13 April 2009

Kick-off

A week ago I made the first official start this season. The competition "Kurzemes Pavasaris" took place in a nice and snow-free forest (unlike at home at the time) in Southern-Latvia.
The middle distance on the first day offered a great deal of short and quick controls, but also required quite a lot of confidence in the trickiest parts. My performance had its ups and downs. Before the 3rd control, I didn't reach the big path where I thought I did and didn't quite understand the situation. While i
n the 8th I just didn't see the flag at first and started having doubts about being in the right re-entrant. In the end, especially to the 20th I probably wasn't thinking straight anymore and made rash decisions. The results gave me some image of my shape so far, which I was uncertain of. Map, splitsbrowser (H20).
On the long distance, I was feeling more in charge of my race. This day, physical strength was more important as the course wasn't as complicated as the previous day. Other then the 4th control, I managed to make a solid race. Maybe the biggest weakness was not reading the map very far ahead and not planning enough. Map, splitsbrowser (H20).

The overall feeling was like in any other spring competition - like a slow diesel en
gine. This feeling has also been helped by the 1,5 months in winter when I couldn't run. It will be harder to get the speed up after such a break.

A week later, after a local night-o competition on Friday, I took part of this seasons first (day)competition in Estonia, "Peko Kevad". Since the juniors had registered themselves to the M21 class instead of the M20, it was just me and my clubmate who took part of both days of the event (two finns ran on the first day). Sad. Didn't really matter to me, the lack of opponents doesn't decrease my motivation, I still run the same.

The long distance on the first day went rather well and I lost only 2 sec/km to my brother, who's running the men's class. Routes, splitsbrowser (M20).

The
second day was even faster, but this time I made one bigger mistake and another smaller one. The area at the 6th control didn't seem right to me, the distances between features seemed off and there were many more small marshes because of the high water season. Lost a bit more than 1:30 there. Map, routes, splitsbrowser (M20).
I feel that my map-handling is OK right now, but the misses I've done could have been avoided easily. Also, my speed has been getting better and better with each fast excercise, that's a good sign.
Next event: 10Mila

Photo: Comeback?

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