Last preparation before the trip to Ottawa

It was one week before Canadian Orienteering Championship (COC) in Ottawa. I was packing my stuff for the week of Orienteering, and making my last preparation before the main race. I did analyze my mistakes from North American Orienteering Championship and trained hard to fix them.


I had increased a number of trainings with map. A big part of my preparation for COC10 was training with Antonio Perez (on the photo - European Youth Orienteering Champion/16th in JWOC10) and another Spanish orienteer Oscar Vila. They showed me how hard I have to work to achieve my goals.

World Orienteering Championship was a great mental preparation. I spent lots of time watching Elite runners running on live TV and GPS, and of course, after race analysis. Thierry Gueorgiou did a great job and finished with two BRONZE medals at Middle and Long. Aleksandr Kratov, my Ukrainian teammate and friend, did very well and finished 5th at Middle.

It was very important for me not to think about COC10 before the race day- I did not want to “burn out”. So, the best way to forget about upcoming races was to go and do something different from Orienteering; something like Rogers Cup Tennis tournament. I went to watch Roger Federer (Ranked 3d), who did not play for 6 weeks and it was an important return match for him. He won, but with a small struggle. It was an inspirational lesson for me to fight till the end.

My last preparation part was in Ottawa, where I had few interesting races and trainings with Canadian Junior team before the final COC10 races. Orienteering week in Ottawa is my next post!