Long time had past since our last post and much happened, get ready for a recap of all the activities we did!
After a weird winter with cold temperatures but almost no snow, many hours of skimo training, Riccardo´s injury finally healed so it was time to think again about orienteering. With the orienteering camps in the first months of the year narrowed to either Spain (Alicante or Barbate) and Turkey (Antalya), we decided to discover more the potential of our country, Italy! With the idea in mind, together with PWT Italy to develop something new down there, we travelled for over 11hours by car to Castellaneta Marina.
We spent there 2 great weeks checking most of the maps around the area, with 2-3 trainings per day one of which of some really good quality orienteering.
Of course the most interesting of all is the forest of Chiatona, really good for orienteering adn physically demanding also, but also the other city and forest maps offered some great fun!
Only few days home and it was time again to pack our bags for MOC 2019 in Malta, MOC Camp and MOC weekend in Agropoli area, close to Naples. Useless to say that we looked really forward for these last two because in that part of Italy they make the best pizza in the world 🙂
MOC Championship 2019 was as always a great happening with a strong field of runners to compete with and some really interesting locations. The best report on the event is done by Nick Barrable and can ne found here: https://www.orienteering.it/moc-championships-2019-races-report/
After the 3 races of MOC Champs, we flew to Rome and then transferred to Paestum for MOC Camp. We had such great memories from the camp in the past years and also this year it proved that it is a winning concept. Where you can learn from world champions and have some quality trainings and top level competition.
Useless to say that after 3 races at MOC Champs and a great but exhausting Camp, there were not much power left in our legs for MOC Weekend. These last three races were less challenging that the previous ones but each day was a fight first of all with ourselves and then the other runners to squeeze out all the speed and power left.
Ok…lot of sprints, but WOC this year will be only in the forest… Better to get back to some forest-o, and of course with the snow melted away, the choice went for North Europe. For Riccardo in south Norway with some night-o selection races for 10Mila and some races on WOC-relevant terrain. While instead Tommaso missed Finnish forest and went for FinnSpring long and relay races to then fly to Norway and meet with Riccardo and the others of Italy national team for a training camp around Sarpsborg to get a little bit more familiar with how the terrain at world champs might look like.
Concluded the camp it was time for 10Mila for Riccardo and Carlotta. Carlotta run a really good 1st leg of OK Orion 2, changing in 24th position. The rain didn’t bother much Riccardo running of Halden SK 1 that kept up well at long night, changing 7th at only 15 second from the leader.
And which together with the other 9 guys took him to the podium of 10Mila with a great 3rd position.
