Inconclusive is what describes this “season” the best. I gave my situation time, and more time and it continued to get slowly better. Never got it bad enough to really call it quits, and after spending two weeks in Finland for a training camp which I ended with running the viesti-liiga final and feeling like ‘normal racing’ again – a feeling I hadn’t had in a long time. It gave me a boost of optimism which currently makes me hopeful for a real season next year.
By the hours my training (including races, etc.) is for 2024 on par with last years (see Attackpoint*). The differences show up in running pace and hours on the bike, however. I cycled 100h more than 2023 but ran almost one minute per kilometer slower in basic running sessions. My 9 intense running session are negligible compared to the 85 of last year. I raced 7 orienteering competitions this year, running 5 of them in the last 2 months though.
For the past 7 months I consistently logged a bit over 30 training hours, after coming from a low of training and motivation between December and January (~16h). The beginning of December 2023 was also the last time I have been sick which is probably a first for me and my body but also not so surprising given the lower overall training stress and amount of traveling.
Given these statistics I should have had a solid period of base training in the books but the reality feels not (yet) like that. Maybe since coming back from Finland, the few running sessions actually felt like running again but it is not enough yet to call it all normal again. But as said, it gives me a good amount of hope currently while also scaring me to fall back down again. Either way, the plan for the coming weeks is on winter training with a bigger focus on running and carefully injecting intensity back into the mix again. I will have to see how the body reacts but running feeling like running seems like a pretty good starting point.
It therefore should not come as a surprise that I will try continue my orienteering career with the nationalteam and also my club Angelniemen Ankkuri. The ultimate goal for the next year is therefore to start at WOC, however, currently my goal is to reach normalcy in training and a basic, consistent and sustainable level of competitiveness again by March next year. Everything else I will figure out later.
Holidays, training camps and race weekends have for the last years always been very interchangeable terms to me.
While I did more holidaying this year, I am planning to do more of the other kind of holidays next year.
Let’s see what the future holds – if there one thing I learned the past months, it is to stay optimistic.
* I actually compared the last 366 days for both years ending on 1.11
Photos by order of appearance: High Tatras in August (by AEF), 25Manna in October (by AEF), Latvia in September (by Elīna Zvaigzne), High Tatras in August (by AEF)
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