From the 2nd till 9th of February, the Catalan junior team and some members of Kalevan Rasti (Thierry Gueorgiou, Antti Harju, Tommi Tolkko a/o) headed out to Le Caylar and Clermont-Ferrand in France for a training camp.
We did not see Thierry Gueorgiou a lot because he made his own training, but it was inspiring to be close to him. The first 5 days we started our training camp in Le Caylar. A typical Mediterranean terrain, but very specific in France. It is rocky and most parts are not very hilly. There are so many labyrinths of stones that map reading is very difficult even when the mapscale is 1:7.500. Most areas are open, which allows you to see features (hills, trees…) about 300m away.
Some of the most interesting trainings:
- 3rd February in Le Caylar: in the morning we made a very interesting training, in spite of the temperature (-2º Celcius) and the snow. The training was in a rocky and stony terrain but very flat and with low visibility, so, technically difficult and very fast.
- 3rd February in Potensac: in the evening, we ran a long night train. 8,4 km with long route choices and short controls in a tricky zone. The raining and the hard wind made the training even more difficult.
- 5th February in St. Eulalie de Cernon: we did a 2 hour training. We had to go up the mountain in 2,5 km with 300 m of climbing without orienteering. Then we had to run downhill 5 km. When we finished this first training we went uphill another time to run the downhill-o again.
- We also ran some sprints in the most technical parts of the maps, one of them in Le Couvertoirade. The map scale was 1:3500. The distance was 2,6 km with 21 controls, but the difficulties of the circuit and the speed made our winning time 25 minutes. It was incredibly fun to read all the stones!
Clermont-Ferrand was our next stop. Some people say one of the most difficult maps in the world. We had to change the way how to read the map completely. The terrain was the same as in the World Cup in France 2006. Thierry Gueorgiou is maybe one of the few people who know how to run there, winning the tree disciplines (long, middle and sprint) in the World Cup 2006. Lots of little depressions and little hills: low visibility and too many details to read. We walked and, in some part jogged a little due to the difficulties to move.
We did two interesting trainings:
- First we ran the World Cup Middle Final men, a course of 4 km. It was difficult not to loose any minute of mistake even if you walked. The best time was for Tommi Tolkko 37 minutes, and the best Catalan Biel Ràfols completed the race in 45 minutes. The time of Gueorgiou, back in 2006 during th World Cup final, was 28.29!
- Next day we trained on the south part of the area with an orographic version of the map. I think that was the most difficult training in all the week. The course was about 5 km but you had to know all the time exactly where you were, so that made the race very slow.
It was definitely a great training camp, where we suppose that everybody has improved their o-technique.
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