European Word Championships were held this year 10th - 16th
April in Palmela, Portugal.
Due to tough schedule decided to focus on two (out
of three) distances - middle and long.
Further you can see maps with my routes and a commentary for
each race.
Middle qualification
Two rather stupid mistakes caused that my qualification was
not as smooth as I expected. (But it hadn't meant anything in the end as the
whole race was voided due to some wrongly set controls and a problem with the map in one
place. So all runners who started in the qualification were then allowed to run
in the final.)
The race started quite well for me and I felt confident in
the contours. (tack Räkan)
First stupid mistake came to control no.4. I switched my
thinking and started mapping already to the no.5. Took me some time to realize,
fortunately I could come out of this mistake rather fast. The next thing was
not to get stressed and keep the head cool. Which I managed till control no.8.
While seeing the control flag from far distance I was ignoring map and also my
compass. And while thinking about kind of stupidity of this control, I was the
only one being stupid there as I was running towards the control which turned
out not to be mine.
Long qualification
My tactic to this race was to try to avoid all green bushes
that were in 90 % of cases incrossable.
To control no.11 I wasn't so precise in
the very first part of the leg which meant that instead of to the yellow part I
came already above the green rose bushes. I countinued to run following a small
path while trying to see any possible passage through. I was naïve. My
performance was yet enough to qualify safely.
Middle final
I was really looking forward to this race. The terrain promised really fast
race and there was almost nothing else on the map but contours. I believed in
my speed as well as in my contour reading skills. But unfortunately things went
bad. And I delivered a performance that I feel really ashamed of.
My legs were
perfect, physically I was prepared really well. But again I destroyed any
chance for a good result with my head. I did many big mistakes. Running fast
not using my brain.
When I took the broader look on this race I had to admit that I was
probably overmotivated. I was not able to indetify and solve this before the
race.
Long final
In spite of the former problems with this course
on the organizers' side. The final course that was prepared for us was really
nice. Still a lot of fast running due to the character of the terrain. Although
I made some mistakes and my legs were definitely not fresh after the middle
final, I managed to deliver performance that led to 25th place.
Relay
The okej run from my side but I felt quite tired in legs. Running the
second leg for the second team.
Unfortunately we lost bigger chances to a good
result on the first leg.
To sum it up simply, I was hoping for more.
BIG CONGRATULATIONS to all the team mates who delivered
amazing performances and took great results!
