European Orienteering Championships - A Few Big Hills

Team Canada arrived (mostly) in the Czech Republic last Thursday to get in a little bit of preparation before the first races on Sunday. I say mostly because there was only two of us that were expected to arrive, and one of us most definitely did not. For several days. In short, Emily got stuck in an airport.

With that crisis eventually averted (though narrowly re-crisis’d when we discovered that the hotel locks us in and I was unable to open the door for her at 2:30 in the morning) we managed to get out to a model map for the long the day before the sprint. If you haven’t run in the Czech Republic before, find your nearest hill, run up it many, many times. And maybe jump through a little bit of stinging nettle every now and then. That is a Czech orienteering simulation. 

The forest is actually really lovely. Tall trees and basically no low branches means the white forest is wide open, super runnable, and the visibility is miles and miles, except for that giant hill in the way. Occasionally there are also cool and fun rock/cliff features, though this terrain didn’t have as many as further west and north in places like Novy Bor (see “Czech out those rocks!”)

Alas, this is not our hotel. But it was the sprint final area.

The first race up was the sprint, which I (Will) was the only Canadian running. I was aware that my fitness was not where I wanted it to be, and I seemed to have also picked up a bit of a cold after pulling an all-nighter at Tiomila the weekend before (lesson learned). So, for me, the sprint qualification and subsequent B-final were just opportunities to create good habits and to work on running with relaxed form. The sprint final was a particularly fun race, held on a hillside spa, which meant big hills, many stair cases, a few switchback roads, and ambiguously mapped flower gardens & shrubs!

The fun thing about sprints on maps like these, though, is the difficulty in finding effective route choices when legs go straight up or down the hill or when the legs go across the hill. The ability to plan as much as possible with brief amounts of downtime becomes super important, since you need to be able to both choose a route quickly, but also choose the correct route! I… did not.  Unless the best route included stinging nettles. With short shorts.

At this point, I was tied for 1st place! (photo by Petr Kadeřávek)

In the long distance qualification, we were met with the added challenge of having very hot weather, hovering around 25 degrees. Perfect weather for standing around and watching runners suffering in the heat.  Personally I did not have a strong heat, as I was still feeling the cold and by 2/3rds through the race, I hit a new level of tired that transcended just "race tired" and more into “I’d just like to lay down for a while”.

Fortunately, Emily was more than capable to pick up the torch that I apparently forgot in quarantine and run a strong qualifier, progressing into the A-final. In the long final, thanks to her qualification position, Emily had the opportunity to be starting in the midst of the top runners in the field. By the end of the long A-final, with many racers slowly dropping off the pace, she ended up a remarkably strong 7^th place. I asked her to provide her own report on how the race went:

I was feeling calm as a cucumber before the race. I knew that I knew what to do (and that rhymes, too! – ed.), so it was simply a matter of going out there and executing.

When I first picked up the map I saw that the first few controls were quite short, which was good, but it also meant I didn’t have as much time to plan the route to four, which was a very long leg. Route choice is essential in this terrain because a wrong route choice could mean climbing way more than is necessary. So, to be safe, I made sure I left the control quite slowly to plan my entire route, which was a worthwhile “investment” of my time. There were quite a few big trail running sections as well, so I used that time to plan the rest of the course.

Emily melting faces. And just plain melting. It was hot.

Physically, it was difficult because of the nature of the terrain. It was quite rare to be doing anything other than going steeply down or steeply up. So it either felt like you were going “too slow” or “too fast”.  But, in spite of that, I was feeling pretty good. At around 2/3 through the race I took a gel, but I didn’t really feel like I needed it (even though in retrospect, I’m glad I did).

A quick look at the results showed that a lot of runners were really falling off the pace in the last 15 minutes of the race. Although physically I felt good, I could tell that my concentration wasn’t as high because I wasn’t executing my plans the way that I should have, and I was more trying to “fix” them as I was finding myself in the wrong spot. But it just turned out that I could be flexible with my route and still get to the control with minor time loss.

I’m quite happy with this result, but there are still things I need to work on to get me to the level I want to be!

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Next up for Team Canada is the Middle distance, which goes down tomorrow (Thursday, May 26). The starts are in the afternoon, and Emily will be wearing a GPS, so you can watch her dot at http://www.eoc2016.cz/en/ . You can simulate Will's dot by taking a lazer pointer and shining it against a wall in a random pattern.