MAROC in Romania and Switzerland 2014
Swiss O week Day 5 Start
Roger and Trish Coombs made the Transylvania Open in Romania their warm-up for their prime 2014 summer focus, the Swiss O Week. Read more…
“The four day event was based around the city of Cluj in the north east of Romania. We’d decided to just do days 3 and 4 as having not been to Romania before we felt that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to the area justice and besides we wanted to keep some energy for the six competitions days in Switzerland following. The two races were both held on the same map in an area of beech woodland not unlike the Chiltern Hills or areas of the North Downs in southern England but the large number of mushroom pickers we came across in the woods was a very notable difference. The woods were very clean under foot and the only impediment to fast running were the very steep hills. Events were very friendly and low key but Roger was still somewhat surprised to win M55 by 19 minutes on one of the days – you may have noticed that does not happen in Scotland!
Things moved up a gear when we moved to Zermatt in Switzerland. 5000+ orienteers descended upon this car-free town to take part in the biennial Swiss O-Week. All events were accessible by public transport – basically gondolas, cable cars and funiculars. A transport pass for the week was part of the entry fee and it got heavy usage for the events but also before and after each days races.
Day 1 was a sprint around Zermatt and we didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory. Roger managed to be 175th out of 195 to control 1 on the M55 course having complete brain fade in some dark Swiss alleyways. He was in good company..Simone Niggli lost a similar amount of time at her no 1 too..lots of people apparently followed her as well!
With the sprint over the remaining 5 days were a fantastic mix of high altitude orienteering areas ranging from: runnable alpine meadows, with a mix of fine and coarse contour detail but with rocky slopes through to forested hillside with detailed sections and large boulder fields and difficult running, to high alpine, very rocky and sometimes rough terrain at the edge of the glacier with the highest technical and physical demands. The scenery was continuously fabulous and orienteering with starts often above 2000m and once up at 2900m was something new to us. The effect on our breathing especially when trying to run uphill was substantial. As one might expect in Switzerland the organisation was impeccable even when it came to swapping two days for weather related reasons.
Unfortunately we didn’t win any prizes – perhaps not surprising given the class sizes (M55 was 195+, and W55 120) - but it just had to be the best O multi-day we’ve ever done (the Scottish 6-day excepted of course ) - one to definitely put on the bucket list. See you in Engadin and St Moritz in 2016!”
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