The Summer Talent Camp has taken place, as a lead-in to the Scottish 6-Days Festival, with 16 athletes and 5 coaches looking at aspects of a periodised physical and technical year, with ideas for training sessions that worked on fitness and orienteering skills during the various phases.

Physical Training Day

After preliminary introductions and ice-breakers on Sunday evening at Badaguish, Monday morning saw the athletes assessing their physical strengths and weaknesses by taking part in two short time trials at Glenmore Lodge, one focussing on terrain running and the other on hill ascending and descending skills. Following this, the data was taken and used to model various training sessions that the athletes could undertake to develop their fitness across the year, with a specific focus on ensuring that the paces were individualised and tailored to the phase of the season. The afternoon included a middle distance 'test' race across the open areas of Loch Vaa and gave a further opportunity for the athletes' current skill levels to be gauged. Many ideas were also given for running form development, warm ups and cool downs before each of these sessions and the athletes were impressive in their willingness to display a strong work ethic across what was a physically demanding first day.

Technical Development

Tuesday saw a continued focus on periodization, but now the emphasis for the following three days switched to technical and tactical orienteering development. Firstly, the coaches worked on the base phase, 'skills focus', with various exercises at Dulnain Woods, in the morning, and Loch Vaa, in the afternoon, set up to test and train the key concepts of direction, distance and picture. The athletes started at Dulnain with a 'star exercise' to practice their compass work and then focussed on adding the distance estimation layer over a number of short loops. This was followed by the Loch Vaa picture exercises, firstly without the compass, where the athletes were challenged to use the detail on the map to work through the course, and then finally a line exercise with compass, where the aim was on creating a strong and robust picture of each leg, supported by good use of direction via the compass.

Wednesday switched to the early pre-competition phase, where the focus turned to the 'planning' aspect of orienteering, utilising the key skills from the previous day to successfully execute each leg. The day included pairs work on a number of terrain loops in Culbin, with talk O in the morning and then map memory in the afternoon. Thursday moved into the specific pre-competition phase, with the athletes now beginning to put their techniques under increased pressure via a sprint exercise in Aviemore and a 'long' style exercise in Alvie. Friday finished the three days of technical development by moving onto the competition phase and running the athletes through relay exercises in North Granish and then a final middle 'test' race at Moor of Alvie. This tested their ability to apply their skills under 'race pressure' and then, back at base, they looked at key analytical tools which could use to learn from their race performances. A final review was held on Friday evening before the athletes made their way either home or on to start the Scottish 6 Days.

The performance team were impressed by all the juniors' dedication to their development across the camp and their continued enthusiasm throughout a physically and mentally challenging week. Thanks must be given to Badaguish for hosting us, Phil Kirk and Angie Thirtle for feeding us, James Tullie, Lynne Walker, Rupert Hornby and Elizabeth Furness for organising access permissions and helping with the exercises to make optimal use of such great BASOC and MOR areas for training and, finally, the volunteer coaches of Helen Winskill, Tom Bray and Ben Chesters, who's contributions across the camp were appreciated by all the athletes.