WOC 2008: Sprint and Long in focus
January 14, 2008 ...by Jan Sidla
Smola disqualified in sprint, Losman strong as always, Sedivy lacks his sparkle.
The town of Prostejov is as hilly and o-tempting as a parking lot of Lidl.
Imagine a sprint training course looping around a few cars in a disabled drivers division first. Easy.
The next slice would cross a large symmetrically configured and almost empty Christmas shoppers section.High speed, good route-choice.
The final short legs test would bring runners into a dense everyday commotion of cars and carts where everything looks the same. High concentration.
In reality it was a loop around some municipal buildings, a 900 meter long leg with a hidden must-passage and a zig-zag in a suburban neighborhood.
Petr Losman did well, Michal Smola was caught off guard and bypassed one control.
The good news is, that the inhabitants keep their dogs on leashes.
Well, just they hardly ever take care of their excrement.
In the afternoon we moved on into the woods and carried out route-choice tests.
We planned two laps and each of us ran each of the laps twice in the full speed mode.
In the first round decisions had to be made very quickly, in the second the very best route-choice had to be found and executed.
Unfortunately results are classified until July 19th. The map sample is on the top right.
This year's winter has been very kind to all orienteerers living in the Czech Republic who prefer the pure means of moving around
to using skis and mountain bikes. On Sunday we dared to segments of Drahany Upland reaching to 700 meters above sea level.
After the last week's thaw only some 10 centimeters of wet snow remained there to spice our ultra long session.
To break the dullness two butterflies, one traverse test and some corridors were installed too.
To my surprise complaints went not about the snow or crossing the thin ice up and down in the first butterfly,
but about the corridors being too wide and not hampering much.
Depending on pace, times from 140 to 170 minutes were reached.
Jan Sedivy sprinting out of a toboggan playground.
Many thanks to ZBM, KON.
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