WOC 2007, Kyiv

Ukraine training camp, day 1 by Rachael

The ground was perfectly flat, short grass and very fast. The venue, the Dynamo Kiev stadium, host of Poland vs. Israel for the night and also embargoed area for the WOC2007 sprint race. The stadium is cut into the hillside and would make a fine arena with many approaches from the park, although whether or not it remains embargoed and will be used is unknown.

Unfortunately the orienteering areas we visited weren’t quite as runnable. The mornings exercise was an introduction to Kyiv terrain on Pushcha-Vodytsya (Пуща-Вдиця). The bus driver gave us a magical mystery tour of Kyiv on the way there before we eventually rocked up at a nice little BBQ site in the middle of the wood. First impressions were of sand. The ground was sandy everywhere and some of the major tracks were quite deep sand making it faster to run in the woods. Some of the forest was gorgeous, open, lightning fast woodland with just moss on the floor. Some of it wasn’t quite as nice. In general light green equalled bushy with thick leaves, low visibility and much slower run. There was undergrowth with brambles in places but only fairly low level. Throughout the whole forest there were hundreds of spider webs and you couldn’t avoid running through them (the spiders were only small at least!). There were some strange veg boundarys marked on the map and in almost all cases they weren’t at all clear (maybe due to old map?). There are lots of pits everywhere and in general they were very big. Many had raised areas round the edges making them relatively easy to spot. A lot of the small pits weren’t marked at all.
Techniques required: Accurate compass bearings. Route choices are best if they can stick to the higher white areas to avoid the light green and bushes.

The afternoon session was on Gidropark (Гідропарк) (area south of the metro station), one of the large islands in the Dnipro river. Don’t be fooled by the nice looking map, the area was almost entirely covered in brambles and undergrowth. The southern part of the island was mostly well mapped although the vegetation changes were often difficult to spot and much of the white should actually have green stripes. The northern part of the area was considerably less runnable with very little difference between green and white, both being full of undergrowth. The green was slightly more bushy with lower visibility. Some of the undergrowth was ok to plough through, the big, dark green leaves aren’t prickly and its ok to run through them. There were also a lot of brambles and nettles in places. There are many small, unmarked paths as the area is full of people.
Techniques required: extra thick trousers, accurate bearings. Swimming stuff for visiting the beach after!

posted by daniel @ 2:44 pm