Eating or tearing maps

When my son was 8 months old, he has got first orienteering lesson. Now he is much older - 10 months, but still not interested about orienteering, except eating or tearing maps.

Wojciech Kowalski i jego lekcja orientacji from superbysior on Vimeo.

WC Oslo Middle +Long

When we left Poland there was only rain. In Oslo all the time is sun. It’s too good weather for running, too hot. I expected extreme terrain. I was surprised. It wasn’t so bad. All the course I was running alone and I did only 1’25” mistakes. I’m really proud of me.

On long distance I had a lot of alone (group 2-3 runners) fun to 21th control. Than caught me a 10 person group and I changed sport from orienteering to cross country running.

After a mounth full of competition I'm exhausted. Now it's time for 5weeks of recharging batteries and restore power.

Polish Champs

… were quite nice. On the SPRINT distance map and terrain were good, but the course planner didn’t remember about different rout choice, what is one of the main things on sprint.

MIDDLE distance was OK, sometimes too easy. The speed was decisive in the race. But I want other challenge: technique. So I go abroad to WC in Salo or to WC in Oslo. This are real orienteering lessons!

CLASSIC race was very interesting! Big congratulation for organizers. They didn’t afraid to do a course for 89’ (15,5km) for a winner. For me it’s normal, but for Polish reality not. You can see replay (.kmz open in Google Earth) from this race here now or will be there soon.

On first two races I had no mistake:) than on classic I did 2’. During whole weekend I was able to keep good speed. Good, mean enough for polish O-level. Generally I’m in a small physical hole. I know it’s good for me, because top will come on August/September.

One more time

Good Lord!

The gpsseuranta.net from Jukola is great. During the race I didn’t know that so many things was happening around me. From the start to 9th control, I was thinking I ran alone, couple of seconds after William Lind. But now I see that there was mix of runners. I was enough to do some small mistake (me on 1,2 control) or run little bit shorter (keep more strait line – me on 3 control) and you could be with other runners.

I can’t believe in that. I have to see it one more time. 

3 times kicked

Word Cup (NOC middle and sprint). Finish terrain didn’t disappoint me on middle distance. I expected challenge and got it (66th place). On sprint qualification I was pushing very strong, I did only 5” mistake and I was missed the final by 14”. It’s not nice to be happy of your race and be out of final. Yesterday I took part in Forrsa Games and one more time my bottom kicked – 4’12” behind first. Great.

around Miskolc

I spend with Polish Team six days around Miskolc. We did couple of interesting trainings (you can see it below). During two, hard days I did 46 km in the forest. Thanks to Czech Team for opportunity to take part in their WOC qualification race to classic distance. The course had 16,3km. In real I did 21,3km and I was missing a lot. Better now than during WOC. You can see Google Earth replay of the relay race. There are four runners from Polish Team. They’re running on different legs and teams: Maciek Grabowski/green dot, Wojtek Kowalski/red, Alek Bernaciak /blue, Mateusz Wensław/purple. You only need to click on H-relay.kmz and open it by Google Earth.

boring or exciting

Lonely, fast running on the road is boring, but lonely, fast running in the park with o-map is exciting! (even if I know the area of the park). Full speed 8x3' (with 3' brake) was good for: exercise of speed up in short time after the start (I always have problem with this thing on the sprint competition) and changing speed during the race (reading the map-middle speed; only running-full speed).

In April I did 32hour of training . In this running 19h, orienteering 8h and other activities 5h.