Hammer time!

After my last post, I took part of Ilves 3-days instead of 10Mila. Previous successful starts had tuned me positively and I was looking forward to the upcoming event. Sadly, already on the first day's warmup, I felt like an empty battery. I began rather fast, to see how my body would react to high intensity. Soon I realized that I wouldn't last long maintaining that pace and cooled off a bit. Nevertheless, by 5th control the overall feeling had gotten so bad, that it started affecting the technical performance. I started making wrong decisions with simple situations. The day basically went down the drain and the question was if it was just another case of my bad first day syndrome? Anyway, I hoped it was and couldn't wait to start over the next day. But the difficult times continued... Though I ran slow on the next days as well, I had adapted a bit and didn't make any remarkable mistakes. The loss to the stages' best times decreased each day, but it never got good enough.
Results, maps: day 1, day 2, day 3
The weekend raised a lot of questions. I knew this wasn't the time to be in shape, but was this low-keyed performance justified? Something was very-very wrong and the situation needed to be analyzed. Two reasons were taken into consideration and a few others were ruled out. Remained: taking part of too many competitions or that I had been ill without knowing so. Familiar my body, I believed it was the second reason. Either way, I decided to take a rather easy week of training with low intensity.

On the next saturday, I ran a 4 km testrace to compare the shape to the previous years. The result - a new PB - brought a slight grin to my face, but the difficult feeling had me still doubt a bit. Furthermore, I lost to Raido with quite a margin. Results, course.
On the following day I took part of one of the selection races for Baltic Championships. I took it very easy and had a nice training on a new terrain.
Results, map

This weekend, it was finally time to face facts on the Estonian Championships in middle distance and the M21 relay. The terrain promised to be technical and physically demanding, which seemed very appealing. On the warmup of the sunny and hot day, the status was neutral, which concerned me a little. After a few hundred meters into the race though, I felt that the feet were nicely loose and the movement was rather agressive. Reading the map was like child's play. On the long leg, before the marsh, I dropped my compass and the distraction caused an instant mistake. The extra distance gave me an extra 45 seconds to my total time. After that, I got the flow back and continued nicely without mistakes til the last control. I ran a few meters too far and had to come back, which made me lose another ~10 seconds. After such an intense race, I just couldn't run any faster to the finish. Oh the feeling when I heard I had won! A great return! Results, map

Photo: Rene Post winning his first individual Estonian champion title

Relay time! The same team in the same order as in 2007, when we got the silver medal. The same team in different order as in 2008, when we went out as clear leaders in the last leg, but unfortunately ended up 6th. The same 2nd and 3rd leg runners as in 2009, when we got the silver again. After my three years of gold hunt, it was about time to win already! The race itself: "Handicapped" Timo made a solid first leg and came 3rd-4th. The leaders were ahead by 3:20, which wasn't a surprise - It was Olle Kärner who came out first. The 3rd or the 2nd place runners were easy to take, I just wanted to catch Marek Nõmm from the leading team. And surprise-surprise, I caught glimpse of him already in the 4th control. To the 5th, I took it a bit easier and kept 10-15 second distance between us. To the spectator control I made a different routechoice and wanted to get there first with a small gap, to avoid running together with Marek. Although I had the best time on that leg, the choice didn't pay off, since I just had to work so much more than the ones who ran from the right. So I arrived at the control exactly when Marek. On the last loop, we had no forking and I was no longer as fresh as in the beginning of the course. With the easy last control and long teeth-grindig finish, I managed to give Markus a ~45 second gap ahead of the runners-up. Now it was in Markus' hands and all I could do is wait and hope he comes out first! The result? Yessss, after four years, we finally did it! At last I am a real Estonian champion!
Results, map

Photo: Exchanging emotions with Marek Nõmm

Next: Baltic Championships