WE Training Camp in Retournac(Loire)

Long Distance.

H21 : 10,7km, 31c, 600m up.

Start List : Jo Tinchant, Vinc’ Coupat, Charly Boich’, François Gonon, Sim Leroy, Phil Adamski (3’ intervall).

The first leg was very interesting. The choice a little at the left wasn’t good, because of climbing. The choice all at the left, flat, by the road, was maybe the best, but the right one seems good also. Personnally, I prefered the left one, making the second time.

I caught Vinc’ just before the 4. We made a mistake (1’) together at the 5, quite surprising because we attacked by path curve just above.

6th was typical of this terrain, in the rocky areas. The big boulder (on the circle, N-E) help us to simplify in this « confuse » area.

We made an other mistake to the 7, going too high and too much on the left. But the re-entrant help us to loose less than 1’.

François catch up us before the 8. The speed increased behind him for the 2 little loops. We caught Jo at the 11. As François was faster, we had to let him go, seeing him away, but controling our way 100m behind.

A very good downing to the 16 made me take 20sec to the others. So I punched this with François, and without Jo and Vinc’.

François, so fast went away again. I was alone. And I made a mistake to the 19 (45sec), because I didn’t want to go through the green. But the length by the white (right side) was too long.

I continued with an other mistake to the 20, going too high by the water channel. So the 2 others came again from behind.

3 together, we were very fast for 21th and 22th. But the climb to the 23 was too much for our leg in this beginnig of the winter preparation. We lost 2’30 compared to François, only physically.

The end was very nice, we had to managed this fine controls with the tiredness. We managed it quite good, but lost 15sec at (almost) each control, very closed to it (5-10 meters !), because we were too tired to read precisely our map and description while running. But we were happy to finish by a downhill, a too avoid a big mistake, for exemple at the 30 where there is not so much detail to attack the control.

This first long distance training was not so long, but the rocky ground and the climbing made it tough. I will need some few days to recover !

Results :

1° : François 1h39’21

2° : Charly 1h48’23

3° : Vinc’ 1h51’13

4° : Jo 1h54’01

5° : Phil 2h00’26

Sim’ dnf (injury)

Sprint :

The sprint race opened the winter week-end trainings. It took place totally in streets of a quite old town of the « Haute-Loire » (50 km west of St Etienne). There is a big density of roads and paths combined with underpass and steps. Thus the race was hard, you needed to stay focused all the race not to lose important seconds by taking the wrong way. In fact the difficulty wasn't mainly to find the fastest route choices, but to follow the planed route choice.The contours are not printed on the map but the north side is upper by about 75m climbing. It is almost impossible to read the map in the very sloping downhill, and still more in the steps. It reduced the map reading time and with the tiredness it could have lead to mistakes, sometimes long...

It was the same race for women and men and juniors and seniors.

Result : ( there were some problems at the finnished due to canceled controls for some runners who didn't understand the consigns, as me...)

Name - Finished time - Time at the 15th

François Gonon : 15'11 14'14

Philippe Admaski : 15'42 14'45

Simon Leroy : 16'14 14'56

Johann Tinchant : 16'27 15'24

Vincent Coupat : 16'27 14'49

... ...

Capucine Vercellotti : 18'38 17'00

Goffre Anaïs : 19'01 18'02

Léa Vercellotti : 19'16 18'11

Cindy Bécu : 19'29 18'00

Amélie Chataing : 19'38 18'28

Middle distance and night course :

Contrary to the sprint and the long distance, the medium and the night races were not « objective races ». It is a new concept in the french winter training. 2 races are choosen to be the goals of the week-end (here the sprint and the long).

It means we have to totally give our best on those races. On the others we can physicaly relax and simply work our own technic. Up to now we did all the races as faster as we could, and I guess we couldn'be totally focused on every sessions.

Charly