It has taken its time to recover from a 12 day long training
camp in Slovenia and Croatia but now that I’ve overcome the worst exhaustion
I’m finally able to write a few lines about it. It was my first training camp
abroad with my new club OK Linné and it was a wonderful experience. There’s a
nice buzz and excitement in the group combined with relaxed attitude and great
passion for training and racing. Racing doesn’t always need to involve sports.
7 Wonders, tight schedule to a ferry or a micro sprint on a hand drawn map over
the back yard is enough to spark a competitive instinct.
First three days we spent on this gorgeous island of Cres.
We arrived there late in the evening in the darkness and it wasn’t before the
next morning when you could fully see and understand the beauty of it. It’s a
small Croatian island with huge hills, cute small villages and thousands of
sheep wandering around freely. We stayed at Beli, a charming historic village
at a top of a hill with views over the ocean and orienteering terrains just
around the corner. Kvarner Bay Challenge, a small local two-day event, was in
the scheme in the first weekend. Terrain was typical karst terrain with good
runnability apart from the stone formations. And there were quite many of them too. Like
fifty shades of stonewalls and at least three ways to describe them on the map,
based on how they look like, or how big or distinctive they are. I always
thought that small dots in a line (......) meant a vegetation border but learned that it
can also refer to a small stonewall. Educational.
In addition to KBC we did a couple of technical trainings, a sprint in the town of Cres and a few sightseeing runs exploring mysterious stone
labyrinths, Celtic tombs and Roman ruins before leaving the island. Oh and
after missing a ferry (because stopping for some pics) we did one spontaneous hill run too. We just started to
run uphill from the harbour and after 40min of climbing, we turned back. It’s
seldom you get to do something like that back home since the biggest hill in
Uppsala is about 2min.
On the way to Croatia we ran a sprint in Rovinj, a beautiful
coastal town in Istrian peninsula. It was such a nice place that we stayed
there for a lunch too. Some of us took a dip in the sea and smelled like fish
the rest of the day. On the way back to the cars I managed to spot this little
café there that valued high my home country. That
cafe alone is good enough for a reason to visit the city.
In Slovenia we stayed in Ajdovščina, in Vipava Valley. It
was gorgeous location with views over the surrounding hills and vineyards.
Also, it was the event centre for Lipica Open days 3 and 4, which made it very
convenient for us. There were many maps and terrains around for training and
then there was this magnificent peak (Navrše Hill 857m) that we just couldn’t
get enough of. A small stony path led from the village up to the top with over
700m of elevation gain in 4,5km distance. Once again, very different scale what
we are used to back home.
Lipica Open delivered variety of terrains and challenges for
each day. It was very well organized event and very interesting orienteering.
After all trainings both in Croatia and Slovenia I thought I had seen enough
stones but first day in Lipica Open still surprised me (see the map here).
I found it hard to ran through these enormous stone fields but kept my
orienteering technically together and go
