From the 15th to the 25th August, I had the amazing opportunity to go to Czechia with other athletes of my age to train and practice our orienteering.
We arrived very late on Saturday night, before having tea and getting to know the coaches. We then had training for 4 days, consisting of some exercises in the morning and a fun activity in the afternoon, such as a peg relay. All the areas were really cool, with lots of intricate rock detail (see pictures) which provided for some very tricky navigation- and lots of cool scrambling and squeezing through gaps to try reach the controls! On basically every day we could go swimming in a river or lake which was very good to cool off, although it was the coldest czech tour there had ever been, we still had fun jumping in the water.
Thursday was the rest day, in which we had a lie-in (very much needed) and a visit to the nearby waterpark in Liberec which was really fun. That evening, we were joined by Tomas Krivda (world cup middle champion), and then had a day training with him the next day. In the evening he gave us a talk where he went through his world cup middle map, showing us how he navigated through the course (making it sound way too easy!) The final 3 days of training were for a competition (basically the JK but in Czechia) the first day was a middle, then long and then another middle – all in different parts of the same area.
After the third race, we drove back to Prague where we spent the evening exploring the city and enjoying our final night in Czech, before waking up early for the flight back the next day.
Overall, it was a really enjoyable week of training, meeting lovely people, and having lots of fun orienteering in really cool areas! Thank you so much to Airienteers and the Jack Bloor Fund for their generous contribution towards the cost of the trip, making this very memorable week possible!
