Lagganlia has changed the way I orienteer by Ruari C
Controlled running
For 1 week this summer holiday I have been at an orienteering camp that has been the most impactful thing I have done in this sport. The camp that I went too was called Lagganlia, near Aviemore, and it has changed how I orienteer.
Lagganlia is a week-long training camp for orienteering that is run through the summer holidays and is for M14/W14. Every year 12 boys and 12 girls are selected from the whole of the UK to take part in this camp. During the week you focus on orienteering techniques such as bearings, contours and route choice, not only for classic orienteering but also for sprint orienteering
The coaches at Lagganlia are extremely experienced orienteers, with some of the senior coaches coaching for 10 years or more and others running for Britain in WOC, and this year we had Alice Tilley coaching who has run for New Zealand in WOC. As well as the senior coaches we had junior coaches, some of whom went to Lagganlia themselves, helping to run the camp, plan courses and shadow athletes round courses.
When we were there every day we would run in a new location with the morning being made up of practice runs that you could do as many or as few of as you wanted to, with you being advised on which ones you should do by the coaches depending on what you want to focus on during that run. In the afternoons however we would have a race that would either be a serious race or a fun race such as a peg race, star relay or odds and evens.
As well as classic orienteering we would also work on sprint orienteering and some of the techniques that were part of that aspect of the sport, such as mass starts, gaffling and butterfly loops. Halfway through the week we also did a proper sprint race around an urban area.
At the end of the week we did our tour champs race which was the finale to the camp, this race was a long TD5 level course that would challenge us and make us put into practice the skills we had learned over the week. In the end I ended up coming 8th in M14.
For what’s next, I want to take part in more large events such as the JHI’s and JIRC’s as well as others. I would also hope to get into ScotJOS and compete with them. But I mainly just want to keep going to as many events as possible and to improve my fitness.
Thank you ECKO, and especially Jan for helping me develop as an orienteer.