Season 2011 is started

April comes with the beginning of good weather, nature is growing up, birds are singing… and the orienteering season starts. After a good winter training, mostly held in France and without any big injury, it’s time to see the improvement and how it will go during the competitions.

For me o-season started the 9^th and 10^th of April with Suisse Sprint and Middle Championships that we ran as selection races for the French team. There you could have found very strong competition - the best Suisse, Czech and Finnish runners. It was a really sunny and warm weekend, and the races were very fast in a typical Suisse village and in a quiet flat Middleland forest. My shape was not on the top because I was a little bit sick but the main problem was my mistakes. For example, I lost 25’’ in the second last control in the sprint where I finished 19^th (48’’ after M. Mertz). And in the middle distance I lost 1’ on the way to the second control and so I was 12^th (2’23 after M. Mertz again).

Then, this weekend, there was The Swedish Sprint Championships in the nice old city of Visby, in Gotland. The qualification was in quite open terrain while the finale took place inside the big walls of the medieval town where we could have found interesting route-choices as you can see an example (1^st control) here:

After the victory in my qualification heat I started as the last runner. But because of some wrong route-choices (to controls number 4, 9 and 11) and mistake around the 10^th control, I wasn’t able to manage better than 6^th in the final (28’’ after fast J. Lysell). Here is the GPS tracking;

Other Inov-8 runners also ran the Swedish champs, as Scott Fraser who took the silver medal and Graham Gristwood who finished 5^th (3’’ faster than me).

Because it’s my first article, you can have a look at this recent article from the International Orienteering Federation, page 7 & 8, that introduces me more;