Sally Calland orienteers in Turkey
The festival was a 10 day event with 17 races, yes 17. 14 races were training races and then the festival culminated with 3 World Ranking Events all around the Antalya region.
The training events
So where do I start to get across my experience of this fantastic event. Day 1, I suppose!
Duaci was the morning event and incredibly technical. I was doing very well until 15. I had gone straight line towards the two trees (which were very prominent) and rooted around with no luck. I then decided to go to the road on the east and go in again from the tree. Still no joy. After 30 mins I gave it up as a bad job and continued on. Not the best start to the festival!
The afternoon event, on the other hand, was a delight:
… beautiful, fast, runnable forest with a wonderful gorge walk afterwards. Day 1 recovered well.
Day 2 saw the first sprint in there Expo centre. I had ran here before and so the race went by uneventfully. Quick, relatively easy nav.
The afternoon took us back onto the hills and boy was it hilly. I had decided to do the middle course this afternoon as I was already getting heavy legs!
You will see from the map of Eksili that all the courses were on one map and so you could decide some way into the course if you wanted to switch. A great idea, which I took advantage of several times through the training week.
I treated myself to some serious dinner afterwards. Yum, yum!
Day 3 saw us in another very runnable forest in the morning, with nothing too eventful to report!
Then the afternoon was back to another old haunt. Kumkoy. An epic sand dune area which had eaten me up and spat me out once before. That said, I do enjoy sand dunes. They are incredibly technical and if you nav on them, you can nav anywhere (IMAO).
I started very well, too well in fact! I was very careful to stay on bearings. The tracks were almost useless (apart from through the forest fight) as they were just sand tracks and merged and changed significantly. I even went mostly straight from 10–11 – bang on. So far it was Sally – 1, Kumkoy – 1 (2019 was the last time I was here and had a shocker!) and I was running well. Then 18 fought back!! I had managed to cut through the white forest at the edge of the marsh but then could not find the control. I don’t think I had gone far enough west in hindsight. I ended up relocating from the road, costing me a few mins.
Next day was Selge, an ancient Roman site that was only accessible across a very, very narrow 1900s bridge (also built by the Romans). Unable to prove with a photo as the road is so narrow, without anywhere to stop.
Selge has also beaten me up in the past and so I focused on the stone walls, open land and the trees as key aids to nav. It helped a lot early on and despite a mistake at 2 (didn’t go far enough) I was doing well.
I had planned early to head NE out of 10 and follow the track to 11. Long way around, but safe. Anyway, as we say in the Army ‘no plan ever survives contact with the enemy’ and so stupidly I changed my plan and decided to follow the open land up and over the hill. BIG MISTAKE, HUGE! I ended up clambering through the rocks and as a result lost so much time. The rest of the race was ok. The area is my favourite ever, it is so technical, challenging and beautiful.
The next day was a sprint, not too technical, but great to test myself at (relative) speed!
The next day we were back on sand dunes. There were 100s of runners all competing in a relay race. This was very distracting and one of my biggest work-on points – ignore everyone around me! I started badly (getting distracted straight away!) and ended up at control 2, which I call a happy accident. A quick relocation saw me slow down and focus on my map and not the people! The loops were really tricky and you needed to stay on your game to make sure you didn’t mispunch. I didn’t, thankfully and really enjoyed the challenge. Good training for Redcar’s CSC.
In the afternoon the event was held on an ancient Roman mining site. You will see the deep rivets near CP 3 and 11 (for want of a better word!) on the map and this is where the Romans cut the stone from the ground to export it.
This was a very technical area and going was slow due to so much loose rock created by the mining. I had a reasonable run, but drifted off my compass to the west of CP11, costing me some time. The ground looked exactly the same and I had relocated off the wrong ‘Roman mining’ linear feature!
I am now VERY TIRED, but happy! So onto the actual competition.
The competition events
Stage 1 was hilly although short. I made a mistake to one by choosing the first reentrant off the track instead of the second. Apart from that (and tired legs) I had a good run. 2nd place!
Stage 2 was a WRE and was the first time I got my feet wet since arriving in Turkey. I had a good run up until 7–8. I contoured north around the huge cliffs and up the river bed to the tracks. I then took the wrong track to the CP (circled). It all looked the same as the way I thought I was heading until the river bed and open area looked odd. This parallel mistake cost me 5 mins and the win! Booooo! Another 2nd place though.
Stage 3 – the long. I had a great run. My best leg was 7–8 where I headed south through the open strip of land, then followed the track close to 12 before cutting up the river bed and hitting the large rocks west of the control. Then up and over straight into the control. The ground was very uneven and I found myself either going up or down all the way around, so fast running was not often possible. Another 2nd behind a very capable Russian lady.
Stage 4, the final race. A wonderful sprint around the old town. Not particularly technical but I was caught out going to 3. I took the wrong road heading NE of the building costing me 30 secs to relocate. Very frustrating given I lost by 25 secs!
And good 2nd place overall and I was happy and tired. I did all long trainings bar two, ran 92km with 1537 metres of climb and came 2nd overall in the WRE competition. I was TIRED!
Turkey offers some amazingly, technical terrain all in close proximity. They have an event in Cappadocia in April (the place with the tufa rock chimneys and hot air balloons) and have competitions in Nov and Feb every year. The weather is Mediterranean and the prices cheap as it is out of season. The people are very welcoming, the event immaculately organised and I cannot recommend the place enough, even as a solo traveller.
Now to head off to POM (Portugal O Meeting). Let’s hope all this training pays off!
