After a quick and refreshing trip to Switzerland, it was time for the business part of this trip to start. The primary objective was to coach at the Junior World Orienteering Champs (JWOC), the secondary to re-live my youth a bit with some orienteering in the Italian dolomites. After many years of elite level sport, time seems to march on and I just can’t seem to keep up with the my 20 year old compatriots in the forest anymore. Rather than put my skills and experience on a dusty old shelf in the back room somewhere I thought why not help out where I can, still be part of the team and pass on some of those skills and experience….and that’s how I ended up in Italy.

It wasnt the most straight forward path to the ultimate goal of coaching at JWOC but a few months later I found myself was on a train speeding through a tunnel in the Swiss Alps heading towards Milan.

Milan was stinking hot, 38degC with some heavy bags and slightly to much gear was not my idea of fun. Wifi was difficult to come by, and I hadnt managed to find somewhere to get a good sim card deal (old phone = not compatible with e-sim). This proved difficult to find the advance party that I was picking up in Milan central. McDonald’s was my saviour and soon enough I got in contact. What seemed like a simple task proved to take way longer than anticipated…. just about an hour late, I had a rental car sorted and found the others.

Task 2 was fitting everything in the car. I tight squeeze but we made it work, definitely wasn’t worth 3000 euro extra to upgrade the rental car company tried to fleece me on!

Task 3, I was slightly more worried about. Heading out of cental Milan in the late afternoon. With 4 others that are pretty reasonable at navigating we managed to escape and made our way onto the motorway… only once testing out the automatic braking system 😅

Motorway driving was another experience in itself, 130km/hr most of the way and the key, drive like an Italian. We made it into Trento and out the otherside to a supermarket just in time before closing. Only one missed exit that exposed my confusion of left and right… or and the other instruction to get into the supermarket car park of “left, left, left, yeah right here”

In Balsega di Pine, we met the 5 others who had arrived by bus earlier in the day and suddenly there was 10 of us in Camp.

Day 1 of training there was quite a squeeze to get into the car, then a bit of back and forwards because everyone forgot the maps! Oh well, we economised on time and did some supermarket shopping in the meantime. First foray onto a map was at the model area, Montevaccino. The mapping was a bit vague, the terrain not super nice and the scale I started at very weird. It also did not have rave reviews from the advance party. Still a bit of lingering jet lag and some warm weather made me think ” well I’m glad I’m not racing JWOC” but I still managed to figure it out a bit. I also got to know the way to map pretty well with a return trip in the evening to allow Felix to get back on a map after a week or so of sickness.

Day 2 was another tight squeeze into the rental car. Bit of a drive today, about an hour to get to the map of Sella Valsugana Ovest. Right on the edge of a famous sculpture park, this was quite a cool map, very nice white forest with some cool mountain-ous contours. We did a mass start for a few controls for some race simulation, which was quite fun too. I was still coming right from jet lag and the heat but this map was great for getting back into the swing of things.

While up the valley we ran into lunchtime siesta and had to find a large supermarket to get some lunch… they had quite a nice selection and along with some ice creams to cool us down I managed to find some super tasty Focaccia bread ahead of training number 2 for the day. Sprint training at Roncegno Terme followed lunch in the heat of the day. Another mass Start with some crazy Italian streets to navigate which was a good challenge. While waiting and chatting at the finish there was this dude who came over from his restaurant speaking to us in German (he saw Sam’s Austrian and Jakes Swiss top). Eventually once we established the easiest language to communicate in he invited us in giving us as much sparkling water and fruit as we could manage! Thanks Moreno!

Day 3 and now a full team including 3 cars making life so much easier. Some long distance training was on the schedule for today up at Laverone with quite the crazy drive up the mountain, it was super narrow with very small tunnels and super steep. Quite the driving test. I only got some back seat driving advice once when I had to go around a parked motorbike and drifted a bit close to the wrong side of the road….😬!

The map itself was really nice, very Alpine terrain. I decided to do some of the course backwards after dropping the athletes off. My first control no problems, it was then just over the ridge to a track and across to the control. Once over the ridge I took a bearing and that’s when I noticed something was up. I was totally convinced my compass was pointing in the wrong direction. But you always need to trust the compass… in the end I gave up trust, ignored it and made my way to the next control no problems. All seemed good again with the compass too… next control was fine… or so I thought as suddenly I couldn’t trust it again. Eventually I caught the others coming back the other way and then turned to return. It was only after we got back to the cars I looked at the bottom of the compass and realised that it had been sitting in a cupboard for so long (and I probably had had it for 20 years?) That the needle had partially detached from the magnet! I’d have to say I was somewhat relieved with that finding… it wasn’t just some poor orienteering by me the last few days, my compass was messing me around. After training at Laverone it was back for yet another trip to the supermarket before heading back to base.

Day 4. If yesterday’s drive to the map was a bit crazy…. today was something else again. It would be safe to say that even though Google maps selected the fastest route it probably was not the most efficient. There was some serious back road travel involved, very steep very tight and quite bumpy. The whole time I was hoping that we wouldn’t come across another car going the other way and thankfully we didn’t!

Rifugio Maranza was yet another amazing map set on the hillside so very steep in sections with nice big rounded contours. There was even some trenches from one or both of the world wars as well as at least one grave. These trenches made for some interesting features on the map!

Instead of taking the wild route up it actually looked closer to go through Trento to get back down, so it was a good excuse to make a side trip to the “big” city.

Day 5 of training was race simulation day at Monte Mezza. This consisted of going through the normal race process with just about 20mins in race mode. Good way to flush the cobwebs out. I was on control placement as some of the features were not always marked. I did the course backwards under a little bit of time pressure… but this was the nicest map I think I had run on maybe ever in Europe. It just had some really nice features, the forest was nice and maybe some rain from the night before made it feel “crisp” … if that’s a thing… I had trouble with placing one control, it required some rehanging and reconsideration. If I was controlling I think I would have moved to another feature….but anyway it provided some discussion afterwards. I am pretty convinced it was correct however.

Despite getting close to cutting it fine, I made it to the start with a couple of minutes to go…. however to late for Sam as he was first starter and ran off wildly, way too far. He had to start a little later which messed times up a tiny bit but all worked out in the end. By the time everyone had started and I had run back through the map everyone was pretty much ready to go again, onto the next model map just around the corner.

Temperatures were heating up by now and it was close to mid day. I was starting to feel a bit of accumulated fatigue too… not that I let that on to the kids. I pre-ran the course through this cool little town Pieve Tesino. Second control I got a bit flummoxed and changed my route choice as there was somebody sunbathing in the way! After that it was quite a tricky wee course navigating the stairs, pathways and narrow streets. About half way through the course at an agreed point I was assigned to stop everyone from their race pace and allow them to continue at easy pace. What I hadn’t realised initially the spot that we chose was a school, and being Monday and around lunchtime… school was about to break for lunchtime siesta… I started to feel a little uncomfortable sitting waiting outside drenched in sweat. And sure enough the bell rang kids came out… right about the time the JWOC kids arrived at the control…. a little bit chaotic. All good though, I didn’t get arrested and no one ran too hard after that control. Very cool terrain for sprinting, nothing compares really.

Day 6 was moving day, moving into the official accomodation that was. There was quite a bit of cleaning to do at the house first before check out…eventually we were all packed and out. Each Car went a different way today, some to the lake, some to the track and my car on a training mission to Andolo. This was probably the furthest drive away and into reportedly bear country. It was the other side of the valley so I was quite keen to go for an explore. It was also up the valley from where I went in 2005 so nice to reminisce a bit.

Again a very cool forest, especially the second half of the map. Although the first half had you running alongside a cliff with a nice view the second part was a network of tracks and nice small hills. I sweated to pieces as it felt super hot once again but enjoyed my little jaunt around.

On the drive down the hill there was an abandoned castle, and I thought why not stop and have a look. The boys in the car were almost surprised I stopped but also kind intrigued. It turned out to be worth a quick stop as it was pretty nice… just super super hot!

Back to camp and back to pick up our gear and move into the hotel. Somehow gear explosion had taken place and it took 3 cars 4 trips… but only 10mins down the road it all worked out OK. Now things were starting to get a bit more real…. stay tuned for part 2…