It's been a
while since my last update and the summer is gone. But it was a good one, at least
when it comes to weather. Why am I writing about the weather? Because here in
UK we like to speak about it and this summer is totally worth mentioning. It's
been historically warm and sunny, like a typical Finnish summer. We got this
shopping bag a year ago with a label "Great British Summer", which
has been more or less a regular joke in our house. But not anymore.
Apart from
Scottish 6 days I didn't orienteer much this summer but kept myself occupied
with sportives, road races, triathlon and fell running. I enjoyed the aimless
floating and freedom to do whatever I wanted. I even broke a few of my PB:s
quite effortlessly while floating. However after a while I realized that I needed
to set up some goals in order to stay motivated. So I went and ran Finnish long
distance champs in order to qualify for the final World Cup round in
Switzerland.
I knew my
shape was ok but as I hadn't orienteered for a while it was a question mark how
it would go. I was extremely nervous before the qualification race but ran well
and was only 9 seconds from winning my heat. From the splits I saw that I had been fastest on all
"running legs" so I knew I had the legs and I just needed to focus on
orienteering. But unfortunately those legs were gone on the following day and
the final was just horrible. It was only 5 days after a half marathon so it
wasn't really a wonder that my legs weren't fully recovered and up for two subsequent
races in tough terrain. In addition I made one big mistake to control 7, which
didn't help at all. So I ended up 6th. It was a disappointment after a good
qualification race but luckily it was good enough to get selected to the World Cup. So mission accomplished. As a bonus I also got selected to a training camp
in Italy for the next year. I've got good memories from Trentino a few years
back and really looking forward to get there again.
So I got back
home with a huge motivation boost: now I had something to train for the next
few weeks! But it wasn't just motivation I brought home with me. I also got my
plantar fasciitis back. That's really annoying but I'm doing everything I can
at the moment to get rid of it before the training camp. So instead of
intervals and O-training I signed up to a local gym and I'm trying to
strengthen all my weak running muscles. I'm hoping for a soon recovery.
