Lagganlia is an orienteering camp run annually, by the British Orienteering Federation, for athletes aged between 12 and 14 (This is the M14 age group and W14 age group). The camp is aimed towards developing talent for orienteering throughout Britain by running a very tough but extremely fun week of technical orienteering training in the moorland and forests of Scotland. It runs during the summer holidays and this year it ran from the 25th of July to the 1st of August. A total of 24 athletes are selected from the 12 regions and this year Northern Ireland had 2 athletes selected to take part.
When we arrived on the first night we unpacked in our rooms, had diner and then spent an hour or two getting to know all the other athletes. After we had played the games that the coaches had created in order to get us to know each other we were briefed on what would happen on day 2 before we headed off to bed at 22:30
Breakfast was served each day from 07:30 till 08:00, and we woke up at 07:00 to get our orienteering gear ready prior to breakfast. Breakfast offered a healthy selection of cereals along with toast. Once we had finished our breakfast we had to make our pack lunch for the day and were given a time to be up at the lodge for a briefing.
The training on day two was at Uath Lochan. We started off by learning how to warm up properly and then moved into the orienteering training. This commenced with pacing 100m on the flat, uphill and downhill. Pacing is a very useful skill in orienteering as it lets you how far you have gone which is key in very technical terrain. The it was time to put this skill into action by doing a fun relay. This consisted of each team of three having a soft toy which the first person ran and set at the first control then the second person ran out to the first control got our toy and put it at the second control. It ended when everyone in your team had ran twice and the last runner brought the toy back.
Our second day of training was in two different locations. Our first location was a moorland and the second a forest and moorland mix called North Granish. The focus for this day was compass work, involving ground to map and map to ground techniques. This skills allow you to know where you are by using the shape of the ground and then using the contours on the map to locate your position. When we arrived at the second location we were put into teams of three and had a relay race, with each person running two 144 km legs.
Day four had the longest travel to get to the training area and required us to be bussed 1 hour and 15mins to Roseisle. This is an area of forested sand dunes and with dunes, hills and depressions everywhere our focus for the day was to use contours as attack points and catching features. This is probably the event I took the most from at the end of the day as I would never have thought of using contours as attack points in the past. Once we had finished training we learned how to stretch before a run to the beach and a dip in the sea, which proved to be warmer than the loch we were in later in the week and the river we were in at the Scottish six days competition the following week.
Wednesday was only a half day of training which started off in a forest called Moor of Alvie and then moved to an outdoors centre called Badaguish. Moor of Alvie was a sprint qualifier in which the top 7 were in the A final and the others where in the B final. The finals where then held at Badaguish where each course was 2.1km long and fast running. After this we had a go on one of the outdoor activities, 7 rings suspended over a pond. We attempted to cross using the rings but getting very wet in the process. After this we went to loch Morlich to mess about in the water and then into Aviemore to have some free time to shop.
Thursday saw us at Grantown on Spey to do talk-o and relocation. This involved us moving about in pairs were one person was in front , with their map out of sight, and the second person was behind with a map and giving clear instructions on how to get the next control. Once there the the pairs swapped roles. Following this we returned to Lagganlia for the biggest briefing of the week. Friday was to be the Lagganlia Classic race where we would have to put all our skills and training into practice.
When we woke up on Friday we were all excited for the race and after breakfast everyone got ready before the first starters went on the bus at 10:15. When we arrived we had to go into quarantine, meaning we only had a small stretch of road to warm up on and weren’t allowed anywhere else. The race was both technically challenging at TD5 level, the highest possible, and physically tough at 5.5km and 100m of height climb.
The week I had training at Lagganlia was the best orienteering training I have ever had and provided plenty of fitness and terrain running as well. The skill I found helped me the most was using contours as attack points and catching features. This was a technique I put to very good use over the Scottish Six Days of orienteering the following week.