A quick recap

I’ve just recently finished (Well I started writing this a couple of weeks ago) a hectic 3 weeks of orienteering training. Starting off with a 2 day race weekend in Northern Denmark and from there on to Hungary, where I managed to get in 4 trainings and a race in the JWOC 2018 terrain, before finishing it off with 3 races (middle, relay, long) over the weekend.

Some quick geography before I begin

My first races in Denmark, the Nordjysk 2-dages. We arrived to Tversted, the town near the races, on the Friday so we could run a night-o training before the races. This was an Elite Center trip, so we would all be sleeping in a few nice cabins, and also getting some coaching in the evenings. I should explain the Elite Center is the program all the Danish national team members are part of, along with some foreign athletes and other Danes with ambitions of competing for Denmark. However the coaching did not happen as all the coaches ended up being or getting sick so we were left to our devices.

I did enjoy this coastal terrain for the most part, being quite fast, flat with lots of small contour details, open forest portions, however any green was best to be avoided.

The middle map, the long took place on the same map

I was happy with the long, being my first race in Denmark. It wasn’t perfect and I made one major mistake, but I was happy with my speed and execution of lots of the legs. The middle didn’t go quite as well, as I never settled after a mistake early on, and was sloppy throughout the rest of course, never in the right head space. Overall, some confidence gained  from parts of the long, but still left plenty to improve on over the course of the season. Then I had a day visiting my grand parents just south of Copenhagen before I flew out to Hungary.

I flew into Hungary on the Tuesday morning, where I would meet a couple Irish friends in Budapest. Eventfully, I managed to get on the wrong bus leaving the airport, so instead of ending up in central Budapest I was kicked out at the end of the bus route at a mall in what I believed to be some run down Hungarian suburbs. The blue dot being myself and the red marker being where I needed to get to. Luckily, after a quick phone call to figure where exactly I was suppose to meet them, I found my way onto a subway and eventually in downtown Budapest.

We then had a few hours in Budapest to walk around before we needed to catch the train to the bustling metropolitan area of Kiskunalas. So onward we went in the general direction of the train station, looked for a bathroom, left when we realized we had to pay, hit the (cheap) grocery stores, looked for an atm that only looked moderately sketchy, and then finally tried navigate the Hungarian ticket machine. Once on board we had the pleasure to finally relieve ourselves, we did realize after the fact that these bathrooms aren’t suppose to be used in stations…

I should also mention it was actually warm, even if all the Hungarians seem to be wearing jackets in the few pictures I have. A good indication we weren’t going to the touristy part of Hungary, was the entire train consisted of elderly Hungarians, one Irish American Hungarian who went to University in Dublin and once had Ruari’s dad as a prof, and ourselves. The train ride though was 3 hours of puttering through flat, open nothingness, a train stop in the middle of the road, and the occasional dilapidated ex-soviet military base.

I felt like a picture of Budapest was needed so I took one of the few

Another side of Budapest or literally right underneath it

Hungarian innovation at its best

Train stations are simpler this way

Once in Kiskunalas, it was 2km walk to the hostel, however we were unaware of the trouble that google maps accuracy would present us in this fine town. Eventually after puzzledly wandering around a few blocks, we opted to enter a school. Here we encountered ….and to the confusion of numerous employees this was to be where we would be staying. The building was quite nice though as you can see, and all was good apart from the kitchen utilities consisting of one small pot, 2 plastic spoons, a steak knife, and a single bowl. Of course there were more dumb Hungarian toilets to be found. I shall restate the place actually was good, a bit odd having children constantly swinging outside our window, but good despite my complaining. Same goes with Hungary, I did enjoy the slight run downness to everything (except Budapest, they make every perfect there), that bit of consistent rust on their stupidly large telephone poles and every fence, and of course there 2l plastic bottles of beer.

A view of the accommodation from the kitchen window …that really just made it here because I found it entertaining my phone couldn’t handle foreground/background

The totiet here was of course more than just a hole but I felt there were 2 stupid principles at the core of its design. First of all, to flush the toilet one would twist the nozzle to let out a continued stream of water until you tighten the nozzle again. Which works until you consider 10 year old boys go to this school. More importantly though, the back portion of the toilet bowl bottom was this gentle incline sloping down to the water (see below for diagram) so when you let loose, it just stuck to where it fell. When you flushed it just left a nasty trail.

My mug for the week

Putting the city of Aarhus’s documents to good use

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then the serious business began. The first training was an O-terval training where one partner would run a course while the other jogged over to the next exchange waiting to be tagged off. Unfortunately our car was a bit late so we didn’t start in the mass start. In all fairness to the driver he was going 100km/h on a pothole filled country road, so can’t ask much more. We ended up skipping the first interval (out of 8) as it had been picked up, but was running I spend up throughout the intervals as I got more use to the terrain. The afternoon training was this lovely map below. Normally a good training, however when the purpose of the camp is to understand the terrain it becomes a bit questionable. Now the yellow and contour section may seem quite inviting, but the green quite similar to around 3 occupied the majority of those two areas. Some legs went well on this one and others less so.

If you want to see what the map really looks like .

Next up, the Spring cup, a middle distance on the map adjacent to the JWOC middle. Never having run in this “unique” terrain before, it went quite terribly. I believe I ended up doubling the winners time, impressively only 10th last. After that we did a line-o, the first third or so was in the tricky maze-like terrain, but the rest got significantly easier as it left that portion and started incorporating to many trails in. Needless to say, I still have some work to do in this terrain.

Can get a bigger image if click on the two below.

 

 

 

Then on Friday was the sprint. Kindly, the rain from the end of yesterday had stayed and it was now around 7 or 8 degrees. Not bringing o-shoes to the sprint was needless to say a bad choice. After the day before, I was happy to get on a map I could actually run, feel like I was actually doing a work, and I must add actually understand the map. Having originally not signed up for the sprint Ruari, Conall and I got to start right before the actual start block. Overall, I was happy with my race, a bit sloppy at times with a couple 10s mistakes, though I never felt like I hit full speed.

Saturday, it got even better, just over zero and a constant rain from about half an hour after we arrived at the arena. Today was a middle, followed by a relay in long/relay relevant terrain, so far more pleasant to run through than the previous forest. I was happy with my middle distance, I ran hard only getting a bit sloppy towards the end as I lost some focus. Then for the relay, I ended up joining an ex-colonies relay team consisting of the GB coach, Mark Nixon, on first leg, me on second, and Conall on third. Mark came back in 4th place, about 2 minutes behind the leader, and I was on my way. By my usual relay standards it went quite well, no big mistakes, however just sloppy throughout losing 10-15s at every control. I’m confident though, as I run more races and mentally become accustomed to these situations this will disappear. I did manage to stay in 4th though, passed by a Fin, but managed to catch a Hungarian.

On the bright side, it was no longer raining today, just snowing. Overall, far different conditions to the 40 degrees we’ll be running the JWOC long in. I ran a clean run today, apart from 2 minute mistake, on a short easy control as I started to get tired. That being said I was a bit disappointed in my result as I was physically missing something, and just couldn’t run fast enough.

That ends a good week in Hungary, where I feel I like I’ve gotten a good idea of the terrain and gained some confidence in my results. At the bottom I also have a link to my Doma account, where the maps of  the races in Hungary can be found and results.

A 800 forint (or 4 Canadian dollar) burger…a little more carbonation could be used in the coke though

Then I was off to the airport, where I had a more expensive burger than the one pictured above.

We will conclude Hungary with this orgasmically open Hungarian forest

Upon arriving in Denmark, I meant Jan in the Copenhagen airport. From there we headed to Aarhus where we managed to get on 3 maps over the 4 days he was here, and then he was off to Hungary and myself to the Danish Spring. I unfortunately have no pictures from this so you’ll have to take my word. More specifically, we did an easy sprint training, then a sprint-ervals course, and closed it off with a control picking training in the nearby forest. We both had some more intense days ahead of us so we were keeping the training light these few days.

The Danish Spring was in Roskilde or more specifically in the surrounding area so it was flat, fast Sjaelland terrain. That being said it actually was quite hilly for Sjaelland, just being this area of Denmark nothing overly steep. The first race, the sprint, went quite poorly as I managed to set the first first 6 controls alight with several minutes of mistakes. After that I managed to settle down a bit but still room for improvement. The middle went better, I wasn’t running fast enough, but there were no big mistakes, just some sloppy controls and hesitations. Then the long again I had a poor start but I was happy with my run after that arena passage where I feel I picked the intensity up and started to orienteer more smoothly. I was a bit disappointed with the results, but I can at least take away the knowledge in the forest I was placing around the weaker Danish national team members. Then back to Aarhus for a few days.

After the Danish spring I originally planned on relaxing for a few days before I went out to the Påskeløb (Easter race) on the island of fanø, but I learned that the Danish national team and some Norwegians were having a training camp so I joined them to run a interval/relay training, more of a hill training then interval, and then an easier paced training. That was in Silkeborg so very relevant to JWOC 2019 that will be there. I really enjoyed this training. The first map (on the left) went poorly, some mistakes in the beginning and then I physically hit a wall around the 6th control. On the bright side, even if I couldn’t run, technically from there on it went smoothly. After the 5 minutes rest, I opted to start out more conservatively running speed wise, to avoid the first intervals outcome. The second one went far better technically even if I was still missing something running up the hills. Luckily, JWOC this year is flat so I don’t have to worry about that yet.

 

 

Then the Paskeløb on Fanø, which is an island off southern west coast of Jutland. About a 10 minute ferry (at most 2 kilometers) across shallow water from Esbjerg. It was very shallow as you could almost walk to the island, at one point we were sailing past a sand bar 20m from the boat. Then, to give some distance to the map at the very top Esbjerg was about 2h away from Aarhus, and if you assume we were going 100km an hour, we will say 200km between the 2 cities.

The first day, the races were across this technical but physically tough beach. I’m struggling to describe this terrain so I’ll just post a picture.

 

 

Other then the (knee deep) marsh crossings in the snow, I really enjoyed it. There was some learning to be done throughout, in my numerous route choice errors and also distinguishing the physical ground from the incredibly physical to run through. Also thanks to the 1 minute start intervals of this long distance, there were some trains forming, so 3 of us essentially ran half the race together. I can also take some satisfaction in that after making several dumb mistakes, I could consistently catch back up to the others.

Some nice spring snow

Unfortunately, the next 2 days weren’t quite as enjoyable. The next day was the middle, through some thick forest you really had to pick your way through. The white was amazing but few sections of it. Despite spending a minute at the start properly tying my shoe, I mentally recovered from that and had a good first 6 controls. Then, I made a 3 minute mistake on a 30s control, reading the wrong control description, and this time I could not recover from that.

The last day was particularly brutal. You were either crawling under branches, pushing through them, or wading through marshes. It was similar forest to the day before just where yesterday I felt I could pick my way through the green, this was not the case today. I managed to put together a couple good legs, but for the most part I wasn’t mentally there. In the middle portion of the course, it had gotten to the point where I had just stopped enjoying the orienteering, and was no longer racing. I did manage to bring the intensity and focus back towards the end as I entered into the first days terrain for a few legs.

….Despite butchering the last 2 days, I managed to still somehow hang onto 3rd (in part thanks to a few others mispunching) allowing me to take home a fine Fanø beer, that is very well likely wasted on my tastes. Though I can say after the two final days, I have learned the importance of staying calm in this thick terrain and not giving into the desire to push hard through it, but staying collected and smoothly flowing through the terrain, ducking under and weaving around the branches.

Also all my maps can be found here:

to the maps

Thank you for the read