Training Camp with VeVe in "Le Caylar", March 2006.

On the 24th of February, I started my long awaited month of semester break… and this holiday deserved an appropriate celebration. To do so, what would be better than to head off for southern France to orienteer, meet friends from VeVe (Tuomas, Janne and Baptiste), enjoy the sun and heat?
The orienteering area Janne picked out for us was “Les Grandes Causses”, and our center of mischief would be “Le Caylar”, a little village north of Montpellier. It took me only about 6 hours driving from Neuchâtel (my home town) to there.

As we concentrated on the magical triad: 1.sleep, 2.eat, and 3.orienteer, I will only focus on the last point in my writing.

The terrain there is mostly on a plateau 800m above see level, sprinkled with large boulders. The terrain never recovered from the radical logging in the 18th and 19th century, because the many goats eat the “tree germs” and also because the weather is very rough… hot summers, constant strong winds… and actually relatively cold winters (which we were not aware of before getting there). So the vegetation is mostly grass and very thick bushes. On the edge of this plateau are the steeper maps, with also more forest.

My goals for that training camp were: 1. fine tune O-technique (after a long winter, my O reflexes get sloppy and need some trimming) 2.Get a vacation from the stress I had at the university.

1st Training, Monday morning

On Monday morning, April 27th, after sleeping in (which we ended up doing everyday, actually… best way to achieve my goal #2), we went on the map “Le Potensac”… as a warm up practice for the training camp. The running between the big boulders in the fast “goat fields” was phantastic. No better way to enjoy orienteering as an appetizer, but we thought this was too easy for a main meal, so we decided the next training on the map would be by night.

2nd Training, Monday evening

In the evening we did our first night-O, on the map called “St Eulalie”. We didn’t know by this time that running with our headlamps would turn out to be a routine for the training camp. Baptiste made the course and set the goal of the training… we would have to run in pairs only with one map. The one runner runs from the control to his attackpoint, hands over the map, and the other will do the fine orienteering getting to the control. It was a good practice in relocation (when your partner finally hands you the map), and also for learning to select appropriate attackpoints, but especially to differentiate rough orienteering and fine orienteering. Janne (my partner for that training) and I made no big mistakes… but we where astonished to see that our course took us 1h40min… a tough way to start a training camp.
The terrain was really fast on the top of the slope, but once in the slope the running slowed down considerably… steep, rocky but especially really thick vegetation made moving in a flow tough.



We started with the sunset... running with the reding sky was quite a wonderful experience

3rd Training, Tuesday morning

On Tuesday morning we did our first fast training… a training formula Baptiste and I are slowly getting experts in, as we have done it quite often in the last years… always content with the training result. The idea is to have a first cross country running part, where you run full speed, raising your lactic acid as high as possible, followed by some technical controls. This time we did four repetitions. The uphill took me 3min25sec, 3min21sec, 3min28sec and 3min19sec. The downhills were about 7 minutes.

To my first control of the 2nd loop I made a quite typical mistake for vague terrain. I ran down too far, getting to the edge of were it got steeper. Besides the contours, there is nothing here which can give you a strong hold.
Way to nail the control: 1.precise baring 2.feel the curve of the landscape.
Lesson: If there is contour help, it is a crime not to use it.


On the 3rd loop I missed the 3rd control. Here the vegetation was the helping device to nail the control, and not the slope (which is too uniform). Leaving the 2nd control full speed, I underestimated the importance of the exactitude of my approach. I believed the wall and the thick green would be perfect helps to guide me… well, the wall was, but the green turned out to be very diffuse. I misinterpreted my location and ran way too far down, thinking I was correct… a nice parallel mistake.
Way to nail the control: 1.Lucid concept of how to nail the next control while leaving the previous one 2.Applicate high precision orienteering on the whole leg.

Lesson: When using greens for navigation, a constant and exact map contact is required… it is very dangerous to do rough orienteering in “bush-O”, because the available features for the relocation are to diffuse and can be easily misinterpreted.


This training we were lucky to have a photograher. Thank you Baptiste for the pics!





Me fighting in the last uphill







Tuomas Sipilla flighing up the cross-country section







GO JANNE!

Janne Weckman tiptoeing





Me confused... picture of me in my mistake on the 3 round.

Janne fighting for the victory in the last downhill after a smashing orienteering part.







Tuomas in his smooth and elegant style




Quintessence of the training: it was really tough physically, technically and mentally… just perfect!

4th training, Tuesday evening

And in the afternoon, night O again… of course! We went on the eastern side of the map we had been in the morning for the Cross-O. My ability to concentrate decreased systematically during the training... at the same rate as the night grew darker.







Check out this mistake:
I have to admit, that I resigned to finish the whole course… of course only because I didn’t want to let my 3 friends wait in the cold.

5th training, Wednesday morning

Recovery training. Line-O on the map “Le Parpaillou”. Slowly I understood that the challenge of that type of terrain is not primarily the fine navigation in the impressive rock fields, but much more the ability to do bush-O… when the visibility is low, the features diffuse, the possibility to keep a straight direction is zero, in those circumstances the master of the terrain will show.
To train those features, Janne planed us a challenging line-O. It took a lot of concentration to remain precise…

6th Training, Wednesday afternoon

Baptiste put out a Micro-O, as a control substitute he put toilet paper as controls. Worked out really well! We thought we wouldn’t push too much the challenge, and exceptionally resigned in doing a night-O training that day.

7th Training, Thursday morning

Our 2nd fast training. At least it was supposed to be that way…
Tuomas prepared a training the Finn call “pressure training”. We raced short courses, where we would start in chase, with 30 seconds gap. Of course the goal was to catch the leading person… who would have the most pressure.
The weather was freezing, and that day I never managed to emerge from a thick fog my head and body seemed to be in. I did huge mistakes and my heart rate was stuck in the basement, never climbing higher than the 160s.

Here is my biggest mistake:

I left the trail far too early, thinking I was much further. Well, this was a nice beginners mistake. I must say I am quite ashamed of it, but I need to take the lesson out of it! Elementary orienteering is not given, it also requires concentration!

That day, the snow had found us even in southern France

8th training, Thursday evening

I must say, that after the morning training, I was not looking forward to go out in the snow again, especially in the dark. But actually, it turned out to be a really fun practice… after resting enough the whole day! Because we were all struggling with motivation, we decided to go on the most enjoyable map, “Le Potensac” and to start all together. Because of the great visibility of the terrain, we would see the lights from the others far away, which would lift our spirits. As expected, no one achieved to break away, and we all finished in less than 1 min.

9th and last training, Friday morning

To kill ourselves at the end of the training camp, we decided to do a last fast training. We asked Baptiste, who had left the day before for the PWT in Italy, to plan us a middle distance on the map “La Roc Orientation”. It took me about 4 controls to get all the cogwheels running smoothly, and than it went pretty well. I lost most of my time trying to pass some of the really thick thorny walls, not always mapped as such… but for a middle distance it took me a little long… 50 minutes. But which was good, the more tired we are at the end of the training camp, the merrier we are, isn’t it like that?!?
… Well, I preferred not to think about the Swiss cross country champs, which I was running 2 days later…

Conclusion

A perfect training camp. High quality, no injuries, good atmosphere. The only down part was the weather, which got worse everyday… but we made the best out of it.
Physically we did enough fast trainings, and until the last training, we were able to keep the speed high enough (with the exeption of freezing Thurday).
Technically, we encountered many different challenges: fine orientation in the stone fields, compass orienteering, a lot of night-O, and what brought me personally the most: the tough bush-O parts.

Thank you Tuomas, Janne and Baptiste!