Monday 27 June 2011

Training, training, training

The last few days have been full of training as we're trying to familiarise ourselves with this terrain. Most of the team have seemed to come to grips with the area pretty well and our general consensus is that it's easier terrain than the past 3 years - but it pays not to be complacent!

We had two trainings on Saturday, one being a middle training focusing on visibility and lines through the terrain and the other being a short control-picking exercise with a focus on exit direction. Despite the terrain seeming reasonably straight forward mistakes were still made and I particularly found that I was at risk when I wasn't strong on my compass, checking off spur directions, for example.

Yesterdays training was on a map which bordered the actual JWOC long distance map and we used the relevance to focus on route choice. We often met up at various controls to try out different routes. Were the long track routes faster than the steeper straight routes? There wasn't really a definite answer and it varied from leg to leg but the straight routes were generally still fast in this terrain, just more physical. The more time we spend on the maps the more the decisions should become instinctive.

Obviously, we haven't spent all our time just training though. We've spent heaps of time just chilling around the hotel. It's a pretty nice place and us boys have explored the hotel pool (with water slide, sauna and steam room!) and the 10-pin bowling alley. We were all pretty terrible though! The girls went into Gdansk yesterday for a look around and to pick up Anna's bag which has finally arrived. The Australians and Japanese have arrived at our accommodation with the Danish, Finnish, Austrian and Belgians still to come later in the week.

At the moment everyone is just lazing around the hotel (except for Toby and Laura sitting their exams - poor things!) and it's a beautiful day outside. I think we're planning on taking on the Aussies at 10-pin later so hopefully we can improve from the other night and smash them!

Anyway, we're all finally getting over the jet-lag and everyone is enjoying themselves.

Pozegnanie for now!

Written by Scott

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