From Italy to China by Switzerland and Sweden!

Ø  French-team training-camp in Asiago (Italy) for WOC 2014:

Last month was the time to start to focus on the preparation of the next season with a camp in world champs 2014 terrain: the main goal was to get a good idea of what is waiting for us in some 10 month over-there. We can now say that we will be well spoiled, and the camp-experiences was worthy! Indeed, without talking too long of the beautiful landscape and the excellent pasta every meal, it seems that the terrain of the competitions will be really interesting and quite challenging. The route-choices will be especially significant and a good knowledge of the steep terrain will be essential! Still some work to do…

Ø  World Cup in Baden (Switzerland) :

For the last but not the least events of the international season: Quite interesting competitions were waiting for us in a not that typical Swiss forest thanks to a tricky hilly area full of big rocks, and in the old nice city center of Baden where decisive route-choices had to be taken. The atmosphere there was especially great as a large audience came to cheer for some of their Swiss star taking part in their last international competitions with the Swiss national-team colors.

For me, the performances were quite satisfying but it could still have been better! (As it’s almost always the case in orienteering; but some times more than others…). The long competitions season start to feel tiring (especially mentally).

- Middle-distance: 15^th

I did some good parts, but some precipitations in the tricky area and bad route-choices cost me too much time to expect a good result behind the tough Swiss armada. Looking the split-time, it seems that the speed was not a major problem, but the orienteering had to be clean the whole way!

(Result / GPS tracking)

- Sprint: 13^th

My navigation went pretty well the whole course and that something to be pleased with, but I unfortunately took some much slower route-choices where I lost a lot of time especially in the stairs which are generally terrible in sprint! That how the 1^st control (right by the stairs), the 12^th (left tunnel), and the 14^th (stairs left) have been far too long for me. At the changing map, it was particularly wise to stop when we got the new map just at the start triangle, and take the right route-choice.

 (Result / GPS)

          Finally, I finish the overall world-cup as n°21^st without competing the 3 first races in New-Zealand in January, with some up and down performances during the NORT in June and with catastrophic underachievement at WOC. Nevertheless, we can notice that a number of the best runners don’t compete for the overall world-cup.

(World cup ranking)

Ø  Park World Tour: China

          Few PWT races in China have been a perfect excuse for a new exploration in a new continent for me, and I really think that the trip worth trying! It was even sometime a little adventure when we didn’t know exactly what to expect and when. I can summarize this great experience by some cultivating sightseeing, some exotic places and food, living in comfortable enough hotels when we see the number of stars, far too much time spent in the transports (but it went fine with cool people), a lot of fun times with a nice cosmopolitan group, and even few quite interesting orienteering event: For me, it went just good enough to make the trip profitable thanks to few price-money.

(All the information, maps and results on the PWT website, here)

Ø  Swedish relays:

       October was also the time for the last large Scandinavian relays of the season in Sweden. However, it did come as well as expected for my club OK Hällen as we couldn’t be ranked at 25-manna due to a broken SI-stick despite good chances for a good position top 10), and we even didn’t take the start of the Smålandskavlen due to a team decimate by injuries and sickness…