Fredo Tranchand: Still following the sun!

For every orienteers athletes, winter means training period when we build all our preparation for the next season. That why, it often means several trips to find new challenging terrains and interesting maps, that is essential to improve our skill. It’s also a perfect way to visit fantastic places following the sun (where we would never put a single toe without orienteering reason) and meet great people.

In this article, some experiences are quickly presented:

First and foremost, the shape seemed quite good already in the beginning of the winter and I’ve tried to struggle with some African runners in cross running competitions:

(Results)

Furthermore, we had several weekend training-camps with the French team on different interesting terrain through France (mainly in the south part to follow the sun!) the whole winter (around 2 per month).

The first one was in the technical rocky forest of the WOC 2011 area close to La Feclaz. There, most can remember that it was really hard not to get lost during the corridor or the night training

The next one was in the tricky typical ‘cheires’ of Auvergne where we could also try to stay in the corridor

Then, we moved in the Fontainebleau’s famous forest south of Paris where we could navigate in between the big builders, also great spots for the climbers

We’ve even got the ‘chance’ to run in some 20 cm of fresh snow in the French Riviera (where people are not especially used to go to find snow), and a KO-sprint training. (This film-maker quality video made by OBT summaries well the situations)

The last but not least weekend-training camp of the winter was a specific sprints camp. (Here, you can find maps and even head-cam videos made by professional on the JOGgreat website)

In between these camps, some other orienteering sessions were planned with the Pôle France of Saint-Etienne, like this typical one: 3 downhill loops mainly by night:

Moreover, another part of the orienteering as been done abroad (in south Europe to follow the sun, of course):

Some weeks in Portugal with some really good challenging competitions and interesting trainings

- The NAOM races
(Here is the 1st stage 2Drerun)

(Map & Results on the NAOM website)

- The POM
(Maps / Results : I couldn't run the last stage due to ankle injury the day before)

- Some exceptional tough trainings made by Philippe Adamski

MOC in Italy - "Follow the sun"

Some sprint training in rather atypical Italian villages:

MOC competitions with some forest and spectacular sprint courses

All the news on the MOC-Facebook page

To see how was the sprint in Matera, just click here to watch the video, and listen to the music!

"It's amazing over zere!"

On the other hand, the winter training-period has been quite difficult to handle for me with a lot of injuries that disturb a lot my plans. With some hematomas, heel inflammation, twisted ankle, twisted ankle again, and I’ve lately got the stupid idea to fall down with all my weight from a bench on my tibia while doing strength training(so I’ve got a kind of painful 3^rd knee in the middle of the shin!). But I don’t ‘cry over spilt milk’ because it could be worth, I could train quite much anyway. Just the quality has been affected as I’ve done around 50% of alternative training (Bike, XC ski) this winter instead of 20% basically.

To conclude, I can say that there is ‘no flies on me’ with some work at school in between the trainings and I have even started to look for a job for next year as I’m finishing my studies this year (if somebody is looking for a civil engineer, don’t hesitate to tell)

Now, it's always time to improve and to learn about all these experiences (some mistakes has still to be analysed...) to get ready for the approaching season. As the sun is finally going to Scandinavia after the winter, north is going to be the normal direction to follow the sun!