Training camp with Radek Novotny

Last days (26th to 30th) I've been in a training camp in the region of Marinha Grande. It was supervised by Radek Novotny, the Czech coach. I loved it, learned a lot and was exhausted in the end...

We did some types of training that we're not used to. It was mainly focused in the fast orienteering capability and the management of a precise map reading in diverse competition situations.

In the 1st day, a map with many kinds of orienteering: line O, fiding controls in an area and a sprint.

We had another training session that consisted in Middle Qualification and Middle Final. In the Middle Q I was one of the lasts to qualify to the 4,9km Final A but I was able to make an almost perfect race in the final (in the map below). You may check the results here and the Splitsbrowser here.

Here a 10km re-localization session which I did with Paulo, my everyday training friend. His map had the other half of the controls.

In this morning we trained the starting process. We made 8 different short courses in the forest (around 500m each) at maximum speed. The total time of the 8 courses would decide the chasing start to the afternoon session, a 7,7km butterfly run. In this session I made almost all my course with Diogo Miguel and Tiago Romão (even if I had different loops) and I was 2nd overall in an emotive final sprint. You may check the results here and the Splitsbrowser here.


This session consisted in a two-man relay. Me and my teammate (Catarina) went along the road and each one punched one control and came back to the road to return the map (when we reached the end we had to return to the start, punching the controls that the other had previously punched). There were lots of teams and it was a really tiring session with 3 different maps.


In the end we had a long session. Radek planned a fantastic course with lots of interesting route choices. I went straight in some controls where the best option would be by paths. My result was not what I expected once I did some major mistakes that costed me some time. You may find the map here.

In the end, I loved this training camp. The night theorical sessions with Radek were really interesting. I was able to identify some of my biggest problems in orienteering:

1.- I have to start slower at competitions. My mistakes are always in the first controls.

2.- I usually loose too much the contact with the map (mainly in the middle of the legs where I simply run). I have fixed this problem in some training sessions and ended making a better control attack, saving some precious time.

The next days will be though. I'll have my exam season and the most important national O'competitions... We'll see...