Ready to rumble!?

     One week before the orienteering highlight of the year (the World Orienteering Champs inFinland), let’s do a short statement of the beginning of the season: It seems that my performances have been doing up and down like a rollercoaster during this especially dense period.

Middle selection race in Tibro

As usually, the real season started in Sweden in April: The Silva-leagues competitions in Tibro in the very end of April were selection races for the French team. There, my performances haven’t been very satisfying as I made several big mistakes while having trouble to keep the right direction and searching the controls in the wrong area. Fortunately, I could still show few good result on sprint test races to get selected for the main goals of the year.

 

2-men relay to train for Tiomila

 One week later, the famous Tiomila-relay was hold close to Stockholm where I run the last leg for my Swedih club OK Hällen. However, the team performance hasn’t been as good as expected and my race was quite catastrophic…

After Tiomila, I’ve got the excellent idea to take the ferry boat back to Turku for a good training week in Finland with few interesting competitions. That how I’ve got the opportunity to run the 2 last stages of the ‘Huippuliiga’ (Finnish Elite league of 4 races with the last stage as a chasing start with time-differences decided with the points from the 3 first stages). The second last stage was a middle distance where I did a huge strange crash spoiling all chances to make an ok performance to get any points. 

That why, with no-point in Huippuliiga, I was the 52^nd and very last starter of the chase and starting some 3 minutes and twenty second behind the current leader of the league. This race was quite special with some 50 guys running in the forest within 3 minutes and the first part was a lot about running. Then, from the butterfly, I’ve got the opportunity to orienteer a bit on this legendary tricky map of WOC 2001 in Tampere. 

Huippuliiga chasing start

The orienteering technique was not perfectly clean for me but it was always someone to correct the trajectory until we caught the leading group who missed a control (I was not sure that it was the leaders but it was a good sign to see little digit in there number-bibs). On the last part, I decided to take my chance and I pushed hard from the spectator control to the end and I’ve finally got the victory of this year overall ‘Huippuliiga’ by winning this race. 

This extremely tight and crowded race and my unexpected victory have produced some discussion in Finland and abroad as you can see on T. Djablaja blog. It was a fun experience for me and it seems that “I’ve got my money’s worth” going to Finland after Tiomila but I agree that it's not haw we see orienteering…

(cool TVreplay / GPS / Results)

(Articles from: world of O, Hevoskuuri)

In May, we went one week in Vuokatti for a training camp with the French team in the WOC terrain for really interesting trainings under a great warm and sunny weather.

 Maybe not the most relevant trainings but interesting ones

     The beginning of June, with the NORT and its 5 world cup events through Scandinavia, meant the 1^st very important goal of the season (Especially as the French team didn’t compete the World cup races in New-Zealand in January). For these events, I was of course extremely motivated. Unfortunately I didn’t come there on my best shape ever as I was a bit sick, but it wasn’t all about physic: (Here are all the results, maps with GPS tracking and TV-live...)

·         Sprint in Oslo: 9^th (+36’’)

OK performance on this interesting course but some wrong route-choices cost me some tense of seconds (20’’ to the 7^th and some others on the last part)

·         Middle in Oslo: 16^th (+2min)

I missed a lot already the 3^rd control in a slope losing more than 1’30. Then, it was some fast part mostly together with A. Kyburz. It seems that I still need some experience in this terrain whereas our teammate L. Basset took the 5^th place for his 1^st time in Norway.

·         KO Sprint in Sigtuna [Sweden]: 11^th (n°4 in Semi-final)

As it could be the last Knock-Out sprint ever, it could have been fun to make a good performance over there!

With some stupid mistakes due to bad concentration and passage missed, the qualification to the semi-final was tight for me (21^st/24) but possible thanks to fine parts.

During the semi-final, after an okay part in forest I didn’t manage to make the fastest route-choice in the city part and I missed some power to be among the top 2 of my hit and get a ticket for the final.

·         Sprint in Turku [Finland]: disq!

As I have been living in Turku for more than 3 months last autumn, I was particularly eager to compete there and motivated to make good performances.

The sprint qualification, with its different terrain characteristics (from student residence to forested park), went rather well for me. (4^th +16’’) 

The final didn’t come that well at all: I took some longer route-choices and I had sometime difficulties to read the map to see the passages getting lock with no solution… But the worse thing was to get disqualified because of passing just on the wrong side of a plot showing the passage of a forbidden street (that I haven’t even seen when running)! (Read the article of Tue Lassen for more explication.) It was especially disappointing for me as it’s far from the 1^st time I get disqualified or miss punched on important competitions and it seems that I can’t find the solution…

Tough star!

·         NORT Chasing start in Turku: 19^th (overall NORT)

Starting 10^th, not that far from the 3^rd position, I still had a good chasing start position on this interesting course. However, with 3 minutes lost looking for the 1^st control, my chance to get a good result decreased a lot. Then, I run quite often with groups with no extra power to speed up. It was really not a good day for the French team as my teammate also had some troubles in Forest…

One week later, I went back to Finland for the 4^th time in 1,5 month to run the amazing Jukola with OK Hällen. This event was an important goal for the club. We were focus on it from last year and very motivated to make a good result (as we had never really performed over there). All the team has done a great job and launched me on the last leg on a excellent starting position. Then, despite a poor start, I run with a growing group a big part of the course before fighting hard the last part with K. Nikolov (KR2) and passing some other teams. Finally, we happily finished 10^th witch was a great team performance and the best result of the club ever. (GPS tracking of the last leg)

 

Jukola team

Now, taking the experiences of the best and learning from mistakes, it’s time to make a precise last preparation to get in “top notch form” and do as good as possible in Finland.

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!

In addition, here are 2 articles published in the beginning of the winter:

- From a Finnish Magazine from the school I've worked for in Turku last autumn (p12):



 - From a trail-runners web-site (in French)

Finnish time

After a quite busy season, what about staying 3.5 months in Finland to train even more?

As I had to validate 14 weeks of working experience for my civil engineering studies (INSA), I was thinking that it could be a great experience to do it in Finland and use this occasion to improve my technique in Scandinavian terrain and especially get ready for next year world champs. (WOC 2013). That how I’ve been in Turku from the end of July (just after the WOC) until now.

There, I have been really well welcome: I could find some very good training opportunities and nice training company. Furthermore, as I can say that the work was not extremely demanding, it was like perfect conditions to lives there and train.

As the main goal was to improve my orienteering skill in the Finnish terrains, I’ve done quite many trainings on different interesting maps around:

After the end of the international O season with the NORT, it was also time for some interesting competitions around Turku:

And some other competitions some hours away of Ferry-boat to cross the Baltic Sea:

- The Swedish Middle champs where I didn’t get the final and the Swedish relay champs where we’ve got the Bronze medal with OK Hällen team-mates:

- The famous 25manna:

Moreover, it was also time to establish some ‘world records’ on some running spot of Turku’s orienteers to give references ;) And I’ve also presented how I train and we could see D. Hubmann training presentation. It could give some new ideas of training especially in Finland where the training culture is a bit different.

But it was also fun to do some Finnish activities:

              Happy ending?

Now, as I’m a bit afraid of the Finnish winter time, it’s about time to come back home in France where a new year at school is ‘waiting’ for me (must be the last one!). But before to leave, I was running my last orienteering competition of the year: Raatojuoksu a long distance with a mass start where I manage to cross the line in 1^st position… But the satisfaction was just for a short while until we realize that I was PM because I took the wrong map (n°26 instead of 29) so it was done before to start. (Anyway, would it be challenging to bring the chainsaw 1^st price to France?). Finally, it looks like I have still to improve and I may come back in Finland next year to show better performances…

 GPS

Train enough?

By the way, the end of October means the end of the training diary for most of the orienteers. It’s time to count the amount of training of the year: for me, it’s 575 hours. It looks like no big changes from the previous years, but I think to improve every year the quality and I have done quite a lot of orienteering (40%) with several training camps and competitions:

Kiitos paljon Suomi ja Hyvää jatkoa!