trainings of our whole stay, you are deeply wrong! Just see the paragraph below...



Swiss games

It would have been a sin if we had run no Swiss game in Switzerland. Actually, the best way to finish that training is to keep the right direction all the time. However, you must take into consideration that sometimes it was just impossible to follow the red line because of vast areas of thick and prickly bushes. I think everyone who had made it to the end could be proud of oneself!

In pairs...

This training was designed especially for the younger runners to learn something from their older friends. I was to run with Papuś (P. Parfianowicz) and must admit his technique is quite good and I didn't really have to make amends to his running many times.

This training takes place at each Polish Youth Team camp. I must say I really like it because we can choose our partners by ourselves and, what's even more important, we can set our own course. Unfortunately, some points looked brilliant only on the map, not in the terrain!

One more time with Zielu but this time it was a kind of rivalry, at least it was supposed to. Actually, we were a bit too tired that day to run at our highest speed level and our running times are not magnificent at all.

Sprint?!

Yeah... it was called a sprint distance. In fact, its length and city part prompted so but what was going on in the final FOREST part? One control was almost impossible to reach with flat salomon shoes. It was only 65m away from the previous control and it took me 2:50 to find it. Isn't it too much?

2 middles + 1 sprint = long

This long distance training consisted of 2 middle loops (4,6km; 3,7km) and 1 short one (2,3km). Altogether it made one and a half hour of nice running. It was also quite funny to have 2 TV controls (thanks to Jacek) on the course.

First legs

That's the training I am always looking forward to because it's full of exciting competition and fast running. There were 5 double forkings on the whole course (controls no. 1, 5, 9, 12, 15).

* 1-4 - nothing special, in the whole group of 6 runners

* 5 - I have a closer forking but a bit more difficult to find, I manage to leave that area as the third one, behind Jacek and Hewi

* 6-9 - fast running with Slavko and chasing the leading couple

* 10 - I am very close to them but don't see them punch the control and have to go back, Slavko and Rino now just ahead of me

* 11-13 - going as fast as possible with Rino, Slavko a little bit behind us

* 14 - deciding control! Hewi has no power left in his legs and we are getting ahead of him, Rino is stronger and joins Jacek, now they are in the lead

* 15-16 - running alone, I can't see Jacek and Rino

* 17-18 - they make a small mistake at the 17th control and now they are within reach of my eyes but are still some 120m ahead

* 19 - they disappear in the forest and win, I am the third one to cross the finish line.



What I actually did there?!



Probably you are interested why the title sounds 'The Swiss massacre' - click on it and you'll have the answer!

I have one question to you as well: did anyone notice that both tunnel-races and both Swiss games were carried out on the same map? ;-)

Tomorrow I am going to publish how successful or not I was during the Aargauer 3-Tage-OL 2008 - the crowning of our entire work in Switzerland.

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.

Home boredom is bound to end now!

I've decided to write my last note before the long journey to Switzerland now because the coming days are going to be really exciting and my free time will be greatly limited.

Tomorrow just after my visit to the dentist, I am going to pick up Jacek from the Fabryczny railway station. We plan to do some training using 'Zdrowie' map and then in the evening the biggest orienteering party ever is to start. This is the 18th birthday of Marta and Anna in Pabianice. HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

I hope we'll manage to wake up early enough to attend our club training on Saturday. Unfortunately, I think I won't be able to publish any note including my route choices afterwards as we arranged to leave at about 16:50 to reach Gdynia before midnight.

We are going to do two training sessions more on Sunday and Monday. Finally, at 15:00 on 28th July we are to begin our long and probably very tiring journey to Switzerland, by bus of course.

In Daniel Hubmann's homeland we are going to prepare for the coming European Youth Orienteering Championship, which will be held in October. After some 10 days of trainings we are going to compete in a competition ending with a chasing start named Aargauer 3-Tage-OL 2008. Keep your fingers crossed for our whole team!

The exemplary picture from the competition area (third day).