Unfortunately I was not able to keep my page up to date during the week. That's why I'm posting now a short summary.

After one week here in Portugal i think i can do a very positive summing-up. 3 Competitions and 14 map trainings in 7 days is very good to find the right confidence with orienteering again. I saw that I'm still missing some speed in the forest with bad runnability, but in fast forest it is quite ok. From the technical point of view, I think we did quite a good work especially with direction, a technique I had always problems with. But after 2 explicit direction trainings and a lots of runs on this kind of terrain, where a good direction is crucial, I feel very confident in my skills. I have to say thanks to Bruno Nazario for well organized trainings! I think this was a nice start into the new o-season, and I feel hungry for more orienteering (but maybe not in the next 3 days :-) .

Those interested in the nice trainings we did should go on reeding. For the others I have selected some pictures in my gallery.

I was really looking forward to Saturday's middle distance. I understood at the model event that the terrain suits me quite well and i wanted to do a race without mistakes in order to compare my actual shape to all the strong runners on the start list. I succeeded quite well until the last loop after the spectator control. I had just a small mistake on control 10, where i lost not more than 30 sec. The feeling and the map contact where good and so i pushed quite hard, maybe to hard on the last controls. So i did a stupid parallel error on number 22 where i lost more than one and a half minutes. So i was a little behind in the end of the race, but nevertheless i was quite happy, because i was able to do some really good legs.

The night sprint was fun. Not quite serious but still a good possibility to push hard. In order to try the situation with two competitions in one day, as it will be two times at WOC later on this year.

For the long distance on Sunday i had no real expectations. The terrain was quite hard. There i learned that my physical preparation on tough terrain is not yet what it should be. In addition to this fact, i did some stupid mistakes. So the disappointment after the race was high. But we are still at the beginning of the TC.

Maps from the 3 competitions: middle, sprint, long

Monday, the stony day. Trainings up near Sao Pedro do Sul on two maps used in POM 2007 were scheduled for that day. Those who took part in POM 2007 will remember that places for the bad weather conditions but also for the nice terrain. We where luckier this year and had nice and warm weather. The terrain was so different form what we had until now. Quite hilly and full of stones. So the aim of the trainings was to pick the correct feature within the circle. We did a middle distance training in the morning on the Gestoso map and we run the WRE middle distance course of 2007 in the afternoon on the map Campo de Anta (no way to beat the fastest times from 2007 even with better weather conditions). After that Marco, Michele and i went for a mass start night-o training to make it even more difficult. I was quite happy whit my orienteering in the open map of Gestoso, while i had huge problems in on the Campo de Anta map. I was missing focus on longer legs and has some problems with the tough vegetation.

On Tuesday morning we had a nice mass start training. With the legs already tired, this was the best way to keep the motivation high. Martin Binder and Ursula Polzer from Austria joined us for this training. So altogether we where 13 people. Nice. The terrain was the same as for Saturday's middle distance. Fast with some tricky parts. I manage to do well and never loose the contact to the top, while avoiding big mistakes. We did 3 loops with a new mass start after each of them. Nice.

In the afternoon it was time for a long distance training on the map Ganfanhas. I started slow and tried to push harder with the progression of the training. Good training with no mistake, even when going almost full speed.

It was time to focus on some orienteering techniques. On Wednesday a direction training with some white map parts in the morning and a contours-only training, where the focus was on changes of direction without using the compass was planned. Nice. And in the evening one more night-o training in order to use direction skills.

Thursday was the last day all together. I wanted to go for an other direction training in the morning and do a middle distance training in the afternoon at good speed in order to have some kind of final test for the TC. And the test went well. I just did one small mistake and was able to run at good speed for the entire training.

Friday, last day here in Portugal for me. The other Italians left early in the morning. I was supposed to go for one more map training today. But after the 2^nd training yesterday my knee started hurting again a little and my head felt so empty. So i decided for a easy jog near the ocean here in Porto, extensive stretching and sunbathing for a perfect end of this trainings camp.