Break between the training camps

As I wrote earlier winter has been hard to me and I’ve had difficulties to adapt after spending a few years in warmer latitudes. So it was good to have a short getaway just when I started to feel the burden. The whole training camp in Portugal was a spontaneous move from me. It was more or less coincidence that I happened to be in the right place at the right time when Rasa and Annika were planning their trip and I could jump along them in the last minute. But I was very happy and grateful for that. I felt I needed to get some easy kilometers and some fast pace orienteering. Rasa and Annika were also great company to travel with. 

We arrived to Quiaios very late on Friday night and in the next morning there was a long distance race in the scheme. After all skiing and cautious running on ice it felt strange to run suddenly in snowless terrain. My training had been mostly just aerobic before the training camp and I suspected that four races in a row would be too much, so I had planned to take it gently. 

I enjoyed enormously the first day. It was fairly easy but very nice (see the map here). I noticed that I was still a bit off mode after the winter, in other words my navigation was a bit off the bearing and my running was off the pace but despite that I enjoyed it and found a better flow and rhythm in my orienteering the longer I ran. Having done one training before the race would have helped a lot but now I just needed to adapt and use the races as trainings. Second day I used fully for training purpose. Middle distance in the morning and control pick à la Thierry with 74 controls in the evening. The latter was a true concentration training. 

That control pick training certainly helped me to find back my confidence and orienteering skills so that I managed to do a fairly decent run on the WRE on the following day. My pace was still slow compared to Minna but I wasn’t too much behind the others. I made a couple of mistakes but as a whole I was quite happy with my performance. Pace will come later, I’m sure of it.

Results POM WRE

GPS tracking POM WRE

Last day in the chase I felt awful. What I didn’t realise was that I probably had a flu coming up. I had a horrible headache and felt extremely tired. Too tired to run and too tired to focus. I made a couple of stupid mistakes early on, ran the diamond in wrong order, gave up and jogged home. My motivation was gone, it wasn’t my day. After lunch I felt much better and hang along Annika to train on a contour only map. It was a good fun and it felt okay when running at easy pace. Next day I got sick.

After the races we travelled back. Initially I thought it would have been nice to stay longer but after catching a cold it was quite nice to come home to recover. I certainly prefer being sick at home than on a training camp. Not that I wanted to be sick at all, but if I have to, then I certainly prefer to do that at home. And lying on the coach at home sipping my favourite tea and watching xc ski world champs on TV isn’t that awful after all. I had anyway planned to take it easy between the training camps. Now I’m just hoping to get well before the second training camp with OK Linné. This time we are heading to Croatia and Slovenia. Again, it will be more training than racing, but we are planning to run Kvarner Bay and Lipica Open. It will be awesome!

Big thanks to everyone who helped us with various things! Always a pleasure to come to Portugal!

POM WRE - my first race in Linné shirt (Joaquim Margarido)

First start of the year - very focused! (Joaquim Margarido)

To run, or not to run, that is the question (Joaquim Margarido)