New PB in 5000m! And two other achievements

Yeah! Now I’m satisfied: I made 17:36 in 5000m track. For the five different kilometres I needed 3:25, 3:27, 3:35, 3:37 and 3:27. It’s somehow a victory, even if it was not as fast as one could expect due to the test on treadmill in spring. I have trained to reach 17:00 on 5000m. But from time to time I had to realize that there is a difference between a performance test and a competition and I can’t get that much faster than 2011, when I made 18:14. One reason is indeed that I, as an orienteer, can’t hold to a perfect running training plan. There are simply too many competitions and training camps. After all an orienteer also wants to get better in orienteering, and not only in running!

At the official 5000m in Langenthal on 22 August (three days after a very hard long distance swiss orienteering championship race), I said to myself: okay, your form is not very good and the weather is too hot, so a bad race time is more probable than a good one, but you have to try it anyway. What I did then, was not clever at all: I started much too fast (because I felt extremely good in the beginning) and got much slower during the race, which ended in a race time of 18:24. A horrible result. I already reached this in February 2011 alone in a training. So, directly after the race I decided to try it again before the end of this season. The best possibility was last Tuesday. Kevin Hegg, a club colleague, volunteered for being my pacemaker. Thank you very much!! Thanks to him I could reach my biggest aim: run a more or less constant race.

A completely other kind of victory was the one at the sprint orienteering championships on 9 September in Zofingen. I really liked this sprint! I was exhausted in the finish. It would have been interesting to see how much time I lose on the world cup swiss girls (who were in Finland at this time), because I had a quite good race with only some little stops. Anyway, this gold medal made me feel that my trainings not only answered the purpose of my well-being and joy, they also made me better and faster.
SPM article swiss orienteering 
SPM results

The same with the victory of the last stage of “4foulées” in Les Bois on 12 September. A 10.8 km race on meadows and only few paths and roads (very funny :-)).
4foulées results

Even though these two victories always also depend on the other competitors, they make you think that you can’t go that wrong with your training. A very good feeling! Although not really justified…;-)

Next: Greifenseelauf in Uster on Saturday. I'm looking forward to my first half marathon! And then, in the beginning of october: 25manna in sweden!

It's getting winter slowly.. perfect conditions for swimming in the Aare and cold lakes, like the oeschinensee.

me on the way to one of the last controls at the sprint championships. I'm still working on a better running style ;-)

me at the prize giving ceremony of 4foulées in Les Bois

 

Two other adventures. I'm still alive...

We proofed it yesterday: we can also do rubber rafting on the Aare (in swiss german "Aareböötle") in pouring rain and wind. We did Thun-Rubigen (where we finally were sane enough to stop that experiment ;-)). Of course without the Uttigen-Schuss (a “step” in the river near Uttigen, that is almost 2 meters high) because we had just a little boat. We walked this part of the way with the boat on our heads. It started raining when we left in Thun and stopped when we were save again in the train. We have expected this, so we put everything important in plastic bags, I pulled a yellow postfinance poncho over me and my bikini and my sister preferred normal clothes and an umbrella. You can imagine how stupid we looked like!! Unfortunately (or luckily??) in this weather only few people are walking along the Aare. But when we saw someone we waved to this person and sang our songs even louder than before ;-). It was hilarious!! Yes, we WERE cold, we WERE wet and we WERE afraid of the big waves. But after a certain time, the moment came when I accepted everything and could really enjoy “Aareböötle”!! It was even harder to get out of the boat and stand on my own frozen feet than just remain seated in the water in the boat. The fact that the water of the Aare was slightly warmer than the air surely helped us stay in the boat. I will never forget this adventure on august 30 2012.

  

The other adventure was in the evening before. It was one race of the “4foulées” in the Jura. The train brought me through a heavy hailstorm to Saignelégier, where the weather was dry and stayed almost dry. The race was 9.5 kilometres and resembled an orienteering race without reading a map! There were only short parts where it was flat, I was always fighting and minding the slippery cow shits on the floor. The second woman Laurence Yerly with whom I fought on the first three kilometres didn’t overtake me again, so I won the womens race in a time of 39:44.8 minutes. In the finish I must have been looking almost dead (I also felt so), because the one who finished just before me asked me something like: "Are you okay?" I could answer him and soon said: "Une très jolie course!" ...and a whole evening, where I could practice my french! Now I know why they had already more than 600 participants.

Between two world championships

WOC Switzerland is over. There were so many impressive performances, remember for example the sprint race with Matthias, Matthias and Matthias on the podium. ;-)

I competed in the swiss-5-days and could therefore follow the world championships very well and enjoy a nice week in lausanne. Note: Never leave your baggage alone in Lausanne-Ouchy (and everywhere else if possible). To the one who took my sports bag there: If you really need the things inside, use them and be happy. Otherwise give them back to me or another one who can use them! On saturday during the womens sprint final I had to say goodbye to my compass, my SI-Card, running equipment and clothes that can't be simply replaced. But there are much worse things that could have happend, so I still view myself as the lucky one. And beside this incident, Lausanne was just great!

The Jorat (long distance terrain) was not that ugly, you just had to take the paths. Ugly were rather some parts of the 4th stage of the swiss-5-days (Bretaye), where I couldn't see the stony floor covered with fallen trees and the bushes were too high to see the terrain around me. I like running, yes, but there it was not for running. By the way: during this race, after big mistakes, I decided to concentrate on the finish-battle, where I succeeded and won an ice cream. Thanks! And a big SORRY for the one I ran into during my very very important finish sprint.

Somehow it's impressive that I never lost the motivation until the end. I caught the chance to run as a prerunner for the long distance final and the relay, which meant one extra race on the break day of the swiss-5-days and one extra race after the end of the swiss-5-days. So, I've done seven orienteering races whithin seven days, four of which were longer than 75 minutes! My body is not that bad, I'm proud of him ;-)! In the long distance final race, I finished with 1:29:57, which would be the time of the 23rd place in the WOC-race. Not bad, I'm satisfied. But I also tried to find out where I could be faster.

I've done no single orienteering training last week (which would have been impossible before the world championships, when there were training possibilities everywhere and anytime in switzerland!) Instead I used the time for some important high-quality getting-fast-trainings, and of course the bike tour to Colmar and back. This was another real adventure!!

Happy to finally reach Colmar, the northest place of my bike tour.

So, let's start the preparation for the next world championships (in finland)! On saturday the swiss team is flying to Joensuu to start one week training camp.

pleasure before business

Many important orienteering races have passed the last three weeks. Here you can find the results of the four testraces:

world cup middle distance 23.6.2012 (My running time was about 50 Minutes, I ran before the world cup)
Postfinance Sprint 24.6.2012 (Here also I ran before the world cup. My result: selection race Postfinance Sprint)
test race middle distance 26.6.2012
test race long distance 27.6.2012

The day after the long distance I got mentally prepared for both realistic possibilities: Student World Championships or no Student World Championships. Then I looked up the decisions of the coaches and was happy that I was selected for the Student World Champs in Alicante, Spain. Cool!

This meant flying to Spain two days later and doing two orienteering trainings (getting familiar with the stony, dry and detailed terrain) before the championships started with the long distance on tuesday, july 3rd. I ran the long distance, the sprint and the relay. 2nd place, 15th place, 2nd place.

WUOC long distance 3.7.2012,   article on swiss orienteering homepage,  split times
WUOC sprint distance 4.7.2012,   split times , article on swiss orienteering homepage
WUOC relay 6.7.2012  ,   split times , article on swiss orienteering homepage


After some not very good results and a bit too much mistakes at the testraces in the end of june (with the long distance I'm not satisfied at all, the other testraces were ok), I'm very happy to know that I can also do good results! After all that I can run a good first leg for my swiss team. The moment when I realized (through the speaker) that I passed the spectator control at first position was great. Not only because I have been running completely alone before this control. Great was also the moment when Sarina came to the finish at 2nd position for our team. I have been much more nervous waiting for our last leg runner than at every orienteering race I've done on my own!

2nd place with Julia Gross and Sarina Jenzer!

The sprint race was, let's say "special". Because the map was not really standardized, you had to be very flexible. I was not. I had big troubles with the map maker style. Not during the whole race, but enough to arrive 2:44 behind the winner Iveta Duchova.

By the way, my dear room, if you're wondering why I'm not cleaning you up, and, my dear training diary, if you're wondering why I'm not filling you in: "Pleasure before business" seems to be my favourite statement at the moment. For example the Urner-OL on the Gotthard Pass on monday and the mountain tour from Kandersteg to Adelboden on tuesday was it absolutely worth!

Strength training on the Gotthard-Pass ;-)

On the very windy Engstligengrat

Now I'm looking forward to the world championships of the best sport ever, which take place less than 2 hours by public transport from my home in switzerland! It's great to be here now, even though I'm not participating in a main race.

Studenten WM Alicante

Der Schmetterling der heutigen Bahn (6.8km, 420m Steigung, 20 Posten). Fand ich besonders lustig.

Langdistanz Pantano de Tibi. 2. Platz 5 Sekunden hinter Isabelle Feer. Schönes Gefühl, die zweitschnellste Zeit gelaufen zu sein! Es war überhaupt nicht ein perfekter Lauf, aber ich bin zufrieden, denn ich habe mich trotz Müdigkeit zusammengerissen und meine technischen Ziele umgesetzt.  Es war heiss, aber erträglich. Der Lauf ist ausgewertet und nun gehts morgen weiter mit dem Sprint auf dem Burghügel Santa Cruz in Alicante. Es erwartet uns wieder viel Steigung! Diese Nacht ist mehr Schlaf (ohne Mücken-Mord-Session um 3 Uhr nachts) angesagt.

Studenten WM Alicante

der kühlschrank funktioniert wieder, es tropft nicht mehr von der decke, eigenes frühstück ist eingekauft und erste trainings im gelände sind gemacht. morgen kanns losgehen mit der langdistanz!

Jukola 2012

Jag älskar det första sträcka och snitsel :-). This Jukola-weekend in finland (near Helsinki) was so nice that I can’t wait fort he next scandinavian relay. What was so nice? The terrain with its open rock areas, the start on the first row (nr 28) for Järla Orientering, 1.8km out of 5.7km marked route, running in 3^rd position until control nr 3, catch up 82 places from place 126 at control nr 5 to place 44 at the finish, being in a good form when it was important (Thanks to three orienteering trainings in finland on Thursday and Friday I not only knew how to run, I also knew how to orienteer.), fooling around with the Järla-gang, running the 6^th leg for ol.biel.seeland at 7 o’clock in the morning and having the feeling that orienteering in this terrain is easy.

Of course there were some moments that I could have done without. After all my mistake to control nr 4 in the venla relay, where I needed about 3.5  minutes too much to find the control. This was toooooo bad. To the 4^th control I took a route with a lot of path to be sure and fast. And to keep the possibility to catch up another runner who also took this route, and benefit from her. But probably I left the path not enough sure and with too little control of the direction. I never saw the other runner again. I have the impression that, for me, the chance to have a moment of unconcentration is higher when I’m running alone. This was the case there when the mistake happend - I was completely alone in the (deepest ;-)) forest, although at 3^rd position.

At the end we reached the 28^th place due to better actions of my team mates. Well done Karolin, Elin and Elsa! We will start again in the first row next year :-).

Start zur Venla-Staffel mit über 1000 Teams. Ich habe es ganz links aufs Foto geschafft.