Now, my real season opener is less than a week away and I'm really looking forward to it. FinnSpring seems to be offering a tough competition - 16,9 km in technical terrain that will surely put the runners to the test. Additionally, the relay will be a good pre-race for 10MILA.
The last weeks have pretty much gone as planned. Though sometimes during intensive sessions it feels that the physical status is not that bad at all and then at other times it feels like I've never been in this bad shape before. But this is mighty familiar from previous spring seasons.
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| Kurzemes Pavasaris, 1st day |
As promised, two weeks ago I attended Kurzemes Pavasaris. I was expecting for good map trainings, with more physical effort on the WRE middle distance. Sadly there was too much snow in the terrain, therefore most of the time it was either following a snow path (had a late start) or making my own path (while losing a lot of time). Unexpectedly, the feeling was quite good and I was 4th, 1:25 behind. But due to the conditions, the result list is not very objective and I'm not drawing any conclusions. The next day I started early, which made it physically very difficult to fight my way through the snow and sometimes forcing me to take unconventional route choices. Any desire to push myself disappeared very early. Not that I had that much left in me anyway, two days in a row was just too much for me.
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| Amplifier |
Now, spring has finally arrived, making it possible to orienteer at "home". I gained new experience when taking part in a 3-day competition on my first ever visit to Russia. Why "home"? Well, I think terrains in 100 km radius from home should be considered as home terrains. New maps and milieu really made the trip worthwhile. It was sprint, "long"- and "middle" distance and since I was also running Jüriöö night relay in Estonia on Saturday night, I used the sprint as a good warm-up for it and the forest distances as regular map trainings. Saturday's course was physically pretty difficult, but fortunately didn't affect the night competition much. The night competition itself, on the other hand, really altered the feeling for the Sunday's start as you might have guessed already. It was still a very nice training! The event and the local atmosphere altogether was very laid-back, which made it very enjoyable.
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| Park wherever you want, build fire wherever you want |
Jüriöö was somewhat nondescript for me. I showed up, ran the last leg and went home, that was pretty much it. The race itself was dull - street race with no contact from any rivals. Orienteering was very unfamiliar, not used to reading path crossings and street corners during races. Physically it was not difficult to run, but same time it didn't feel like I was really running. Undefined feeling. Sadly because of a missing punch from the previous leg, we were disqualified, which I found out only after my finish. Congrats to the victorious OK Ilves team!
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