Scottish based young adults enjoy winter training with British Orienteering Squads
As the delayed white Christmas cold weather descended over Scotland a group of us hardy orienteers made our way up to Speyside for a chance to get in some top-quality terrain. The camp was joint for SEDS (Scottish Elite and Development Squad) and the British Orienteering squads to people travelled from all over the UK to join.
The camp was based out of Kincraig which provided a great location for the training areas and most importantly a warm hall to sleep in. The general plan of the camp each day was Wake up > Breakfast > Train > Café > Train > Tea > Sleep, which seemed like we were nailing the athlete lifestyle.
The camp started on the Friday with some folk heading straight to Loch Vaa for head-to-head mass start fun. There was just enough snow on the ground to make the forest have that magic feel but not too deep to slow progress. Saturday morning, we couldn’t get enough of Loch Vaa so were straight back for more training, this time as a map run (run around a map with no controls) to help with map to ground, shape and direction. Luckily, we had no extra snow overnight so the conditions in the forest were still very prime. In the afternoon we headed to Tolquonie for some compass practice. The deep heather of the area combined with the deep snow made for some tough going. Snow is great for tracks forming so at least you could get a lot of positive feedback on your bearings or see where others had made mistakes.
On Sunday we made our way up to the Moray coast for some delightful, non-snowy dune orienteering. The first training was mass start forked intervals with focus on doing your own thing, great preparation for relays. After a well needed café break to warm up, we went straight back out to Lossiemouth. This session was a 1.5km corridor compass to the dunes, a control pick around the dunes (which even at 1:5000 was incredibly intricate, a lot of circles were wandered) and a 1.5km corridor compass back.
With a big snow dump overnight Monday’s training was good tough fun. In the morning we had a compass and contours exercise at Nethy Bridge with the contours proving especially challenging under the blanket of snow. In the afternoon there were two options with a sprint around Grantown, which was designed to be tricky even at jogging pace with windows and planning ahead intervals, and another chance for some mass start action at Anagach.
Sadly, after even more snow and a lot of webcam checks Tuesdays and Wednesday’s trainings were called off as it was decided the cars were best left where they were. A few group runs from the hall entailed before people headed back home.
A big thank you for everyone who helped with the trip especially to Alex W for doing so much of the organising, Graham G and Andy K for planning, Pippa and Duncan A for all there hanging controls and Matthew C for help on the camp. Also, a big thank you to everyone that provided cake, I can confirm they all went down a treat after a cold days training.
By Niamh Hunter