Scottish 6 Days in Morray was overall an awesome holiday week:
great atmosphere, lovely scenery, fab terrains, great courses, beautiful beaches, good weather (in Scottish scale) and friendly people spiced up with bagpipes,
kilts and whiskey. The drive there was long but fascinating after reaching the
Scottish border. We chose to drive through Loch Lomond and the Trossachs
National Park, passing Ben Nevis and Glen Coe, Loch Linnhe, Fort William, Loch Lochy
and Loch Ness on the way to Inverness. It was a scenic route but I was quite
disappointed not to see the famous Loch Ness Monster.
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| Coffee pause on the way to Inverness |
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| Friends coming by |
Day 1 was a long distance in Lossie. Terrain provided a good mixture of short legs on complex dunes and long legs through relatively featureless terrain. I enjoyed the complex part of it and had a good run until control 13, a long empty leg back home, where I lost focus for a while and made a 2min parallel mistake. I lost my lead there but was still quite pleased to finish 3rd only 2,5min behind Tessa.
Day 2 in
Carse of Ardersier was a detailed middle distance, which I found really fun.
After messing up at the end on the first day I was determined to orienteer well
and so I did. I had a good flow all the way and hardly needed to slow down
anywhere. I was a happy girl in the finish and got awarded with a stage
victory.
Day 3 in
Culbin provided a real challenge on the dunes. First glimpse of the map before
my own start and I was terrified. How an earth to separate all small hills and
knolls from one another and how to be able to read any of it while running? I
decided to trust on my compass and pick only the most relevant details. That
tactic worked pretty well and only a few times I had to slow down and read the
details more carefully. Another stage victory.
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| Happy girl (photo by Moray2013) |
Day 4 in Loch of Boath was a grey and gloomy day, both literally and metaphorically. It was pouring rain and the marshy highland terrain was soaked, which was not particularly pleasant for my already tired legs. But I wanted to perform and so I tried to run as fast as I could as far as I could, which only resulted in some extra stress and wobbles in the circles. I did 20-30s mistakes to all first four controls on a relatively simple course, much more than I could afford. Another small miss on control 7 and I was 1,5min down on the spectator control before the final loop. I orienteered better the other half but was totally exhausted. My biggest lost was however a bad route choice to the last control where I lost whole 40sec(!). That resulted in 15th place among all Scottish6Days and Euromeeting runners, 2:09 behind the day's winner Alva Olsson. I was quite disappointed but at least I beat the other 6Days runners and extended my overall lead.
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| Tough day (photo by Wendy Carlyle) |
Day 6
Coulmony & Belivat. My legs felt
empty, my brains felt empty and I had zero interest of running another race.
But because the overall results were based on cumulative time of all 6 days, I
needed to get myself through the course in order to take the overall victory. I
forced myself to the assembly and from there to the start. On the way to the
start some vague race spirits rose somewhere deep inside but I wasn't sure if
the connection from the brain to my tired legs would work. I knew I had a big gap
to my rivals and that I could take it quite easy. It was comforting but on the other
hand I didn't want to spend the whole day there. So instead of jogging I ran more
or less full speed to the first control (clocking the fastest split) but on the way to the second control after a slip to a ditch I realized that
I had no power in my legs. It took ages to go through the marshes and
tussocks from the start to control 5 before finding some harder ground and being able to run
again. After control 5 I found another gear and kept a good pace on the next 40min
stretch from 5 to 19 (being one of the fastest girls there). I found a good flow,
ignored the tiredness and danced the way to the spectator control (at that
stage I was second, only 13sec down to the stage winner Julia Gross). I had
managed to trick my brain through the tiredness for an hour but after dragging
myself up the next climb to control 20 (including 1min mistake on that) my brain suddenly
realized how tired I really was. I nailed the next three controls (21-23) but passed the control 24 just slightly above and it took whole 4 minutes before
I found it. A small 30sec miss on the next control and an idiotic route choice
to number 26 (+1min) meant that I finished 6min behind Julia. I had chances for a stage (and Euromeeting long distance) victory but my goal was really just to finish and take
the overall victory, which I managed to do with style. I felt defeated after
losing 6 minutes on the final loop but still I couldn't help but raise up my
arms in gesture of victory when I reached the finish line.
