Tuesday 28 July 2009

Camp in mountains - take 2

My stay in Poland gott a great finish as I learnt how to navigate on slopes, run same countour controls and, mostly to do orienteering with general and big features.
After 10 days running on south west of Poland, and a weekend on lovely Wroclaw, we packed our stuff and travelled towards the south east of Poland, to a small village, Limanowa, where small orienteering treasures where waitting for us. In fact, it was really challenging for me to re-set my orienteering technique for such terrain. We notice this in May, during Limanowa Cup that my technique on slopes and big hills was really poor. But fortunatelly I can say, now, that during this camp I made big improvements on such type of terrain! This week of orienteering was really important for me.!

Saturday 11 July 2009

Camp in mountains - take 1


W dzemie siła drzemie :) jam is like fuel for runners :):) This I learnt on last camp with coach Kajo in Polish mountains. For so tough trainings, jam is your best friend ;)
During nine days of camp (2nd July - 10th July), I did 15 trainings and about 18hours of running. Most of training were to improve strenght, power and a bit my speed on mountain terrain. Uphill intervals on tough forest was the hardest training and second level 6x8min my favorite:) Running intervals on though forest was really nice too, specialy if you got lost after 3minutes running like a wild animal on unknown forest;) But well, I simply love this forest and this mountains, so every training here is great!
Besides training, there was also two afternoons of rest to visit some very nice places and have some fun. We visited Karpacz, very nice village in mountains, where I almost died on a crazy roller coaster:) It's great to feel the mountain ambience on such places! And also great, was to drink a lovely and delicious coffee expresso, like portuguese one, on a tipical mountain house in Jagniąntków.

What else...this weekend is mostly to take some rest and recharge batteries for next camp in Limanowa, which starts next monday. Tomorrow I hope to find some time to visit Wroclaw and maybe to do some shopping too;)

Tough terrain ;)

Me and coach

Flying ;)

Thursday 9 July 2009

June - our m-O-to



This is our national team, representing Portugal out boundaries on EYOC, JWOC and WOC. On beggining of June we had selection races on the north of Portugal, on our "big mountains" (baby mountains as you see on map below ;)
Well, pretty bad races for me...on sprint it was hard to see previously what to do next and "on-time" orienteering made my stupid race. Even though I won with some seconds ahead. I can't say the same about middle distance...My brain became lazy and probably my eyes too, as I lost about 15 minutes only on one control looking around on a stupid way, when I was 5 meters close from it. Disaster!
But mountain girl was ready to fight for a good race and on the day next I ran quite nice long distance. Still some mistakes appeared but after such bad races on the day before it tasted quite good.
Well, and some days after our names were on a list, and now our faces on this smily picture showing who we are :) " Crescer como grupo" is our moto, and translating, it means something like to grow as a group. That's the way we are working together and becoming better and better.! Well, and we can see very good results until now: 9th place on eyoc -sprint(Mariana Moreira W18), 11th place on jwoc-sprint(Diogo Miguel), 14th place on jwoc-sprint(Tiago Romao) and also Diogo and Tiago will be running on tomorow's jwoc A middle final.
Don't you believe there's still some relay medal for us out there? ;)

Saturday 4 July 2009

May - Pieces of reality

Stress is a big enemy. Sometimes I dive into it and it's hard to find a way out. On races I start nervous, thinking too much on what I should and shouldn't do and forget to run normally focused as I do. I got lost on stress. That's what happened on sprint national championship. Luckily we had two courses and on the second one I could reset my brain, found myself out of stress and be ready to fight hard. I ran very well, fast and almost without mistakes but not enhough to win the one minute lost in the morning. So I was second for 15".

Speechless. On the day next I ran middle distance national championship. I didn't like very much the terrain (a lot of paths and spipky green areas) and to find controls without flags. Althought I ran quite ok, I was speechless when I finished disqualified...

Friendship. After this bad race something much better was on the way...I took a flight to Poland and quickly I was on my second home, wroclaw :) It was very nice stay, to see coach, Hanna, Wojciechs and erasmus friends also. We ran 3 nice trainnings on mountain and run Limanowa Cup. I ran good sprint (1st) and quite good long distance (4th) but other races were better to forget as competitions but excelent as trainnings to learn about. Overall I was 3rd.
It was just amazing! I missed it for long time ;)

Suprise. Busy girls don't get nervous :) I had exam on saturday morning and after a few hours I was running absolut national championship qualification in the south of Portugal (ok..I know Portugal is not so that big ;) It was like running on sauna, under 36degrees...so I took it very easy to be healthy on the day next...cause final was a bit more serious business ;) I took it carefully on the beggining but after a while I was map making as map maker didn't do it so very well on this area.! It costed me about 4minutes and, in my mind,the chance of winning this championship...but big surprise was to finish race and know that I was the winner :):) cool ;)

Friday 3 July 2009

My oasis

It seems strange to writte about May and June when I have much fresher news to tell... Last Wednesday I arrived to Poland, where I'll spend next 20 days. Here sun doesn't shine on portuguese way, and Gods seems to be fighting and angels be crying as I heard on yesterday's morning training. I ran 60' on second level speed, quite nice, specially because of the beauty of the nature surrounding me. Now I can't see snow here (like last time), but it's still beautifull and peacefull. Yesterday's afternoon, during training, I realize how though is this forest and how different it is from what we have in Portugal. It sounds music to my ears when I know that makes me stronger runner on mountain.
Today I'll run ans stretch a bit in the morning with my fingers crossed for my sister's race in EYOC. In th afternoon I hope to be full of joy to do some strenght and running technique training. Gooooo Portugal!!