What Carsten had to say to the WOC team

The WOC team are starting to head to Ukraine, both Chris and Tan leaving the country this weekend I think, below is some of the thoughts that Carsten sent to them General Comments: The kilometre times that have been raced in races leading up to WOC seem very fast, which in the sandy terrain for the middle distance must mean that the visability is good and it is quite easy to manoeuvre through the undergrowth and for the clay ground of sprint qual, long distance and relay must be rather hard and very runable. On the other hand clay can get quite slippery if wet making room for taking different route choice depending on weather (/clay) conditions? The rumour says that there are quite a lot of smaller and bigger rubbish things in the forest. Often mistakes in orienteering are made when it gets a bit tougher physically (throwing the competitor off the balance that the person has been riding along on very nicely until then), which in the in sprint and middle distance areas probably will occur when fast running has been going for a little while (or when obstacles like little (steep) hills and undergrowth show up) and in the long distance a bit bigger hills (and towards the end of the course). One way to get better at copping with these physical tougher periods in an orienteering race is to train intervals to simulate the stress. Now that you are getting closer to WOC it is time to sharpen up a bit and I would suggest to try to do some intervals simulating fast running on flat and then a short hill up (one that seems like the right size/steepness compared to the distance/terrain that you are focusing on) and then continuing on the flat for bit afterwards. The idea of a training camp a short time before a world champs is not to do a lot of training then (the training has to be done beforehand) but more to check out the terrain and how it is mapped. Like a green thing in England is quite often a rhododendron bush/tree thing and so fort. To try and test orienteering and running at competition speed it is better to do interval type of sessions with shorter bursts of high intensity (5-15 minutes). Heat is quite often a factor at WOC and it is likely to be that again this year and attention has to be drawn to drinking enough water (when racing and before and after (all the time)) and getting electrolytes (when sweating and urinating a lot). It is always a good thing to have lots of fun and staying relaxed (focus, when you need to, the rest of the time build the focus reserve up by having fun and relaxing (look at the positive things)). If you have negative things to let out, go shout somewhere else than close to the team (or find a team official to discuss the subject with, hopefully things can be sorted with out involving the team before events). If the team has to be involved then go through the thing in a matter of fact way and sort it out and end the scenario with something positive for the team to focus on in the continuation. Yep, be onto it and have lots of fun, this is a cool chance to show off what you’re very good at.