SEDS, camera, action!
Last weekend a group of 12 SEDS athletes, under the supervision of coach Toni Louhisola, travelled north to a snowy Aboyne where 40cm of snow had fallen during the week.
The deep snow did not scare off Scotland’s best athletes, nor did it deter BBC’s Adventure Show camera man Paul from making a trip up north to film what we orienteers get up to at the weekends.
Sluie was the location for the first training session where each athlete had the opportunity to practise any navigational weaknesses over 3x 2km loops (planned by ex-British squad coach, Jon Musgrave) with the distraction of cameraman Paul out in knee deep snow. The pace was considerably slower than our elites are used to, with few breaking 10 min/km.
After a good break for some well earnt lunch and half a dozen interviews for the BBC the crew headed off to the Shooting Greens for some head to head race practice. The format for the exercise was called ‘trains’ where each athlete would set off at 15 to 30s intervals round courses of no more than 1.5 km, with the aim being to catch those ahead of you and hold off your pursuers. Paul was out once again out with his camera as a bonus distraction for the athletes: his footage will be used in next months edition of the Adventure Show along with coverage of the upcoming British Night Orienteering Championships.
On Sunday SEDS travelled further up the Royal Deeside to Inchmarnoch where the snow was even deeper and colder. The training, that was once again planned by Jon Musgrave, consisted of 3 control picking courses interspersed with line-orienteering on a contour and rock only map. Once again the pace was slow but the power output high. 100% concentration was required for a clean run and many heads turned to mush by the end. Very few cut the exercise short (which was planned with no snow in mind) and the ones that did enjoyed some very picturesque cross country skiing.
Another top weekend for Scotland’s top orienteers who are all running very well and in sync with very little separating their technical and physical abilities.
Posted on 03rd Mar 10
by Murray Strain - SEDS News Editor
Filed under: Elite Squad
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