10Mila 2016

A very long night....

Flew out on Thursday afternoon and met some of the TuMe boys in the airport, before driving over to Börlange, arriving late and heading pretty much straight to bed.

After a decent breakfast we headed out for some training on a similar area. I was aware that even though I would be night orienteering, it would be useful for me to get a feel for the terrain (and o-map, as it had been a few weeks since I had orienteered). This didn't go too smoothly at all and I was struggling both technically and physically, which then hit me mentally. Perhaps it was a high level of pollen that day, but I felt like I couldn't breathe heading up any big hills, very uncomfortable. This then hit me technically and I forgot how to orienteer, which began to make me worried about the following night's 16.6km night leg.

After this training I began to get quite annoyed at myself. Why hadn't I spent more time orienteering back home, or pushed for a day leg, or at least slowed things down in the training area so to not mess things up so easily? I calmed myself down knowing that the pressure of running in a team usually made me focus more, that pollen is less of an issue after rain and at night (and so my chest should be better) and that my leg was ungaffled (plus there was a good chance I'd be in a train).

That evening, after a confusing eating schedule, we hit some more training on a cool ski-slope area near the 10mila map. I headed out much more confident and orienteered much better. Not only that, but I felt 10x better physically and that gave myself a much needed confidence boost. Finished the training off by running down some slowly melting ski jumps and clambered into the bus to dig into a midnight dinner.

Slept in the next morning and had a chilled breakfast, before heading to Falun and having a massive Chinese lunch with the rest of the team. Watched the women's race but also tried to catch some Zs, which didn't go too well. Soon the evening came by, and after a weird dinner/breakfast meal, we were watching the start from the hotel. Spent some time chilling in the room before Doug headed out, and eventually Janis and myself were ready to go to the arena.

We arrived at the arena in a motivated state and began to do the usual pre-race routine. The mood was soon brought down a bit with our first team mispunching but I was still keen to head out and show the club what I could do. Felt relatively normal warming up and was pretty excited heading in to the box and getting ready to form a train. Erik soon came in about a minute down on a pack of about 5 so I set off and began the chase.

DOMA link

Set off up the hill to 1 and felt horrific. Assumed this was just the steep hill though and was soon heading north to 2 on a relatively flat track. Felt quite good and cruised with good pace to find the pack before we hit the field. We swerved left just before the control (saw a light, probably the camera) but soon corrected this and came into the control all together. The pack shot off about 45 degrees wrong to 3 though and I nipped in in front. However, I hadn't planned 4 all that much so we stood there for a moment in a panicked planning state,

The Lynx runner soon made a decision and we followed him out the control at a pretty severe angle to some tracks. This is where I began to feel awful. At first it felt like a sicky feeling, and I began to think how I could fix things. Lost touch with the map and decided to just trust the other guys. I began to fiddle with my spare torch round my stomach and transferred it to my wrist. This made a big difference but I was still not all that fresh. We crossed the drinks points eventually, I took some energy drink and felt a bit better, before swooping down to find 4. Except we had all made a parallel error and we were screwed. We followed some elephant tracks in unsuccessful desperation but soon I took charge to head down the hill to hit a big crag and relocate. Wasted approx. 6mins but could have been a lot more had the guys carried on their headless chicken approach to relocating..

I took the lead going down to the track but was soon overtaken by Lynx again. But this time I decided to break off and take a straighter route to 5 whilst the guys went round on a safer route. I knew I'd meet them again soon so took a bit of a break and walked up the hill to find them at the top again. I took charge again and hit 5 after a big, but safe, banana. Died a bit going up to 6 and took a gel. Felt the instant energy burst and kept in the pack well but then we were soon going straight to 9, much to my disappointment. This was definitely a poor route but no one in the pack seemed to realise. I didn't have the balls to split but looking back, I probably should have manned up.

This could have ended the race for me though, because once we eventually hit the track going to 9, my legs went totally flat and I really began to hit the wall. No amount of gels/drink seemed to help this and I was slowly dropped by the train, which was at about 15 people now. The faster guys broke off and I just about hung on to a few stragglers. However there was a long way to go and I began to worry about how I might end up finishing. Took a few good shortcuts to the later controls and my descending speed seemed to save me but eventually I trundled in to the finish 45s down on the back of the pack, thoroughly disappointed. Even though I lost 6 places, overall I pretty much maintained, due to the small gaps in the train that I was in for most of the race. However 6 minutes is a big loss and I can't even begin to imagine how much time I lost on the running side of the 20km leg.

Perhaps the best way to sum up my experience is that if the race was regular individual event, I would have retired by the 5km point. Didn't enjoy a single moment of it, which is a rarity.

Many things that my poor physical shape could be put down to, including:

• Eating prep. - (maybe ate too close to my start)
• Sleeping prep. - (not enough during the day?)
• Hayfever - (chest felt tight at times)
• Training load in the week leading up - (nothing to give in legs)
• Large concentration of effort at the start of the race to catch the pack (early burnout)

but whatever the reason it was my fault and I really should have run better with all the long runs I've put in in the months leading up to this. Hence I am quite annoyed, and even more so with the impression I gave TuMe. At least I can say I gave it my all, even though my all wasn't very much that night... The team went on to finish 72nd and I was 75th on the leg.

There seems to be a recent pattern that my races either go really well or really badly, no mediocre performances recently as of yet... Need to try and find what's governing my bad results now. Perhaps it's as simple as one of the above points, but there could be more to it than that, including things mental preparation. However, there's still a few races before the summer arrives to test things out and hopefully find a good routine where results sort themselves out. And with regards to TuMe representation, there's still Jukola to come, so hopefully I can prove myself there...