Selectionrace Longdistance - Trainingcamp Slovenia
Sonntag, 24. Mai 2009 um 17:51 Uhr
This weekend the Austrian team was in Slovenia for a WOC preparation camp and also for a selectionrace for WOC in Hungary.
On Thursday we started with a modelevent and on Friday the selectionrace on the longdistance was on our schedule.
The terrain was technically very demanding with numerous depressions. Although the runability was very good we couldn't meet the expected winning time.
The fastest time for the 12.8 km with 500 m of climbing and 25 controls was 100:17 min. I had some mistakes and made it in 103:38.
The race was devided into two parts with a mapexchange in between. The first part was 4.2 km and the second one 8.6. I had some problems finding the right speed on the first part and made some mistakes.
My biggest mistake was to the 2nd control of part 2. At the end of the leg I lost my direction and then already was outside the map. Just a few seconds befor I met Martin Binder (Bindi) who started 4 min behind me, but then spent about 1:30 to 2:00 min trying to find my position on the map.
Somehow this mistake motivated me and I increased my running speed a bit trying to catch Bindi again. The next two controls this tactic worked pretty well but then I had a small mistake to the 5th control. Nevertheless when I approached to control 5 I saw Martin and Tobias Killman (started 8min earlier) leaving it.
On the uphillpart to number 6 I managed to catch up with them and then, because uphill running is one of my strenghts, overtook them. Then came the long downhill part, and it seemed to be Bindis strenght. Bindi was running much faster than I could and I had to let him go. The next part of the course I didnt see him until the next long uphillpart to control 11. At number 12 we already punched together and took the same routes to the next 2 controls.
Then to control 15 we took different route choices but at the control the situation was unchanged and we punched together.
The next controls I tried to increase my speed in order to win our head to head duel. I didn't find every control at once but I could manage to take the lead and make a little gap. In the finish the gap to Bindi was 29 seconds. He had the fastest overall time but at least I have won the race to the finishline.
The longdistance was real fun to run, the course was well planned and finding the fastest route was always challenging.
Map Longdistance part 1
Map Longdistance part 2
Results Longdistance
In the afternoon of the longdistance race we relaxed a bit and then made a rafting tour on the river next to our accomodation. Maybe it was not the best way of regeneration because I still feel the muscles on my arms, shoulder and neck from paddling but jumping over some 1 to 2m waterfalls was really exciting and worth the pain.
Pictures Training Camp
Saturday we used to improve our o-skills running on technically very demanding terrain with lot of rocks, stones and depressions and in the afternoon we made a very unique o-training.
We didn't get a map with a whole course on it but some kind of puzzle map with parts of a map in different scales or with height details only. The goal was to find how the parts fit together and with this information find the controls.
It was a very nice training, but I don't think I am very good in it.
Map Tiha Dolina
Map Puzzle-O
On sunday we had two Sprint trainings in Maribor. The first one was a forest sprint with a lot of steep parts to climb, the second one was the Park World Tour Sprint from 2000.
Map Sprint 1
Map PWT Sprint Maribor 2000
It was a very nice trainingcamp with a tough longdistance competition and good o-trainings. Next week we will have our last two qualification races in Miskolc for the World Championships. A sprint race on saturday and a middle distance race on sunday will be the last chances to score points for the selections for WOC.
