How Not to Prepare for Czech O-Championship

Czech Sprint Relay, Sprint and Middle Orienteering Championship

1. Avoid any fast running training last six months before any sprint race

Just after my ski-o season was over I discussed my attendance at Sprint and Spring Relay Championship. Our club was organizing and they couldn´t let all MW21 athletes to run in order to have people to organize. We made it clear I won´t race. Me an my coach decided to focus for the Czech Middle Championship and adapted my trainings to peak my shape in June. This meant I needed to built some endurance first to have a background to profit from later on. I can honestly say I didn`t do even one fast training.

It was less than 12 hours to the sprint relay race. Phone rings. ”Can you run first leg in team 3 tomorrow” ”Eeeh what? Really? Are you sure I am a best choice??” ”Jop” ”OK, I will do my best”. When I briefly summarized my last months of training, it definitely didn´t give me much of self-confidence for upcoming day.

2. Get a permission to compete earliest the same day as the competition is

If I consider it is pretty late to be informed about competing less than 12hours in advance what about getting a permission to compete just in the morning before the race? That´s what happened before the sprint qualification. But this time it was a bit different situation. I was in a position that I wanted to compete and I was hoping to get a permission after yesterday´s quite good performance.

3. Work between the qualification and final

I got a permisssion to run the qualification but I was also supposed to help with organizing. So after I finished my qualy I went beck to qualification terraion to take care of controls nad gates. Probably, jsem nepouzivala mozek, when I thought this is a good preparation for afternoon´s final race. It was not. I was tired jak svin.

4. Don’t do any teoretical preparation and don´t go to check the terrain despite it is allowed

I didn´t expect to run any of the sprint championship so there was no reason for me to go and check the terrain. Yes, I know it was in the same city I was currently studying in. Yes, I was probably the only runner from Brno who has never been in the competition area before. As I didn´t expect to run I hadn´t even done any theoretical preparation. And it didn´t pay off. The sprint final was held mostly in Petrov (hradby). Despite I didn`t make any huge mistake in this area I was loosing a lot of time to other runners who has checked or walked through this terrain before. It was taking a lot of time to read this detailed labyrinth area on the map and to figure out where are the wall passthroughs were.

5. Underestimate your opponents

It is middle champ qualification. I feel in a good shape. My tactic is to do a stable performance avoiding any bigger mistake. Keep calm. This has always been a good and secure way for the final A.

I am satisfied with my performace. All and all about one min of mistakes. This should be definitelu OK for the A final. I am currently 2nd havign a small loss to the winner. The time of Czech national team runner Eva Kabatova makes me sure I did good as I have also small time loss to her. Suddently, there are four more girls beating me with some seconds and I see my name falling out of top six – the A final…

6. Twist your ankle

Are you warmed up properly? Did you do svihovy strecink, abecedy and rovinky? I decided to do the worm up really properly. But when doing odpychy, my heel didn´t like it and made a pain alarm call. I had my ankle taped and I knew it isn´t twisted. I took it easy and managed to make it run slowly as I had still couple of minutes left.

7. Don´t waste checking your starting time on your own or please, don´t do it properly

In fact, I didn´t have couple of minutes left. I thought I start 119 but I started 116. They didn´t call my name as it is usually when some runner is supposed to enter the starting corridor (or at least I didn`t hear it despite being really close to the corridor).

8. No need to fix your laces, rather take a rest and do it during the race

Once I caught Monika Topinkova my shoe lace got opened. It didn´t fix them properly as I use to do it always in the starting corridor where I have three minutes to do it. Today, due to the late start, I had minus one minute to do that so I did not. Now it is downhill and i have to stop and let Monika go in order nerozbit si hubu.

9. Turn your map obracene a vzhuru nohama (foreigners don´t worry, Czech maps don´t have legs) in order to check control descriptions despite you can check it on your wrist

If you are doing a good race, this is a great tip to loose some precious time. Especially when you have lot of controls points. This day it was 22. It always took me lot of time to find the control number in quite long control description chart, go back to the map, find which control I am running to on the map, where am I and put the map to the north. Why did I do that when (comparing to yesterday´s race) I hade control descriptions also near my wrist? I guess it would be too simple for me.

10. Let your hair grow and go for a raspberry fight

It seemed like an innocent 2metre-deep green area. I run straight into it rather then running 30metres around. But there was a zakerna ostruzina waiting for. It showed me its power end kept me za vlasy tight for almost a minute. I had to back and go through one metre to the left. Bastard!

Hopefully, I have ponaucila from these mistakes. Hope you also ponaucis from them. I do believe I jsem si vybrala vsechnu smulu already at sprint, sprint relay and middle championship. There is long distance and relay&team o-championship left. I hope I won´t have more tips to add to this article.

To sum up my performances and results at these championships

1. sprint relay

It was over expectations. Physically really demanding and I felt the lack of any faster training. Orienteering went well and I came as number 13 to the change with quite OK loss. Our 2nd leg made it to the 3rd place. Stepan on leg 3 managed to keep the position as well as Eva on the last leg so we came to finish third! Unfortunately, leg 2 was missing one control point and we were disqualified.

2.sprint qualification

I did big mistakes and was really surprised I made it to the final A.

3. sprint final

I was loosing to much time in the wall labyrinth despite no theoretical preparation. Physically, I didnt feel fit. One huge mistake despite wrong control description reading and some bad route choices.

4. middle distace qualification

In my opinion good performance. I felt strong both physically and technically. It was a tvrdy dopad na zem when I didn't make it to final A.

5. middle distance final B

I wanted to do a good performance. But as described above, it was not my bad. The race started badly before the race actually started. Lot of uncommon troubles (late start, twisted ankle, laces, hair fight, control description reading) made me to be pretty back in results. Really sad about that weekend performance, especially when I put all focus to this event. Something to learn from and something to forget.