Belgian champion long distance tells his story...

Last sunday, Belgian Championships Long Distance took place in Louftemont. In men elite class Jan Gilot (Photo: Worldofo.com) won his first national title in this distance. After his excellent sprint result (22nd) at WOC in Denmark and his complete dominance during the '4 days of the Kempen' (Flanders, Belgium), Jan Gilot had to deal with the pressure to be the favourite... Here you will find his report on the race:

Map with Jan's route

It was mentally a very tough week before the BC long distance cause everyone was pointing me as the big favorite and the one to beat. I kept in mind that if I made a technically very good race I would have a chance to win, because physically I'm not the strongest but I can make technically the difference in that kind of terrain. There were 3 important techniques I knew beforehand that they would decide about a perfect or far from perfect race: namely compass running, attacking point and read the map beforehand.The beginning of the race was as I expected: very technically demanding. At the second control I had some problem with to distinguish between green and white area on the map, but after a moment of looking around in the forest I knew at what I should pay attention during the whole race. The first hesitation was at the fourth control where I hit the track before I found the reantrance. I lost some 20 seconds there. At 6 the same story where I was too much to the north coming from the white area but I could relocate easily. To control 7 I decided to take the road all the way round to havethe chance to read the map beforehand. Arriving at 7 I knew what where the difficulties I would encounter till control 13. I think here I won therace because I only lost 15 seconds at the 10th control for going wrongfully around a bush and found the other controls without problems, where others lost a lot of time. To control 14 I did the same as for control 7, taking the road to read the map for the long leg (15-16). At control 14 Fabien Pasquasy came from behind me. He started 6 minutes before me but I had passed him during the first part of the race. We stayedtogether till the beginning of the long leg, however he pushed harder than I did on the road. I wanted to run at my own speed to keep the pace until the end and not being physically dead like V. Novikov on WOC long distance this year. So I decided to let him go and run my own race. At control 20 I did another small mistake by taking a doubtful attacking point, but towards the next control I won again some time by taking a good route choice. However I lost again some 20 second by being confused to see Fabien again and passed the control without seeing it. Towards the end I took a slower but secure route choice because I was feeling very tired. At the finish line Fabien picked some 2 minutes but not more and I was very satisfied with my race. I did what I had planned to do: to run a technically very good race and to keep on fighting till the end. I had to wait more than one and a half hour to be sure I had won my first belgian title on the long distance. As it is not my best distance, I'm very pleased with it. I was not physically the strongest (cfr. Pieter Hendrickx, Fabien Pasquasy) but I was definately technically the best. I want to thank BABA and Ivan Vis for the very nice designed map and race. I also want to congratulate Roger Casal with his strong run. As expected he did some 4 and a half minutes better than I. He is definately at a higher level than the Belgian orienteers.

You can find the race report and route choices of Fabien Pasquasy as well on his weblog.