Training Log Archive: slauenstein

Workshop one with Sophie and David, they took turns leading from one to the other control and I explained things along the way. The hardest thing for them to understand is 1) what is mapped and what is not and 2) understand that often the hills/contours look like cliffs and that it's only marked as a cliff if it's really vertical.

2nd workshop with Sandra Buchs, Justine (12 y.o.) and Jule (9y.o). They just need help understand what to read in the terrain and to take each control systematically. I was surprised how well the two kids actually read the contours, but I am glad that all three of them will have significantly easier for them. Beautiful terrain though and going step-by-step with them will make me a better orienteer these coming days. I can't wait for the races:-)

C • Pascal 1

Matti, Lena and I have arrived in Tampere. We are traveling with the Hamel family (Sophie and David the parents and their three kids, Simon, Justin and Jule) and with Sandra Buchs. Her son, Pascal Buchs is running at JWOC and I have been coaching him since he is 12 years old, so we are basically here to cheer him on. Yesterday we traveled all day long... it was kind of tough with Lena, since she did not want to sleep in the airplane and she really didn't want to sit down with her seat belt on during take off or landing, so I had a screaming 2 year old that I was holding down in her chair. I always felt sorry for "those mamas" and this time I got to be one of them. But c'est la vie, she is going through her terrible twos. On the bright side, but not to my advantage, she has given up her pacifier, so she is growing up and developing, which I am happy to see, but I would have enjoyed calming her down with one during her crisis.
Today we had to get settled into our little house on the lake, which to our surprise does not have running water or showers... but it has a sauna... so the lady explained to us that it's totally normal to just "shower" with buckets of water that you warm up in the sauna... it took us a moment to get over the shock considering that we are here for a week of orienteering and the weather forecast is not the best... but after the first shower I can report that it actually works well and you feel pretty clean afterwards :-)
This afternoon we went to a map near the JWOC areas for a training. The Hamel's and Sandra Buchs have never been to Finland or to another Scandinavian country for orienteering, so I told them I would set controls for the short loop we planned. To my surprise there were real controls in the forest and I thought it would be clear to the rest of the group all well, but I did put some toilet paper at the first control to show them, yes, these are our controls. Well... they never found the first control and what I ran in 45 min, they had 1h30min and didn't find half the controls. Opps. I guess I forgot how complicated orienteering is in Scandinavia if you've never done it before. So the plan for tomorrow is that I go out with them and explain the map and terrain.

C • different kind of orienteering 1

Intervalles through the terrain, tough, tough, but glad I could basically stay with the young women in the team. Tried to take down a tree with my face, the tree was stronger, so I am a bit black and blue, but ok. Head kind of spinning for the rest of the evening.

I seem to have trained exactly 5hrs and 4 mins the last three weeks. Weird...