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lundi 28 octobre 2013

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: 15th
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!

- Sprint: 13th
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 1st control (right by the stairs), the 12th (left tunnel), and the 14th (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°21st 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.


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.

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…

mardi 3 septembre 2013

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 3rd 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 4th 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 5th at the middle distance, 3rd in the long and we finished 4th 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.

vendredi 9 août 2013

¡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!

 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: 11th (+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: 8th (+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 5th place only 8’’ from the 2nd rank.


-      Mix-relay: 4th
It was a 4-legs relay with 2 guys and 2 girls where I got the opportunity to run the 1st 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 3rd team, which was a fine result.

            Finally, the French delegation has gotten the 3rd 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…


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!



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

mercredi 17 juillet 2013

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 8th), 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 5th 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: 9th
     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 9th spot of my qualification heat rather far behind a fast Danish guy (R. Thrane Hansen).
(Results / GPS )

Sprint final:  43rd
     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 1st control, the route choice to the 2nd…), 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 6th control (reading the map of the rest of the course) and when I got back on track, I thought I was going to the 7th. Then, I realized my mistake at the 8th control when I wondered where to go (it looked like it was 2 times the 9th control but I finally understood that one was the 6th 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.



Relay: 8th
     In a team with P. Adamski and T. Guergiou, I was, of course, extremely happy to run the 1st 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 1st 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 2nd 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 4th, 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 2nd leg runner in 15th 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)!





    

     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)

dimanche 30 juin 2013

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 52nd 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…
(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 1st 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: 9th (+36’’)
OK performance on this interesting course but some wrong route-choices cost me some tense of seconds (20’’ to the 7th and some others on the last part)

·         Middle in Oslo: 16th (+2min)
I missed a lot already the 3rd 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 5th place for his 1st time in Norway.

·         KO Sprint in Sigtuna [Sweden]: 11th (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 (21st/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. (4th +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 1st 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: 19th (overall NORT)
Starting 10th, not that far from the 3rd position, I still had a good chasing start position on this interesting course. However, with 3 minutes lost looking for the 1st 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 4th 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 10th 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.