New season, new country, new job, new Scandinavian club, new challenges…

When some people are asking me what (the hell) I do in Finland, I think it could be a good idea to clarify my situation, before writing a little bit about the new (coming?/started?) orienteering season.

•  New situation:

As I’ve finished my engineering studies last year (just before the WOC), it was time to enter into the working life (the real one!). However, I’m still motivated to focus on orienteering as I’m sure there is still a lot to explore, and I’m persuaded (or I hope?) that I can still develop my potential and maybe try to reach great achievements. At least, I still enjoy the activity and to the commitment at training.

That how I’ve considered many different options and looking for several opportunities trying to get the best compromise between getting professional valuable experiences and having good conditions to develop as a sportman. My main idea was to find a part time job in suit with my education (civil engineering) flexible enough to train well and to take part on training-camps and competitions; without forgetting that we need a “livelihood” if we want to survive as an orienteer.

My final plan was to find a part time job as an engineer in Scandinavia where the orienteering culture is big and the clubs have usually good contacts with companies that understand the sport and the demand of elite runners. Furthermore, after 7 years training with the “Pôle France” of Saint-Etienne, it could be a good time to change the training environment to learn some new things and get new motivation. Finally, as I’m still considering orienteering as a Scandinavian sport with most of the happenings over there (and where I still have a lot to improve), the next natural step was logically to move north…

Turku

                => Turku (or Åbo if you prefer or for Swedish speaking) in Finland was my actual choice and destination with a flexible part-time job in Paimio and to train with Turku’s well organized and attractive structure.

Turun Sanomat article

After few months in Finland, I’m quite pleased with this situation: I can’t complain of the winter weather conditions that haven’t been so extreme; but the only problem for me here remains the language (“Terve, Mitä kuuluu” is not enough to have a real conversation…). However, I admit that It’s quite pleasant to be in a country where orienteering (“suunnistus”) is known and considered as a real sport by everybody (not like in France where nobody knows what is it…): For example, it’s quite fun when people, even non orienteer, tell that they saw you on the television, on the news-paper; or to realize that the work-mates followed the results of the last competitions when they congratulated me as the “best Finn” last Tuesday morning …

Qualitative training by M. Lindeqvist

Tough night training

• New Scandinavian club:

Tiomila 2011

Moving in Scandinavian somewhere else than Stigtomta include almost necessarily to change club: OK Hällen has been a perfect club for me at this period of my carrier where I could develop a lot by training in Sweden and when I got the possibilities to run decisive legs in big relays. That is for sure very educational and also great experiences as a person to run for the team! That why I would like to thank sincerely the club members for their really warm welcome and for all the great times spent together, I’m truly grateful for that! I will for sure remember the good team-performances like the SM relay 2012 podium, the Jukola 2013 and Tiomila 2010 top 10...., but also the times spent in Stigtomta area. I would have a special mention to the coach M. Karlsson who has always been extremely devoted and available for us with his particularly positive philosophy!

Anyway, now it's for sure very positive to get new great challenges to be in a new dynamic club: PaimionRasti is especially motivated to develop as a team with a good focus on the improvement of each of the runners. I can find here exceptionally good training conditions and it’s motivating to get new training partners. I’m really looking forward the next relay competitions when it will be exciting to compete with the guys we have been training with the whole winter.

• New season:

The seasons follow but don’t resemble each other!

When most of the winter training has been done in Finland thanks to snow free condition (watch-out the finish clubs at Tiomila this year! ;) ), I’ve still got the opportunity to go to Portugal in order to get some B-vitamins and to enjoy to run only with sleeveless short and without rubber-socks. The destination was Castelo de Vide where we could find really interesting maps and run the NAOM competitions.

NAOM

NAOM sprint (WRE) podium (PIC. A. Blanes)

Sprint training (Drôme)

After few sprints trainings (and test race) in sought of France, it was time to go to Turkey and even compete the first World-cup stage of the season: There, the runners had the great (and not so usual nowadays) benefit of running on unknown terrain not mapped; and we could really enjoy the arena along the beach surrounded by very old ruins (like an amphitheater) showing that some people were living much before us… About my performances: with 2 quite similar results, it has been quite different from the qualification to the final. In the 1^st case, most of controls went well but I forgot to read my map when passing close to the finish finding 2 extra controls before mind + I took one touristic route-choice which was far from the fastest… In the final race, I manage to find only few controls cleanly while I had some troubles on most of the others. Still some adjustments to be done…

World cup result: 14^th  / GPS route / All the other information herethanks to J. Kocbach / even with some analysis

The trip in Turkey was especially the opportunity to try the new Mixed-sprint-relay format during an “unofficial world-cup race”. In this occasion, with my promising team-mates (I. Basset, L. Basset, A. Chataing), we’ve got an instructive experience allowing us to learn some lessons to make some adjustments and to get ready for the 1^st World-championship of this new format this summer in Italy.

(All the info)

The next goal is the European champs in Portugal in April.

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…

French champs and military world champs: time to get some medals ;-)

Even if the end of the season is getting close, the two last weeks were still quite busy in competitions:

First it was the French championships (website here) in Dijon area (where the mustard is from) with quite specific terrains: pretty yellow and green but still rather interesting and challenging:

My performances over there were satisfying even If there were still some avoidable mistakes and that how I went 2nd in long distance behind P. Adamski and 3^rd in Middle distance behind P. Adamski and L. Basset. Furthermore, with young team-mates in relay (R. Devrieux, N. Rio), we still have done good performances but the competitors were better and we finished 4^th a little more than 1 minute to the podium. (Md Split-times results / Ld split-times results / Article from the club in French)

Relay

Middle distance

Long-distance map with Philou’s route (Almost the same route choices but it was too risky to take a GPS watch under driving rain!)

Furthermore, to have a more complete week, we also had a 5000m track and field test run for the French team and a sprint in a narrow streets typical village of Bourgogne. It has been good to see that the shape was still OK while running the 5K in 14’58 despite some wind but with a good cooperation with T. Poupard. And the self confidence in sprint was also back when I did a good performance.

Then, last week it was the World military orienteering Championships in Sweden (website here):

Even if it’s not the main goal of the season and the atmosphere is quite relax, the level on this competition is always really high when it’s 7 guys running per nation with strong teams as Switzerland, Russia… 

There in Eksjö, we were well welcomed with interesting competitions: The middle distance was in a rather fast forest whereas the long and relay terrain was in a wilder Scandinavian terrain so more demanding technically and physically.

I went there without huge ambitions but with the motivation to do clean orienteering to get good experiences. Therefore it went pretty well and I came 5^th at the middle distance, 3^rd in the long and we finished 4^th in the relay with F. Gonon and F. Vanier with three good performances that I can be pleased. (All the results)

(Pictures : Igor Daniel)

Now, it’s time to focus on next season and, of course, all the eyes are looking on the World Champs in Italy (website). That why, our next step is a training camp in Veneto region.

¡Vamos a los Juegos mundiales a Colombia!

 

 

             The World Games 2013 in Cali are over with a lot of memories in the head for this quite exotic experience!

First, let’s present what are the World Games: It’s a kind of ‘Olympic games’ for non-olympic sports and it’s held every 4 years. We can find there some various sports sometime strange and often unknown as orienteering, sumo, boules, tug of war, paragliding, kayak-polo, korfball, lifesaving, speed roller-skating… But also some ‘artistic sports’ such as dances or different kind of gymnastics, or little some more famous sport like rugby (7), squash, climbing…

If you like statistics: There were 26 official and five invitational sports, more than 3000 athletes and 1500 officials from 101 nations around the world. Only some 4500 volunteers and almost the same number of policemen were mobilized to take care of the events and the participants. Finally, during the 10 days of competitions, they registered more than 500 000 visitors. Finally, we can say that we were very well welcomed!

More information and sports presentations canbe found here

 The atmosphere during the events was enormous and amazing. It was really great to see other sports that we are not especially use to watch or that we didn’t even know before; enriching to meet other elite sportsmen with similar or different particularities on their sport practice; fun to experience the hot atmosphere of the Colombian enthusiastic supporters (especially if some Colombian athletes are in action). It was also very special to be like a real star as it was almost impossible to walk around without being photographed by Colombian fan! (Even if they had no idea who we were and which sport we practice, but maybe just because we represent a national team written on our short…)

But let’s talk about the orienteering competitions because don’t forget why we went there: 3 races were in the event program:

-      sprint: 11^th (+47’’)

The course was held in some building area and park of Cali and it was far from the trickiest course ever seen. The biggest challenge was physically to keep a fast speed in spite of the warm sun above the equator! I felt cooked and groggy from the very early controls of the race but I still tried to push hard and I still manage to take some bad route-choices (maybe to be sure that there were longer and to have some good GPS analysis… Or the Pythagorean Theorem has to be studied!)

     - Middle distance: 8^th (+2’02)

What was really interesting with this course and terrain was that we didn’t know what to expect before the race contrary to most of the main competitions nowadays, so it felt like real adventure or, at least, a feeling of the traditional orienteering. The heat didn’t decrease much from the previous day and it felt like another battle to push physically and we could also meet the rough thorny bamboo in the green forest which was nothing to compare to our nice bramble bushes present in European forest! I felt slow as a tractor the whole race but it was apparently the feeling of everybody under this heat and I also didn’t manage to avoid mistakes while falling asleep and loosing contact… What we should learn from this race is: never give-up (also technically!). With a horrible feeling and some avoidable mistakes, I finished some 24’’ from the second place. (But I got caught by the impressively strong M. Kyburz by 2’!) The French good performance of the day was done by L. Basset with his 5^th place only 8’’ from the 2^nd rank.

-      Mix-relay: 4^th

It was a 4-legs relay with 2 guys and 2 girls where I got the opportunity to run the 1^st leg. All of the French team runners have done an OK (average) performance but we all came with all the controls in the right order that was the main point and it has not been the case of some other good teams on these courses with a lot of controls and short forking. That how, we finished on the foot of the podium, not far from the 3^rd team, which was a fine result.

            Finally, the French delegation has gotten the 3^rd place of the medal ranking with 40 medals (16 gold) but unfortunately, we can’t say that we’ve really helped this result in orienteering…

All results, GPS tracking, TV replay: here

As the orienteering events were in the last part of the program of the World Games, we had the great chance to take part in the thrilling closing ceremony in the Pascual Guerrero Stadium. Over there, with more than 25 000 extremely enthusiastic spectators, we could see some salsa show (normal in the Capital of Salsa) and listen the singing big star Carlos Vives before to see impressive fireworks.

To conclude, with all these amazing experiences: it’s definitely worth the trip!

Here are some videos to get the feeling of the world games

Pictures: CNOSF/French Orienteering team runners/D. Hubman

WOC 2013: I didn’t find the flow!

     

The main goal of the season with the WorldOrienteering Champs is over with no success at all for me, let’s make a quick feedback:

     First and foremost, in order to prepare well this event, I spent some 3 and half months in Finland (in Turku) last summer-Autumn where I could improve my orienteering skill in Finland while getting a work-experience for my studies and learning a bit of the Finnish culture… The great time there was really fun, of course, but it was also encouraging to perform well when competing in Finland.

     On one hand, after last year WOC long distance with an okay but improvable performance (ranked 8^th), and knowing the fast runability of this year WOC long-distance terrain, I was motivated to train for this year long distance as well. On the other hand, WOC 2012 sprint was a huge disappointment (miss punch the spectators control whereas I had the 5^th fastest time), so I was also willing to take my revenge this year. However, with the tight program of this year WOC, it seemed impossible to run and perform well in both long and sprint: a choice had to be decided. With an up and down winter training, and with the good idea to make solid performances in sprint while missing in long distance in early spring, the choice to run the sprint was obvious. Furthermore, the relay team was planned to be decided during the WOC week and I knew I had some good chances thanks to fine previous experiences.

Sprint qualification: 9^th

     The qualification terrain was not as easy as it seems to be on the map because of a visibility limited by trees, hedges and a lot of spectators all around, and everything was looking the same so it was important to keep the contact all the time. The atmosphere was great especially for a qualification event! I was running quite safe despite few bad route-choices before to do a big mistake running along the wrong houses in an incorrect direction. This fault was an important warning signal to refocus and it added some challenges to qualify, but it had no consequence and I mad it to the final finishing in the 9^th spot of my qualification heat rather far behind a fast Danish guy (R. Thrane Hansen).

(Results / GPS )

Sprint final:  43^rd

     With the start-finish arena in Sotkamo stadium full of noisy spectators, it was a quite impressive atmosphere: perfect feeling for a WOC sprint final! The legs felt in top notch form and ready to push hard therefore I was extremely eager to start this race. However, it didn’t start as well as I would like with several troubles right in the beginning (like misunderstanding in which side of the fence is the 1^st control, the route choice to the 2^nd…), but it went even worse when I added on extra loop on the course (Was it maybe too short??)! Actually, I lost contact on the way to the 6^th control (reading the map of the rest of the course) and when I got back on track, I thought I was going to the 7^th. Then, I realized my mistake at the 8^th control when I wondered where to go (it looked like it was 2 times the 9^th control but I finally understood that one was the 6^th control and I had not been there yet…). Of course, it was no chance to do a correct performance from there and it was complicated to focus on something else than this mistake during the rest of the course where I managed to take almost all the bad route-choices. Finally, I finished the race with one of the longest time far behind the very happy home-winner (M. Boström). It’s again a huge disappointment in sprint in important competition after several other crashes (miss punch…) the last few years.

(Replay TV (Swedish TV), GPS tracking, Results, Splittimes for both qualif and final)

(Article French federation)

Relay: 8^th

     In a team with P. Adamski and T. Guergiou, I was, of course, extremely happy to run the 1^st leg of the relay and I felt ready for this mission because of confidence from former experiences. Indeed, contrary to the sprint, my statistics in 1^st leg relay in competition was really good after last 2 European champs (2012 Sweden, 2010 Bulgaria), Swedish champs 2012, Military World champs 2010, and some other good performances in mass/chasing start… With teammate really well prepared to orienteer in this terrain, everything sounded good for a good performance. But I screw it up!

The relay is an elimination race: every team start in the same line and use to run in a front group until some team miss and are eliminated. For us, it already happened on my way to the 2^nd control. Over there, I was still confident few tens of meters before the control where I wasn’t accurate enough with the map and the compass, influenced by other teams. I missed the control and I had big difficulties to relocate putting suddenly the stress level high enough to inhibit to stay calm and to make proper orienteering. Then, taking the left route choice to go to the 4^th, I had some extra time lost going down as fast as possible to the track but going in the wrong direction…

Finally, with an okay last part of the race, I launched our 2^nd leg runner in 15^th position with some 4’20 delay to the leader which was far too much to expect a correct result at the end and it’s again a huge disappointment (especially for the team)!

(TV replay, GPS tracking (all legs), results, Spit times)

(Article French federation)

    

     To conclude, my performances have been really poor during this WOC and I can be quite frustrated for that. However, when we do elite-sport, we know that it’s hard to succeed as well as we would like all the time. But when performances are far from expected, it may have some essential questions to be answered… Anyway, this major event was again a great experience for every participant; and hopefully, it will be other occasions to do a better job: Next chance in 2 weeks with the World Games in Colombia:

Pictures by: World of o and WOC 2013 photographers team (Aapo Laiho, Juhana Pakkasmaa and Kimmo Rauatmaa)