Feeling happy

It's done now. Most of the basic training. June will include competing, peaking and further technical preparation. May was a good training month for me. In March I was still more focused on running and April involved slow and thorough adaptation to tougher terrains with various problems but May has been good and hopefully I'm now more ready to run faster also in terrain. I've trained my weaknesses and I've tried to do the best possible technical preparation in the prevailing circumstances. I've run two sprints, three prolonged sprints or so called urban events, six technical training sessions or events in tough, detailed terrains and two additional trainings in hilly, less detailed terrains. Most of them I've run at race pace or split them into intervals. It has worked fine and I'm quite happy with the past three weeks. 

Next I'm going to stay happy, give my tired legs a bit of rest and wait fitness to come out. My next Tour de Finland begins with SM-sprintti, continues with Tampere Games, and ends with Jukola. Looking forward to them all!

Here are a few of my recent maps and pics are from the same places. 

EOC from the other side of the screen

I feel excited. I'm not even running there myself but I'm still quite excited about it. It's like WOC in Trondheim. Championships in beautiful Scandinavian terrain represent something special for me. Something you look forward to not only because it's a championship but also because you believe that it offers you something special. EOC2012 in fairytale forests of Dalarna is something I would really love to experience. But even on this side of the screen I feel quite excited. Excited to see the challenges Eva Jurenikova offers the other runners and excited to see how my fellow runners and teammates will do there.

In the meanwhile I've been trying to train hard myself to be better next time. So I've been orienteering in full speed and doing some strength training. I just spent an awesome weekend in Yorkshire Dales running first an urban event in Settle and Giggleswick, followed by a long distance in Klinsey North. It was a terrific weekend. Urban race served as excellent prolonged sprint training and Sunday's event in gorgeous limestone terrain offered adequately hills and details. First look on the map (see below) shocked me a bit but then I just started to run and got along well and really enjoyed it!

Blicken framåt

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

tracking

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

Wonderful Scotland and Perthshire

A week spent in Scotland was a wonderful experience in every aspect. Driving there and seeing the landscape becoming more and more undulating was an experience itself. We stayed in Aberfeldy which is a lovely small village surrounded by gorgeous landscape and filled with hiking routes and other outdoor activities such as river rafting and canoeing. We spent there three days training followed by four days of racing.

  

First morning shocked us with snow. Down in the valley there were only a few inches of snow and we thought that it would be possible to drive on roads after a few hours. But when we got away and some hundred meters higher we realized that there was much more snow than we had thought. And the higher we got, the more snow there was. So we had to skip the first trainings we had planned to do, as we couldn't get to those terrains by car.  Nevertheless one of the terrains was nearer to the main road and we managed to get there and do a training. Scandinavian-like terrain was quite okay in Scandinavian-like weather. I didn't mind the snow. There wasn't much of it anyway and it looked gorgeous everywhere. Like a fairytale. I was thrilled!  

In the same afternoon I decided to go for a long hike to the nearest mountains. I had only a poor hand-drawn map and no compass when I bravely set off. I had seen several signs to various hiking and cycling routes while driving so I assumed they would be clearly marked and all I needed to do was to follow a certain colour. I started from the Birks of Aberfeldy route, one of the popular tourist routes named by a famous national poet Robert Burns. 

The route was indeed very easy and nice to follow. At the end of it I could see something that reminded a small footpath continuing to the direction I was heading. I followed it happily until after some kilometres I was more or less sure that there was no path whatsoever anymore. I used sun and inner feeling to navigate to a small country road that went to a lonely cottage in the middle of no man's land. Then I saw a small footpath sign pointing into undefined direction. There were no tracks in the snow but I was still feeling great and continued trough the white blanket (huge mistake!). Sun was shining from the blue sky and the views were fantastic. Tundra everywhere and snow-topped hills in the horizon. 

After some kilometres the path had disappeared, there were no signs anywhere, no tracks, nothing, and the sun started to go down. Only then I started to panic a bit because I had no idea where I was, where to go or how far it would be to nearest road or village. A thought How I would survive a night here? came into my mind and I started to get worried about the dusk. If I didn't find back before sunset I wouldn't know what to do. I continued half an hour more towards a road which never came. I knew I should have turned back miles ago but I wasn't sure if I would find my way back anymore (wind had wiped out my footsteps). My last chance was to use the sun to navigate north towards the main road by the river. When I finally reached the edge of the hillside where it started to bend down towards the river, I knew it couldn't be far. The happiest moment was when I saw a glimpse of the river (there it is in the middle of the picture below) some miles below me. I did find my way down and back to Aberfeldy but this little adventure took me nearly 3 hours. 

Next morning the snow was gone from the roads and I was eager to get to orienteer (despite somewhat tired legs). Two tough technical trainings in snowy and hilly terrains made my day. When back to the cottage in the evening I was pretty exhausted but happy. Thursday was an easier day that we spent in Edinburgh. We did nice sprint training in Livingston followed by some jogging in Calder Wood and sightseeing in Edinburgh. Edinburgh castle was definitively worth seeing and so was the whole inner city. 

Friday was the first day of JK and started with a tricky sprint in Almondvale of Livingston. I enjoyed it a lot but had big problems with route choices. I was fast on easy legs but had no capacity to maintain the pace on trickier legs between the buildings. Just lack of routine I guess. I missed the obvious route choice to 3rd and went around the fence to 22nd as I wasn't sure if it was crossable. I missed nearly a minute on those two legs and felt that my routines were overall far too slow. But it was still fun and a terrific training! If I wanted to perform better in sprint, I should definitively train it more than a few times a year. map

Saturday's middle distance was in semi-open and marshy Dunalastair. First control was a bit of a "bingo" as there wasn't much to read or see on the way there. Of course I could have used a compass and take it right but I chose to use the tracks that went to another control. It hadn't been such a big mistake if I had been able to relocate that little marsh or plateau I was standing on but there was no such thing on the map. I was unsure what to do but saw then something green in front of me and imagined seeing a bolder in the corner of it which might have been my control (in reality it was some 30m behind my back but took me two minutes to find it). Not a very good start. I overshoot even the second control but from there onwards I had quite a good run and enjoyed it. map

Sunday's long distance in Craig a Barns was the one I had been looking most forward to. I had just finished a jigsaw of the map the night before and felt that it was going to be my type of terrain and orienteering. And it was. I really liked it a lot. It was challenging both technically and physically and I was determined to do it right this time. And so I did all the way to 5th and from 6th onwards. I thought I got the 6th fine too but to my surprise there was no flag there, only a small tape indicating the place. I believed I had come right, so I started to search for the control on the ground but couldn't find it. I checked the crags on both sides of the control point and everything made sense except the control itself. It was still missing. After a long desperate search I finally found it somewhere further down and continued my race. I tried to find the same rhythm and spirit I had had before but it was difficult. I ran rest of the course technically quite all right but I wasn't that focused and determined anymore. Craig a Barnes was absolutely my favourite terrain of this year's JK and the course was great but it was a shame to have a control misplaced. Otherwise it was such a great event. tracking

results

It all ended with a relay in Newtyle. It was relatively easy orienteering on an open hillside but steep hills made it tougher than it looked like. I had technically clean run but my legs were already quite tired and I ran a bit defensively. It was nevertheless very nice and enjoyable orienteering. map

Liverpool Half

I was prepared to write a story how amazing it was to run and how I had a brilliant run. I had every reason to believe it would go that way because my winter training has been good and my target pace on long steady runs has felt easy. I was prepared to run 6:30 miles and felt confident with my goal. But quoting Brad Pitt in The Devil's Own this isn't an American story, this is an Irish one. It suits very well with the date too because St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was celebrated on March 17th, just a day before the run. Melancholic story sits fine into Finnish culture as well, so let's get started.

Everything went very well until the preceding day. We arrived to Liverpool in good time on Saturday just to hear that the football match we were supposed to go was postponed to next week. It wasn't such bad news considering the coming race although my travel mates might disagree with me. So far so good, I thought. So instead of football we just walked around the city like regular tourists. We had lunch at a nice Italian restaurant and took a look on some UNESCO World heritage sites, the cosy Dock area and the Beatles museum. The only problem was that this sightseeing tour took hours and nearly 10K. So when back in hotel again we were too tired to go out for dinner. All I had with me were a few apples and a packet of raisins, so I ate those for dinner. Wasn't such a good idea I got to learn afterwards.

On Sunday morning I got up early to do some jogging but the hotel door was still closed. I tried to get breakfast but it wasn't open either. Finally 1.5h before the start we got something to eat and jogged then to the start area. I had an urgent need to get to toilet but there was no way to get there before the start. I could feel the raisins coming out but all I could do was to go to the start and hope for the best.

The beginning of the race was awful. It was so packed that I had no chance of getting anywhere. I was walking when I crossed the start line and jogged the first kilometre nearly a minute slower than I had thought. After the first mile I passed some running teddy bears and then the voluminous ladies with their trendy water bottles running in a perfume cloud. There were some thousands runners to pass and I jumped to the car lane in order to do this. Hopping in and out between the posts and moving sideways as much as forward cost me both time and energy. I felt frustrated and exhausted when it finally started to loosen and I reached people running the same pace with me.

Maybe a mile or so I could enjoy running before my stomach started to cause problems. This unpleasant feeling grew and grew and after a few kilometres my bowel was the only thing I could think about. I started to look around for some bushes but an idea of going there during the run felt like quitting. If I had to do that it would definitively mean quitting. I felt horrible but I was so determined that somehow I could keep on running for some more miles. After 9 miles it wasn't a matter of choice, I just couldn't bare it anymore and had to jump to a nearest bush. I saw nearly a hundred runners passing me and felt frustrated. All the trouble for nothing.

As I slowly started to jog again I felt much better and after a while I gradually reached my target pace again. At 15K I was about two minutes behind my schedule. No chance I could catch that time but I decided to try to keep that pace on the remaining 6K. It went well and I finished the same two minutes behind my target time. After quitting the race once I was happy with that. Time as such was a disappointment but taking into account the stop I had to make and the slow start it wasn't that bad. Time I used for running was about a minute better than in Birmingham (my first half marathon), so a small improvement anyway. Based on the chip times I was 4th in the women's class but I was never really running for the prizes because I started 2-3 minutes behind the first runners. If I ever again try to run a certain time or for a top3 position I will have to start from the start line or just behind it. That's the only way to make it. Results

Inter Counties

Inter Counties cross country championships were held in Cofton Park, a large open country park on outskirts of Birmingham. I had done my preparations: a week of climbing on rocks and crawling through brambles in Portugal followed by a week with various small injuries when trying to get back into running. Anyway on Saturday afternoon I stood on the start line quite nervous with 248 other excited runners in their county vests. 

To be honest I did ran my prep run for this race just two weeks ago at the English Nationals at Parliament Hill in London. It was right after coming home from Portugal and I was still pretty exhausted. The race was painful but quite amazing experience. It was massive and I got to learn that the fastest runners in England are miles faster than me and I should definitively not stick with them. Nationals were however open to everyone, which meant that there were also over 500 runners slower than me, whereas the Inter Counties were only for the selected runners from each county. That meant that I would for sure be minutes behind the winner but also that I could consider myself lucky if I'd beat anyone. I don't think I've ever been last at any race but now it seemed more than a likely option. When realizing that I was a bit horrified for a moment and wanted to cancel the whole thing. Why an earth did I want to put myself into this? 

But after playing with a thought for a while I started to see it more and more as an opportunity. This is what I always seek in orienteering. Bigger goals and bigger challenges. Well, here's one, why don't you take it? It is definitively not going to be nice but it is going to be good for you and make you tougher. So when I stood there at the start line I knew it was going to be one of my toughest trainings but in some weird way I also looked forward to it. Yet the feeling was far from what I am used to have prior orienteering races. I knew everything there was to know about the course but still I felt insecure, whereas in orienteering races I usually manage to build some kind of confidence before the start despite the fact that course is always a surprise. 

The race itself was not that awful that I had imagined (something good about pre-race nightmares) and I was not the last. I started quite offensively to avoid worst jams and the first kilometres went very well. But fighting to get my place in the group probably cost a bit because after that I lost half a minute on an uphill part and I dropped several places. I tried to find the rhythm back and ran better the fourth kilometre but had huge problems again when reaching the main climbs. As I wasn't able to keep my running efficient on ascents I tried to run as relaxed as possible. By doing so I was able to finish my race but it cost me another half a minute. The last kilometres I was able to run more progressively, gaining some time and places. Direct feedback in the finish was however that I should have pushed harder on the second lap because I obviously had energy left on the last kilometre and in the run-in. Might be true but I still think I got more out of me than on the nationals and the margin to Gemma was less than then. 

It was certainly more painful than any of my orienteering races but on the other hand it was a lot easier to steer and control. I could easily push 100% without worrying whether my brain will work fast enough and whether I will find controls straight if I exceed my threshold. On the other hand that's part of the game in orienteering, to have it under control despite the lactate. I hope I've pushed my limits forward by running cross country races this winter and that I will be able to run somewhat faster after getting more used to pain.

Portugal O-Meeting

Many orienteers have been updating their blogs writing about Portugal O-meeting (POM) but it was such a great event that it really deserves some attention and I want to give my share to it as well. I spent roughly a week in Portugal and it was my first training camp of the year. Emphasis was more on technical part and quality trainings rather than training hours or miles. It was a fabulous training week with altogether 258 controls, 76km of orienteering and 33km of racing. My goal was to do some technical training and to find smoothness and fluency in orienteering. It worked well and I found confidence in my orienteering despite some small mistakes. None of my races were near to perfect but they were good enough so that I got overall good and confident feeling. Just what I wanted. 

It was fantastic that there were so many international top orienteers taking part to POM so that I got a chance to see where I approximately lie at this stage. Although I was some minutes behind the winner at each event I was nevertheless happily surprised of my own consistency and my good overall result (5th). It was awesome to be able to compete against some world-class Swiss, Swedish, and Czech runners on the last day's chasing start. I was really happy about this great opportunity and I really look forward to get another chance to compete against those girls later on this season.. 

Overall the training camp with a mixture of British elite and lifestyle orienteers worked very well and it was great to make some new friends and learn to know better those I only knew by name before. My faithful travel mates Helen and Charlotte were just fantastic and I got them along to some crazy traditional Finnish things such as ice bathing. Rachel and Alex were brilliant company during our pre-POM-training camp and Mark & Co took really good care of us during the race days. It couldn't have been better. 

We also had a good set up what comes to trainings. First we did some sharpening of our technical skills on rocky mountains before the race days and then some nice and easy chill out on sand dunes after the races. It worked well because we were excited and loaded with energy for hills and rocks when we came whereas after the races we were more or less tired and it was nice to get to terrains were you could run quite fast without major effort. 

Necessities of the week: map book over Portugal, which we bought at a petrol station (it worked fine with some fancy iPhone app too but we really liked our old school version and wouldn't have survived without it)

Highlights of the week: villa in Ribeiradio, lobster lunch in Falca with a nice sea view, POM day 4 (all about it), ice bath in the pool

Scary moments: Helen's driving ;) and being stuck in the bushes unable to move to any direction

Things that impressed me:

-Kristin Lövgren's run on the 2nd day 

-Rahel's sprint on the last day

-Charlotte's admirable passion for stretching

-Oli's choise of book

Pros and cons of Portugal:

+ Continuous sunshine

+ Posh restaurants with delicious food for crazy cheap price

+ RFM (local radio)

- Cold houses (even colder than in the UK!). Can't really come up with anything else negative..

Results

Maps