Training Day 2

The second day of training was just north of Csillebérci, where the team is staying. Riding as a team, the Aussies shot down the side of the mountain and road across to the map, which was roughly 10km away.

The days training was again set up by the event organisers who had provided maps and hung controls out in the forest. They had setup SI units and computer print outs for the riders. The Hungarian organisers had set a Short and a Long course that only varied a few kilometers in length.

The terrain consisted of very steep hillsides and a mixture of typical Hungarian forest with open fields. There were small patches of residential housing in the middle of the map and on the out skirts.  The scaling of the map was at 1:20 000. It really showed the climb/descents with 5m contour lines bunching up hard against each other in places, although it did make it hard to see some minor tracks at times.

On the map there were plenty of minor track networks that kept you on your toes to navigate through. It was tricky to navigate fast and fluidly through sections of these tracks. Everyone had their small moments of being a bit lost finding small connecting tracks that sometimes didn’t exist.

After the training everyone was starting to look a bit weary and tired from riding every day since the Hungarian Championships and still had to ride back up the hill to Csillebérci. As it turned out the climb up was very pleasant and fairly quick, and the team could relax and clean up after the days training.