I said it before, and I say it again – I like training. Starting winter training was therefore something I was looking forward to. Now already about 5 weeks properly into it, I can report it´s going well. Blog post over, okay, maybe there is more I can write about.

Recently I came to realize that this season was quite okay. That´s the pessimist in me saying good season, the optimist is seeing the upward trajectory and is screaming let´s go.

So, how did I so long after the season ended at this conclusion, well, I remembered that I got third at the WUOC sprint. I honestly completely ignored that the last weeks in my training and thinking, while I don´t want to brag here – or anywhere else for that matter – I am trying to make the point that I forgot about my biggest success this year. What I mostly was thinking about in training and planning for the next season were the things that didn´t go right. After all those are the things, one definitely wants to improve on. At the same time remembering what works well is as important. Although for some this thinking might be natural, for me it is (was) not so much, something I learned with the help of sports coaching during the last winter training and I apparently am not completely good at, yet.

But also, beyond the WUOC sprint I had a successful season. I participated basically in every major event this season, even though it didn´t look like that at first. The key to this “success” was that I managed to stay injury-free and healthy since mid-May, I had Covid in early March and in early May a light cold for one week. This was not a given, considering all the races and travelling.

I am not the big photo taker, or at least don´t like doing that with my phone. To give an example, there is right now one photo in my phone´s library and that is a screenshot of my current training plan. For the sake of this blog(-posts) I should consider taking more photos myself during winter training as I can´t resort to competition photos but that only as a side note – to myself. Although I did it anyway with the title photo, anyhow..

Talking about WUOC, I thought I try to add a short and funny story here and there, as Bojan and I did in the video linked in the last post.

In the sprint at WUOC I for the first time distinctly used the compass to orientate the map in the middle of the race to have it correctly aligned. This was directly after the arena passage, which itself was a 50/50 gamble. It was a tight corridor which shortly after the spectator/last control split into two lanes one going to the finish and one further to the last loop of the course. However, it was not known before which side will be for what, it was said it will be visible in the terrain – btw a favorite phrase of organizers, almost like professors saying ‘trivial’. Back to the gamble, I of course ran a sprint so was running rather fast and couldn´t spot anything in the terrain but just ran where it felt right, maybe subconsciously seeing the signs?! Anyway, I come out at the right end and suddenly need to find my position on the new map because there was, naturally, also a map-flip involved. Somehow the thought of using the compass here came like a lighting into sprinter-brain and quickly resolved the problem. What a useful tool.

The other good thing about being healthy and injury free is that it allowed me to do a decent training break and then start winter training without compromises – continuity is key. As previously mentioned, the overall future training will be different in the way that I will train quantitively more, have a different underlying training philosophy due a new coach (thanks to C.P.) and will organize everything else around the training in ways that benefit the sport more. In other words, trying to be more professional and hopefully as a result improve my performances.

For all the people that support me in one way or another, I can´t say it often enough: Thank you for enjoying following orienteering so much that it results in support for me. It´s quite motivating to know that other people believe in you, especially at times when self-belief is not high. A more general note on motivation what often keeps me going and pushes me further is the thinking “If others can do it, then why shouldn´t I”. I know I should at least try; I can always fail later.

PS: I didn´t find a good way to combine the current situation with another Star Wars title reference into a new post-title but if you have one I am all ears!

 Title photo: Guntis Bērziņš, Lieldienu Balva, 04.2022

Categories: Orienteering

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