It´s Finland this month as the first World Cup round will be held here and as it´s June there is of course Jukola coming up too. Currently I am trying to find my way back to into training or at least some shape to be able to compete properly which is a rather difficult task being at the start of the season.
The two weeks I spent in Sweden and Norway meeting some super nice people and friends and being able to enjoy the Scandinavian forests and lifestyle, has just been a treat. (Thanks to all the people who let me use their trainings, stay at their homes and were just great being around).
It always feels like things go about at an easier pace in Scandinavia, probably because there are just way fewer people living there than where I come from, but I still notice it every time while driving. Fewer cars means just smoother traffic which stands in big contrast to german highways, also two other things I noticed: Tesla would be bankrupt without Norwegians and even though there is a constant speed limit, very few people drive at a constant speed which would easily be adjustable with cruise control…?
About the training and orienteering part, well as long as it´s wasn´t going uphill I felt quite okay, considering the missing training it was still all going better then expected. On the technical side of orienteering it wasn´t that bad either, of course I felt that there wasn´t a routine to go with but with a good focus on what I wanted and needed to do I found my way around. Problem though was that after 40min the energy and concentration level dropped starkly.
After deciding to go to Oslo and NM Sprint quite spontaneously on the very morning of the NM Sprint, I arrived shortly before the start window for the public races which were run on the official courses as the Elite ones. To my own surprise I unofficially had the best time for my course, of course considering that it was for a qualification race those times need to be judged carefully, but still I wasn´t in my best shape either, so I was quite happy to see that I can still manage to pull off a good sprint race. What may have been key to my ´performance´ was being really aware of my current situation which meant that I knew I couldn´t run as fast as I would usually do and therefore put even more emphasis on the orienteering. That approach actually worked quite well already last year when I ran the third leg at the WOC relay as a kind of reserve runner and without knowledge/experience in that terrain, it wasn´t perfect but considering the circumstances it was one of my best performances last year.
At the same time this approach is something I will try to follow more in general, as performing is exactly about that – doing the best out of the current situation.
Forwarding to June and the days before the World Cup I am happy to be able to train again and spend my time in nice places doing orienteering and meeting friends but at the same time I can´t move past the disappointment as at World Cup I will only run in the sprint relay and also I will “only” run the first leg in the second team at Jukola.
Both are result of my knee problems and also both are fair decisions, still it sucks. I for sure wanted to run all races at the WC and of course first team at Jukola, and even though it wasn´t something where I messed up directly, as it was because of an injury, I am still quite unhappy about it.
“…[sport] can be brutally honest at some times but also brutally wonderful in others!”
Probably time and better results will make me forget about it or at least find some ´closure´ for it, even though finding closure isn´t always so easy or quickly happening as for example I still haven´t found closure on the race I am least happy with of last year which is the WOC sprint qualification race where I mispunched… they say you learn from mistakes and I believe that´s true but if you get an injury which messes up your training and season preparation, that´s a bit harder to accept.
But of course, the season is literally just starting so there is still time and I for sure haven´t lost motivation or determination to try hard in achieving my goals!
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Another great thing about the summer is also that not just the orienteering season is fully going on but also the big events of other sports a going on, after following the Giro, it´s right now about the French open, soon TdF and Wimbledon are coming up, so there´s enough sports to watch and distract yourself with, if needed…
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