Camp Jura – Codename: “Women’s orienteering is ridiculous” – MTØ

PART #2 PUBLISHED! REMEMBER TO WATCH THE NEWEST PICTURES IN BILDARKIV

(click the headline to read the whole text)

Monday

Marius and Lasse met the local IFK runners, Francois and Matthieu, at the Geneve airport. Sun was shining and the temperature was nearly 30 degrees. Frallan had some fabulous trainings waiting for us. Nothing could be better. During the trip to Frallan’s home we saw some awesome landscapes. The closer to Frallan’s home we came, the more the two Scandinavian guys were smiling. It was like a fairytale.

After Frallan had received some gifts from Sweden and Denmark, it was time for the first training. The map looked perfect. Unfortunately our host had to stay at home because of the injury he had got just few days before the training camp. When we came to the starting point the map still looked perfect but the terrain didn’t look so tempting – there were a lot of small rocks and bushes everywhere. Nevertheless, the training was really nice. The course was technical and the runability was also challenging enough.

Tuesday

We started our day with O-intervals. We did the training together with some of the best runners in the world (Adamski, Hertner, Jansson and many more). There was a mass start to every loop. You could say that it was a high quality relay training. Our coach at home gave us two goals for the training – fight for the victory and make the training more colourful. Marius was really strong through the whole training and on the last loop he was the 2nd fastest just few seconds behind the course planner Adamski. Matthieu and Lasse were able to fulfil the coach’s other mission…

After the training we got some company from Norway. Eskil Kinneberg, Vetle Ruud Bråten and Mari Fasting were the ones who also wanted the feel the amazing atmosphere of Lamoura. And they got what they were after. They started their training camp from the highest point of Lamoura. The landscapes were fabulous – once again. The short orienteering was so challenging that even Marius wasn’t able to find all the control points. While the others were doing their training, Team Injury was preparing to the upcoming events their own way. Lasse went to Frallan’s sports garage and took a ridiculously expensive road bike under his ass. Time went flying when he was doing the most amazing biking session of his life. Just one year earlier the professional cyclists had been doing their 7th stage in the Tour de France on the same roads.

In the evening it was time for the traditional cheese meal. Yammy!

Wednesday

The first training of the day was a control picking course. Frallan had planned a 12km warm-up before the 6km orienteering course but no one was strong enough to complete the whole training. But, once again, most of us did an excellent technical training. Meanwhile, Team Injury continued with a different programme. The duo did a visit to a hospital and got positive results. Frallan is getting better!

During the dinner we discussed how light shoes you have to have to be able to win JWOC in Poland. There were two different opinions… But the gold medallist is definitely going to run with extremely light shoes.

Thursday

It was time to travel to the WOC area. In the morning you could feel the excitement of all the athletes when the coach was telling how to run in those terrains. There was also a hint of nervousness in the air. Especially Marius couldn’t help smiling when thinking about the first training in Montagne de Bange. And it was just as special as we had been waiting for. The feedback was still positive. We were able to run in the terrain and find the controls despite the extreme conditions. However, there just aren’t words to describe how special it is to run here. You have to experience it by your self!

http://frallan.free.fr/woc/Montagne-de-Bange.gif

During the evening the kids were preparing for JWOC. They were able to find a respectable amount of pretty girls from Facebook. Still, it is too early to say which ones on their list are going to run in Poland.

Friday

There was an easy orienteering session in the morning and in the afternoon some of us were resting while the strongest ones did their third training in Montagne de Bange. Tomorrow we are going to run WOC selection races for the French and Norwegian team. But before that maybe a bit more JWOC preparations…

Saturday

Let’s begin with the biggest piece of news of the day. Thierry missed more than 10 minutes on one control. That tells a lot about the terrain. Together with the challenging terrain, we experienced really extreme conditions. The 1:15000 map was practically impossible to read when running, and it was raining like hell. Due to rainy weather the magnifier (loop) was useless. It can’t get any harder than this. This was the ultimate challenge! Today only the most technical athletes were able to fight for the victory. Surprisingly, many of the “big names” were running very badly and the result list was far from what most of us had expected. Marius and Eskil made also huge mistakes, but the competitions was still a good learning experience for them. Eskil ran some parts together with Daniel Hubmann and Marius saw how the king of the race, Olle Boström: was doing his job. Ultimately, the boys definitely must learn something from this race. With that kind of performances there are going to be some other runners who collect the best prizes in JWOC banquet.

After the competition it was time to change accommodation. We went to a B&B like “hotel” were we got a traditional French dinner, lasting nearly 3 hours. It was a really nice experience and it was even more fun because the hosts didn’t speak too much English. Luckily Marius was able to communicate with the locals. We witnessed that the 4 years he had been using to learn French hadn’t been a total waste of time. Nevertheless, we experienced some cultural problems. When talking about breakfast the owner of the place kept only speaking about hot chocolate that we would get for breakfast. We thought that it was going to be quite a tough race tomorrow just with the help of hot chocolate. So we decided to smuggle some food into our room, just in case. The hotel owners were also so convinced that the 17km drive to the competition area would take 1 hour, so we agreed to wake up and enjoy our hot chocolate at 6.30. We just didn’t want to argue with such lovely hosts. (The hotel owners couldn’t know that our driver, Petter “Eskil” Solberg, is extremely fast and he would beat the expected driving time with 40 minutes).

Sunday

First of all, it was a huge relief when we saw some bread on the breakfast table! And the competition. Both of our young talents used all the new know-how they got from yesterday’s race, and it was worth it. Marius was 6th, 9,5min behind Thierry but only 3,5min behind the second fastest Audun Hultgreen Weltzien. Last year’s world champion Olav Lundanes was almost 2min slower than Marius. Not bad at all. Should we see him in WOC this year as well? After all, he was the best runner from Denmark in both races. Eskil ran also a solid competition, but he was slightly tired, because he is still using his weight training shoes (+61grams compared to JWOC shoes).

Back in Lamoura we had an early dinner ending at 7 o’clock – a new experience for Chloe and Frallan. We celebrated the awesomeness of the training camp with some ice cream.

There was still one thing we had to do on the French ground – to play pétanque. It was a clear victory for the Fin-Fre team. Some say that Lasse finally found his sport. During the evening, while following the magnificent ice hockey final, we had time to analyze the outcomes of the camp. Frallan also showed us how much effort he had put into his JWOC preparations. He had a comprehensive notebook where he had collected all the possible information about the competitions, starting from the history of Bulgaria… That was just impressing! “I was really bad in English then. It took several days do translate the bulletins” Frallan said and continued “Nowadays life is too easy when we have the google translate”. But our young talents are on the right way, Frallan had also a picture of the most important babe in JWOC in his notebook.

Monday

Lasse and Marius were really upset when they left Jura. Eskil was so lucky to be able to stay one more day. On the way to the airport the boys saw Mont Blanc at the horizon. They had to confess that it was slightly depressing to leave these wonderful landscapes behind. Here’s a warning word from Marius and Lasse: Once you come to Jura, you never want to go home again!

Thanks a lot Francois and Chloe for your hospitality. The training camp was just too perfect. We definitely want to come back as soon as possible!

Nyheten publicerad på gamla websiten