Tuesday 10 December 2013

Early bird EOC training camp


It's been a while since my last blog update. This is because of some personal concerns as well as uncertainty about the future. It's hard to make any plans or set goals when you don't know anything about your future work, income, possibilities to train and orienteer or even your country of residence for that matter. It looks like our adventure in UK is approaching to its end and we need to seek for new challenges. Exciting but nerve cracking. World is your oyster type of living is fascinating but also a bit stressful if you want to set goals and make commitments to work towards them. I've still got energy and motivation to continue my orienteering career but right now I'm in a place of big uncertainty and inability to make decisions or commitments. Frustrating.

I will continue dreaming about running WOC long distance in Italy to push myself forward and to train hard, but everything else remains open. Had I been selected to the national team, it would have been an easy decision for me to spend January in South Africa and February in Portugal together with the team training 100% towards EOC & WOC in near to perfect conditions with professional help, ready-made O-trainings, and masseur on hand. Luxurious? For an orienteer, yes, it surely is. But now that I'm out I will have to organize and finance everything myself. In other words I have to keep it plain and simple.

My dreams are in the future but I'm very much living the now. Last week it meant that I booked cheap last-minute flights to Lisbon and took an extended weekend off to do a short mini training camp in EOC relevant terrains in Portugal. Whatever happens in the coming months I've already got these few valuable technical training sessions in my bag for the spring. Something to remember and to look forward to during the long and dark winter months...Weekend was successful training-wise and also a lovely break from December darkness!