Since 10mila I have been training hard, first in Vuokatti and Joensuu with the Danish National Team, and this week back in Denmark, with Danish test-races this weekend.
10mila
The antibiotics killed the infection in my leg in 3 days, and started running again on thursday before 10mila, and it was almost painless from the beginning. But the antibiotics killed my stomach instead and on saturday everything was just running through me... I was supposed to run the last leg for Vaajakosken Terä, but we had to change plans, so I got the shorter 9th leg instead. I was only able to eat very little the day before the race, and I had no energy in my body at all during the race. I actually did a quite good technical performance, but still lost more than 4 minutes to the fastest on the leg. We had a bad start of the relay, but did a good job from the 4th leg and the rest of the relay and ended up at a respectable 10th position. In Jukola we will be much better prepared and will aim for much more.
WOC training Camp
The Danish national team went directly from Stockholm to Helsinki and Vuokatti. I was able to eat some more during sunday and monday, without shitting it all out again, so I gained some strength again and was able to train hard and good from tuesday. Luckily there was almost no snow, and we had a lot of high-quality trainings until saturday. We had training-competitions on the three individual distances, and even though Marius was better than me on the middle and long distance, I am satisfied with my performances, and I start to feel better in the WOC-terrain. It was a really tough camp, but I only had one day of easy training before continuing the hard period of training.
Danish test-races
Even though we had test-races this weekend, I have trained a lot last week. May is a very important training month for me to be able to be at my best in WOC, and luckily my results the last years is good enough to get me into the team without winning the test-races. I trained 14 hours in the 5 days before the races, and I felt tired on most of the trainings, and have also had a tired body on the races this weekend.
On saturday we had a sprintrace in northwestern part of Hillerød on a new map. It was a great area for sprint, and I wasn't able to do a really good race. I made several small mistakes (5-10 seconds), and had a bad routechoice which costed me 15-20 seconds. I was still able to finish in 2nd spot, but 48 seconds behind Rasmus Thrane, who did a strong race. Results here
Yesterday it was middledistance in Grib Skov Nødebo. The course was tricky, with a lot of green areas of young forest, bad visibility, but good runnability. My performance was really good, one bigger direction mistake (20 seconds), and some small ones (2x5 seconds), but still a really good race. I finished in 3rd position, 36 seconds behind Marius Thrane Ødum and 17 seconds behind Søren Schwarz. The physical feeling wasn't that bad during the race, but the level amongst Danish male-orienteers is getting higher all the time, and it's not easy to win. Results here
Today we had a long distance race in the same terrain as yesterday, 17,7km. My race was again almost perfect, but I lost some crucial time going to much straight. I had a really tough and close fight with Marius, he was leading the most of the race (but not with more than 40-50 seconds), and I got really close in the end, but he beat me with 8 seconds. I was very tired during the most of the race, but still managed to keep a good pace, and do a great technical performance. Results here
Next up, is Finland and Jyväskylä, with a Jukola-camp (and some WOC-trainings) with Terä.
