2024 European Youth Orienteering Champs

“My EYOC experience was great. I enjoyed the racing and getting to meet new cool people whilst becoming closer with my team in the process. 

My main focus for EYOC was the long distance, as I had been injured for most of the year and had only been on a sprint map two times the whole year. I had reasonably high hopes for the long distance: I didn’t have a place goal but I just put all my mental energy into executing my best race possible and then worry about placings after. We had trained in relevant polished terrain for three days (Tuesday-Thursday) before doing the models on the Friday, with the long distance on Saturday. I had felt mostly good in the trainings and picked out key techniques that I would need to focus on in the race. These were simple things such as 1) making sure I walk to plan the long leg so I got my route choice correct, 2) focusing on my exit direction and 3) reading my map as much as possible. 

Stay focused

I had picked the last starting block, so I had a three-four hour wait in quarantine. I knew I needed to be in a good mental state to perform well in this race. This involved me going over my techniques and visualising how I will execute them in the race. However, I knew I could not do this for four hours, so I talked to lots of people at the start and even played volleyball with some Latvians for half an hour. I was one of the last starters in the field, so my bus to the start wasn’t very crowded (me and one other guy). Every person got a ride to the start in an event-organised bus from the quarantine. Once I got to the start, I finished my warmup and had a quick chat with my coach, Kieran Woods. Kieran gave me some great advice to take out the race factor and forget that it was such a big event and just focus on basic navigation. This was the goal of most of my mental preparation, so to hear Kieran say this to me minutes before my start gave me good confidence.

I knew the first control would be important, I executed it well and continued finding the controls with good efficiency and map contact until the first long leg. I executed my plan of making sure I walk to plan this, the leg was approximately two kilometres long. There were many hills to go over going straight, so I chose to go to the road because I knew it would be faster. My thought process was it goes a bit out of the way to get to the road, however once you are there, it is downhill a 1.5 kilometres road run and I knew this would be much faster than any kind of straight option. I executed the road leg well and at this point I was thinking that everything was going well and I had to be in a good position if I kept this up. Straight after this thought, a Norwegian guy passed me, who had started four minutes behind me - this made me rethink my idea of how well I was doing. 

Long leg route choice from Control 7 to 8 on M18 long distance
Now my strategy was to run with the Norwegian guy. This worked for the next control and I actually got the fastest time of anyone on the course for this leg, the Norwegian guy was very strong and I was unsure if I could keep up. However, at the next point we passed a water stop, to my surprise he didn’t stop. My plan had been to take a gel at this water point, after some hesitation as to what to do I stopped following the Norwegian guy and went to the water stop and took my gel. 

I  ran the next few legs with no problems and I was coming into the run-through. At events as big as EYOC, this is when starting last the spectator control can be a very intimidating place. However I had prepared for this and continued with no problems into the last loop. By this point I was very tired but I was still committed to executing the last part of the course well. There were 20 controls, I punched the 18th and had very minimal time loss until this point. I saw how close the finish was and didn’t read my map as carefully as I had for the previous 18 controls. This resulted in a 1m30 error to the 19th. I didn’t learn from my mistake either as going to 20: I didn’t look at my map as much as before because I was afraid it would slow me down. When trying to find a line through the long grass, I found a line however it took me very wide to the left and I also lost time on this control which was a shame since my navigation was good up until the last two controls. I sprinted in with everything I had to finish 35th. I had been sitting in around 20-25th the whole race until these last two controls. 

This was a great experience for me and I learnt that I should never get over-confident with my navigation at the end of a course - I need to follow my processes right until the end. I also learned I need to drop 2-3 minutes in the 5k to have any chance at a podium placement, with the navigation focus being the easier fix of the two. 

Overall this race was a great learning experience for me and the main thing I was happy with was having mostly good navigation in a big event such as EYOC.”

Thanks Eddie! They are some great learning/reminders for any level of orienteer!