sandrazürcher

day one
cerna voda
a very nice way to start a training camp. this map had a mix of everything, some steep slopes with rocky ground, and some rolling fast open forest.
9. october: Cerna Voda

vidnava
in the afternoon we went to what turned out to be the nicest and most fun training of the week. unfortunately it turns out that this terrain is not very relevant to woc.
2nd training: Vidnava


day two
baduruv prusmyk
with the swiss team, i traveled 2.5 hours from zlate hory towards olomouc to a map that should be very relevant for the long and relay at woc. here we did a long distance course practicing route choices at race pace. i was very happy with my training, i could keep a high pace for myself and took good route choices. the terrain was steep and made me quiet tired afterwards. i will have to get physically stronger if I want to run well in the long distance final next year.
10. october: Baduruv prusmky-long and relay relevant


day three
the 5 hours of driving plus the hard long training really tired me out. unfortunately the lack of good base training this spring (from my ankle injury) plus the illness i had last week made it hard to train as much as i would have liked to. But it's important to listen to your body, so i did one training on this day and rested in the afternoon.
this route choice exercise was good, especially because we played a little game before heading off into the woods. in pairs of two we received the map and were told which leg to look at, whoever figured out the route that they would take first, won. then we showed what we would do to one of the coaches of the swiss team. i found this very helpful, seeing it from the eyes of Tom Bührer was a valuable experience and probably an unusual opportunity. i didn't draw my routes onto this map, mostly because i want to use the map to practice in the future, but also it is more interesting for others too look at if there isn't already a route drawn in. take a look and try to decide what route you would take!
11. october: Zarovy vrch-route choice

this second map is probably the most relevant to the middle distance at woc that we got to train on.
Zarovy vrch-middle relevant


day four
relay with the swiss team! we were broken into teams of three, two men and one women. i was on a team with David Schneider and Dani Hubmann. first we all ran in the mass start. after the mass start we ran a sprint relay. the start of the sprint relay was determined by amount of time loss on the mass start. they however did not take the absolute time loss and just put us in the order that we came in with about 10 seconds between the teams. the sprint relay was exciting!! i was able to edge out Baptiste Rollier in the finish shot with the help of my teammates blocking him :-)
12. october: Bohema-mass start
sprint relay: Bohema-springt


day five
one training day left and I was feeling pretty tired, but decided to take part in the middle distance race at the czech meeting anyway. i found this course very challenging, mostly because it was pretty rocky and rough. my legs just couldn't push through the rough terrain. from what i understand, the woc terrain should be less rocky than this. but in anycase, running through rocks and downhill is something i need to work on.
13. october: Melchior-middle WRE

all in all the training camp was a success. i have a good idea of what the terrain will be like next year at woc and can prepare myself physically and also mentally. I think it will be a nice woc, some challenging hills, but beautiful woods as well.

some photos: