A junior training week
was held for the second time near Killarney over the last week in August.
Thirty people, both juniors and coaches, attended and while this year we
were without bike-o, canoe-o and the infamous skinny-o, it was a highly
enjoyable week that benefited everyone.
Once again we took over the converted church in Muckross, known now as the venture centre. The food provided by "Dr. Dre" was yummy, no complaints from anyone there. The quality of our meals was such that a cat joined us for the week, also taking advantage of Brendan's car to get into Killarney!
And so to the training.the areas used varied immensely from the forests of Muckross to the open terrain of Crohane Lake. These World Cup areas provided testing navigation for all as well as good terrain running. A day on the beach was also in order, when we landed on the sand dunes of Inch. Swimming and dune-jumping (led by Colm) seemed infinitely more tempting than navigating through the sand in the sun, but we did a good day's training. In the end, however, the temptation proved too much for some who decided to jump into the inviting waters in their o-suits. A number of people on the beach found this quite funny, as did a lot of people in Killarney Town Park when a 'park-o' event took place there! This was the final event of the training programme and finished off an excellent week of orienteering.
The exercises themselves included line events, relocation, map walks, Norwegian and mass start score events as well as the usual cross-country events. Thanks to all the coaches, too numerous to name but I'll do it anyway: Toni O'Dovovan, Colm Rothery, Frank Ryan, Brendan Cryan, Andrew Mein, Shane Lynch, Paul Dunne and Nigel and Barbara Foley-Fisher. With the Junior Home International only two weeks away the week was invaluable to us all.
The social side of things was well catered for too; swims in the Gleneagle (and the jacuzzi, for which we were all over 18, and the slide, for which we were under 14!), trips to the cinema, shopping in Killarney, a table quiz and of course, to top it all off, David and Stephen's amazing stomach-churning performance on the last night, thanks a lot lads!! The table quiz also provided a lot of entertainment- 'void the question!' and thanks to Liz for organising it. In the end the 'hot spurs' team took the honours aided by the very vocal Paul Dunne!
So now we are ready to take on the English, Scottish and Welsh, and hopefully with our new-found skills and amazing orienteering ability we'll succeed: watch this space!!�