Hungarian Training Camp 2008

I spent last week in the mountains near Miskolc in Hungary preparing for next years World Champs. I have recently been injured so planned to use the time to take it easy and learn as much as I can about the terrain. But as usual I pushed it a bit and ran most of the trainings quite hard. I was making quite a few stupid mistakes on what seemed like fairly simple terrain. I will put that down to the lack of orienteering in the last few months. I struggled alot with the uphill running, living on Fyn in Denmark is defnitely not the place to be to prepare for WOC next year. It is as flat as a pancake here and I have already noticed a loss of muscle mass and strength in my legs. I think I will have to put in some serious strength training untill Maja and myself can (hopefully) move to Oslo early next year. I think I will try and get to some terrain atleast once a week in an attempt to keep myself running strongly.
A couple of the maps here are from our trainings. As you can see its fairly steep. The light green is very runnable but the dark green is hell. Also I learnt that it pays to avoid the stony ground, it slows you down immensely. Tamas - Kut is from Bukkfensik Cup. Controls 2 and 21 were placed wrongly, as you can see I pretty much lost my head after number 2. I had about 7mins mistakes on the whole course... Pretty shocking really.
Silica - L'adnica was a training in Slovakia (just over the border from Hungary, so still pretty relevant). I only made a stupid mistake not checking my compass on number 4. I thought I just had to run along the track and into the second depression, but I didnt notice the small track on the map which actually continued on for longer than it looks like... What a sucker! However, it was my favourite map from all the trainings. You can run pretty straight, but all the rounded features make it easy to change direction without realising it, so you have to be good with your compass.
Miskolc - Tapolca and Berekalja were the 2 sprint trainings we did. They were set in the same style as the WOC sprints will be i.e. Starting in the forest and coming down into the town/park. I was focused on going hard in the terrain part of the course because I thought it would be my weakness, but really I had no mistakes. I could have had a better route choice on Berekalja from 4-5 , but generally I am running well on all the short legs. I was quite pleased. My main focus for 2009 WOC will be sprint, folled by middle and relay. Apparently the WOC sprints wont be quite as steep as the trainings, but still I was struggling a little on the hills. I will have to do alot of strength work and some hill intervals next year.
I am most likely not going to be running the long distance at WOC anymore, atleast not untill I have sorted out my problems with cramp and fatigue. The Bukkszentkereszt map shows all the fun I will be missing out on next year! haha! Its so steep. WOC final is reportedly going to be 19km next year... They are getting longer and steeper by the year!


Well, thats it for my first post on this blog... don't expect them all to be that long!