Since the world cup in Scandinavia (NORT), I had a quiet busy month of July:
Firstly, some test race in Slovenia to try to get selected for WOC middle, long and relay. We run on demanding, interesting and relevant terrain for WOC as you can see the map with Tero’s route (maps and the results).
As the French team has only 3 places for Middle and Long and we have 3 very strong guys (T. Gueorgiou, P. Adamski and F. Gonon), I ‘wasn’t good enough to take a place to run this distances at WOC, so I should focus on my main goal: the sprint.
Then, after some sprints training in Corrèze (Example) , I flied to Rio-de-Janeiro for the Military World Games.
My tripe there was rather short but long enough to climb to the CORCOVADO to see Rio from the top, to swim on the Ocean, to see some monkeys on trees, and occasionally to run and to orienteer in Eucalyptus forest…
Concerning the competitions, I run first the short distance where I mad too much mistakes and I took the 26th place. Then I must have understood better how to run in this terrain for the long distance and I took the 6th place just 1’07 from the 2nd place (2’31 from the winner).
Long map (with G. Kerschbaumer’s route).
Results.
Just after my come back in France, we had our selection races for WOC sprint with a rainy 5000 m on track where I run in 15’04 (not my personal best: 15’00), and 2 interesting sprints in Ussel and in Brive-la-Gaillarde. The Inov-8 X-talon proved to be the ideal choice when the terrain is mixed with urban sections and both park and forest, while Inov-8 f-lite suit perfectly when it’s only road and urban sprint.
Finally, I did 2 fairly clean sprint races and a rather fast 5000m so I get selected to run the sprint for WOC in France: now I can be 100% focus for this next event on the 16th of August.
It must be a great and unique experience as an athlete to run the World Champs on our own ground and we should have more supporters ‘at home’ than usually, so I’m really looking for this goal!
