My season
start in Finland did not fulfil my expectations at any degree but gave me more
time to prepare towards WOC. First of all it took me a more than a week to
adapt to the Finnish weather and terrain, and secondly, my orienteering skills
there were rusty. I was nevertheless happy to make progress during my stay and
at the last selection race I finished 6th, only 22 seconds behind the winner.
That was already much better than my first race. Sprint appeared to be my best discipline at the moment in
Finland and the only distance I could really run. Terrains for middle and long
were too tough for me to run and my going there was far from fast. Compared to others I was really
slow and inefficient in all tough and marshy parts but fast on the areas with
better runability.
Of course
it's shame to miss the EOC but on the other hand I have now more time to
prepare for the World Cup and WOC. Swiss terrain should suit me a lot better
than Finnish after training in similar kind of terrain for over a year now. But
I also know now that I need to practise more in Scandinavian terrain to make it
to the Finnish team. While I've been training towards international events in
continental terrain I have neglected training in the Finnish terrain. I'm nevertheless
very happy with my staying in Finland and all technical training I got to do during
my stay. Now I have much more experience and I also know better which areas I
still need to work on. I'm not giving up yet because I know I've trained well
and I have much more to give than I've been able to show. Here's short
description of my races.
Middle
distance was actually technically quite simple but I imagined it more difficult
and played safe. I didn't do any bigger mistakes, only a lot of hesitation and
checking things a million times before proceeding. At the end of the race I
realized that I've forgotten to run. I had been too focused on the map.
Long was
kind of a nightmare to me. It was so wet that it's hard to believe. After my
first dip into ice-cold water on a tiny marsh in the beginning of the leg 2-3 I
thought I was just having a bad dream. But the nightmare continued and
continued and I never woke up. By the time I reached the 4th control my sense
of humour was gone. I was frozen, unable to move my limbs and my left glute had
stopped working. I ran really badly the long legs 2-3 and 7-8 losing minutes on
both of them. Then I got confused of an open area just before control 16 and
lost nearly 1,5 min there. After that I ran aggressively the last few legs but
unfortunately the course ended just when I started to find a good rhythm. results
My glute
was in pain already before the long race and stopped working totally after the
race so I had no idea whether I could run the sprint only a few days later. But
I did and did actually my best run there resultwise. I had three bad legs (1,
10, 12) where I lost about 10 sec on each but otherwise my run was pretty good. Because of mistakes it didn't give me a ticket to Sweden but at least it gave me some hope. results, RouteGadget
Highlight
of my Nordic O Tour was Tiomila. We had exactly the same team as last year,
only in slightly mixed order. After running several times either 4th or 5th leg
it was time to test the first leg. My job was to come with the main group and that's
what I did. Unfortunately I'm too much of an individualist to settle to run
with others, so I had to try to something else. Leg to my first control was really
long and offered a tempting route choice along the road. I couldn't resist
trying that even though none of the other top teams took the same route. A few
girls came with me to the half way but jumped to the woods earlier whereas I
continued a half kilometre longer. It was a strange feeling to run all alone so
early on the course on the first leg. I felt confident but still somewhat excited
about my route choice. I was hoping to be in the lead but when I approached the
control I saw runners coming across from other forkings while I still had a way
to go to mine. By the time I reached my control about a hundred girls had passed
me. It was a hard blow but at least I had tried. Had I been alone I might have
run faster but being stuck in the masses I just settled to run the same pace
with people around me. There was a continuous queue of runners and it was
hard to try to pass anyone. I had technically a clean run but changed 2,5
minutes behind the lead. Anni, Heidi, Saila and Venla did a superb job after me
and we could celebrate an awesome 3rd place at the finish. tracking
