Rachel Duckworth competes for GBR
At the end of July, I headed out to Vila Real in northern Portugal to compete at the FISU World University Orienteering Championships as part of the GBR team. The championships bring together some of the best university orienteers from around the world, and this year almost 250 athletes from 29 countries made the trip to Portugal.
Having recently graduated from Cardiff University with an undergraduate degree in Physiotherapy, being selected to represent Great Britain at an event of this level felt like a particularly fitting way to finish my time as a student-athlete.
The competition was based in and around Vila Real, about an hour and a half east of Porto, and was organised by the Portuguese university and orienteering authorities. The programme was certainly weighted towards the urban orienteering enthusiast, consisting of a knock-out sprint, mixed sprint relay, individual sprint and, finally, a middle-distance forest race. For someone who much prefers running in the forest, it was a surprisingly sprint-heavy week!
Sprint, sprint and more sprint
The competition kicked off with the knock-out sprint, which involved qualification followed by quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final. I didn’t end up advancing further than the qualifications. The sprint races were held in and around the centre of Vila Real, making full use of the historic town and its rather complicated urban layout. There were narrow streets, courtyards, multiple levels and plenty of opportunities to lose time through a slightly questionable route choice.
I had an average run in the knock-out sprint and mixed sprint relay, before putting together a much better performance in the individual sprint. The individual race was probably the highlight of my week competitively, with some challenging route choices and a very fast pace making it particularly rewarding when things came together.
The sprint terrain was also a nice change from the typical British urban races. The historic buildings and multi-level nature of the town made for some very interesting maps and courses, and the planners managed to use different parts of Vila Real across the sprint competitions without the races feeling repetitive.
And finally… a forest!
After three sprint disciplines and a rest day, we finally got to the race I had been looking forward to most: the middle distance.
The forest competition was held in a military training area on the outskirts of Vila Real. The terrain was surprisingly reminiscent of the forested sand-dune areas you find in northern Scotland, with intricate contours, rock features and some seriously complicated shapes in the terrain. The area had previously been mapped at 1:4,000, but we raced on a 1:10,000 map. That meant a huge amount of detail had been simplified compared with the maps we had been using for geeking and preparations in the build-up to the event.
The terrain itself was a real mixture, with pine forest, steep and intricate slopes and areas where the runnability changed dramatically. It was the sort of terrain where having a good understanding of the map and what the contours represented was crucial.
Unfortunately, my middle-distance race was a bit of a disaster. After a week of gradually building confidence and putting together some solid sprint performances, I never really found my rhythm in the forest and had a pretty awful race. Not quite the way I had hoped to finish the competitive side of the week!
One of the less subtle challenges of racing in Portugal was the weather. Temperatures were regularly peaking at 37–39°C, although thankfully most of our races were scheduled early in the morning to avoid the worst of the heat.
Interestingly, the unusually hot and dry summer we had experienced back home in the UK actually turned out to be pretty useful preparation. While it certainly wasn’t quite Portugal, several months of warmer-than-usual weather had meant that racing and training in the heat didn’t come as quite as much of a shock as it might otherwise have done.
The important races…
Of course, no university competition would be complete without a few less serious events.
After the proper racing, we took part in a beer relay, with planned and printed courses around the park adjacent to the accommodation, followed later in the day by the championship banquet and plenty more celebrations. It turns out that university students are remarkably good at finding ways to relate almost anything to beer.
Vila Real was a brilliant way to round off my time at Cardiff University and my time as a student-athlete. There were some races I was pleased with, some I would very happily have another go at, and plenty of memories that had very little to do with the actual results.
Representing GBR at a World University Championships was something I had hoped I would get the opportunity to do during my university career, so to finish my degree and my student-orienteering years on an international stage in Portugal was pretty special.
