Right after that took place the annual "club match" between Finland's "Turun Metsänkävijät", Latvia's "Meridians" and our "OK Võru". As a surprise, I won the individual distance (the actual winner, Edgars Bertuks, ran unofficially). And expectedly, we came first in the relay with Jaagup, me and Timo.
After that have mainly been low-paced long running trainings. And also other additional running- and orienteering exercises. Just the regular stuff, with some alternative trainings included. And due to the lack of snow, I haven't been able to ski as much as I had planned. In fact, I have only been out to ski four times. I hope the weather won't stay that way.
I've also been competing in indoor orienteering. On the first stage I came 3rd in M21 class, automatically becoming the winner of M18. The final distance was intense til the end. Although I was in the lead in the middle of the course, I managed to mix up some controls on the map and immediately fell 4th. But Lauri Tammemäe, the first one to finish, was disqualified for mispunching the last control and I came 3rd. The results and maps can be seen here. There are six stages more to go.
Besides that, I was to Sweden during Christmas and in Latvia on New Year. I used the opportunity to train night orienteering on the terrain of the Latvian championship in middle distance, where I ran the M50 course and after that practiced using the compass.
Last week I took part of our national youth and junior team's training camp in Otepää. On the second day we ran our every year's test run. The 7,6 km long course race is mostly on forest path, but includes a part of asphalt. 4 laps, each about 1,9 km in length and 42 m in climbing. My time was 29:42, that makes 3:55 per kilometer. I'm satisfied.
All in all, I've been training harder than ever before.
