Charlotte Watson

After settling into my new home in Oslo, there was no time to lose to prepare for World Cup Round 3 in Sarpsborg. The KM (District) championships in long and relay the weekend before were some good warm up races. In the relay I was running first leg with a strong field and to my surprise I was able to keep up and finished with the leading pack. This gave me a much needed confidence boost for the following weekend. Karolina and Andrine ran good races as well and Lillomarka OL were KM relay champions for the first time in D21! KM Relay Winners! (Photo: Andrine Benjaminsen) I travelled down to Halden on Thursday morning in order to be able to get out on the model map before the races began. A strong compass and staying in contact with the map were important in order to avoid any parallel  errors. The terrain was quite tough underfoot making it important to stick to your intended line so as not run any uneccessary distance. The programme was a tough one with four races in

A great team to be part of (Photo: Simon Errington) Over the first week in August I was competing for the British team at the World Orienteering Championships (WOC) 2018 in Sigulda, Latvia. I was selected to run the middle distance and as reserve for the long distance. In the end I was called up for the long distance so I ended up running both disciplines. I finished 53 rd /72 in the middle distance and 28th/71 in the long distance. My aim was a top 20 position in the middle distance and I was far from this on the day.  Sometimes sport doesn ’t go your way but there is always lots to learn and you just have to keep working hard and the results will come.  This is the first time, as a senior, that I have really focused and trained specifically for (technically at least) for a championship. I didn't manage to bring everything together on the day but I have learnt a lot through training for  WOC and WOC week itself. I have written a bit about my WOC experience below. Middle

After spending three weeks training camp in Finland, Lithuania and Latvia I returned home to the Lake District to carry out my final WOC preparations. You can read about my training camp in Latvia here .  I undertook similar self organised training camps for my last two JWOC ’s (2012 and 2013) but I haven’t carried out such a venture since then. So there was lots of learning old and new not only about the terrain in Latvia but about myself and training to be a top orienteer in general. The Swedish team very kindly allowed us to join in with some of their session. Their consistent high standards of training including sessions with control flags, race simulated starts, SI air and GPS tracking really helped give a WOC feel and add a bit of pressure.   3 things I learnt l  Make your orienteering sessions high quality  - with only 6 weeks until the World Champs there was no time to waste. The Latvian terrain was so thick and scrappy in places that it required quite a bit of agg

I recently returned from a training camp preparing for the the World Orienteering Championships in Latvia. Read about a typical day on camp here:  Learning in Latvia