Ikke bare Kowalczyk, Zyla og Stoch som er Polsk i Kollen!

I uken frem mot 10mila var Agata, Natalia og Rafal på treningsleir i Moss med sin Polske klubb UKS Orientus Lodz. De rakk å trene mange gode økter, deltok på kvistete og kvasete løp, og var på sightseeing i Holmenkollen, før det var klare til å representere Raumar i 10MILA

Les Natalia og Agatas sammendrag av deres Nordic Tour!

Agata, Natalia and Rafal visited Norway already one week before 10Mila. They stayed at OK Moss club house. They were not alone there, but with 7 more people from their home club – UKS Orientus Lodz.

Firstly, they took part in Norgescup sprint WRE in Askim on Friday. Then Lordagskjappen

Agata på 5.plass!

(middle) on Saturday and Smaalenenelopet (long, chasing start) on Sunday. The sprint distance was pretty easy and it was all about the running speed. Rafal took a good 21st place in men’s elite. The forest races held on the next 2 days offered very challenging orienteering in fine Norwegian terrain. Agata showed great technique and placed 5th in the overall classification of D19-20E.

On Monday they took some rest with slow line training in the morning and a short night loop in the evening. On Tuesday it was time for very nice training in pairs on the map from the Saturday’s competition (the north part of it). Right after the lunch they travelled to Oslo and did some sightseeing (Opera and Holmenkollen)
. Obviously, they couldn’t miss the Oslo City Cup as well
. Unfortunately, they expected it to be a city sprint (wearing just T-shirt and shorts). However, it turned out to be a completely forest sprint. That’s why most of the Polish runners took it quite easy
. Anyway, it was loads of fun about the whole situation!

Wednesday meant the popular Kvistkvaset relay. Fortunately, the terrain and the map were much more friendly than last year (Natalia and Rafal remember these bushes really well)
. Agata and Natalia struggled with the difficult courses and after Marie’s good performance on the last leg they finished 4th in the women’s class. Rafal did a good opening job on the 1st leg and after good efforts of Eskil and Havard the men finished on 4th place too. They managed to win beige caps, which made Rafal very happy:) In the evening, the Polish group had a short night course in Moss.

On Thursday morning they trained on the map from the Norwegian Veteranmesterskapet 2012 . Rafal went first and set controls for the rest. Unfortunately, the small re-entrant on the 4th control was too difficult to find for him and only Agata managed to see this control flag afterwards (saying that it was set a little bit farther in the terrain). The terrain was exceptionally nice and extremely challenging for most of the Polish guys. In the late afternoon OK Moss organized a little training loop with the use of (their NOT so favourite) EMIT bricks. The training block was completed on Friday morning with a short course with some compass legs and they could pack their things for the long drive to Stockholm. Destination: 10Mila!

Natalia after her 2.leg

There were as many as 3 Polish girls in Raumar’s women team on Saturday. Agata had some problems at the first forking of the 1st leg, but continued fighting until the very end and sent Natalia to the forest on the 207th place. Natalia did her best and jumped up 20 places. The Norwegian girls (Tiril and Marie) did a really good job and the new anchor runner (Ewa Gwozdz) could start on the 179th place. She had a close-to-perfect run and finished 155th! What a debut!

In the men’s relay Rafal had a superb race on the 8th leg and jumped 9 places up (from 61 to 52), having the 28th time of his leg. Thanks to all the other guys effort, Raumar could eventually finish on the same place as last year – 48.

It is also worth noticing that the Polish club (UKS Orientus Lodz) set the ‘men’ team and Ewa, Natalia and Agata were an important part of it, running the 5th, 7th and 10th leg respectively. What a weekend for the ladies!

For flere photos, trykk her!