After World University's, I had been trying to get my training
back up to normal volume but was really struggling each week with sessions,
feeling like I was almost going backwards :( I decided to just hold on until
Euromeeting and then have a week easy after before building back up the volume
for winter. I had taken a half day on Wednesday so got a series of trains
through London up to Stansted and my Ryanair flight across to Riga. Landing
late and waited for Chris, Will & Kirstin to land with Matt. We couldn’t
find the car hire which added more time to the journey! It didn’t take too long
to get to the accommodation (over an hour) and it was great to catch up with
Kirstin & Will Rigg. The end of the journey was down this deserted, gravelly,
dusty road which could have been the start of a horror movie, turning up at
what looked like an abandoned shed – which was in fact a lovely warm converted
stable however without curtains.
The next day, Thursday, was a crisp morning and we walked
over to the food house, a little warm cabin with some old sassy dinner ladies
serving up porridge. In the day we all went out training on the forest where
the accommodation was. Very green & scrubby terrain! After Kirstin & I
sat next to the wifi router for about an hour, refreshing the wifi with no
luck! We then trekked into town to pick up Will Gardner – finding a supermarket
predominantly filled with alcohol. In the afternoon we chilled out and watched
DUFF.
We managed to get on the wifi a little bit in the evening
to do some geeking before bed. The following morning we saw the rest of the
team who had arrived late the night before. It was the middle race, but not
until later in the afternoon. As a lot of people in our team didn’t have many
world ranking points, we were all off pretty early (matt starting first in the
Men’s BOTH days, even before the coaches, Tom & Ed. Before my race I kept
thinking I JUST needed to orienteer – interested to see how my navigation fared
when I tried to do it perfectly in a race. I was pretty happy with my course,
with good speed after some slow first controls & only two BIG mistakes that
pulled my time down but I was really happy with the overall course. That
afternoon I was really tired and probably had a nap but talked to Eddie about
my orienteering very realistically about where it was going & my goals.
With no easier senior event (e.g. WUOC) I was unsure if there was any point
doing WOC and set a target of doing really well at the national races.
After dinner, and a slightly weird desert which had the
texture of frogspawn we played some pool before bed. The next day was the long
race which used the same arena as the middle. As I warmed up there was a
rustling from the bushes and just in front of me a terrified wild boar came
storming out the forest and shot across the road into the other side, closely
missing Peter who was warming up in front! As I was in the box, I caught a
glimpse of the map which looked disgustingly green!
I took the first legs slow, hitting them bang on in the
green and after a slightly faster leg made a 90 degree error on a hill side. It
really through me as I had NO IDEA where I had got to & found it so hard to
relocate. I had to listen to what I would say to Adam before he races: If you
don’t know where you are, go back to the last place you knew where you were’
and so trudged back up this hill to realise what I had done! After correcting
this mistake I felt really tired & drained but there was a long leg into a
nicer patch of wood, a butterfly loop & then some longer legs where I could
run faster & perked up. Toward the end I made another mistake as I was
being cocky and not giving the map enough attention but stayed in a relatively
good mood as I felt fit & had spiked A LOT of controls! We had lunch in the
arena (soup, rice & chicken), going over routes & waiting for everyone
to finish before driving home. On the
way home we stopped to look at some of the caves as the area we were in was a
national park with loads of caves hidden into rock faces. Back at the
accommodation Tom ran some analysis before we had a stretching session in the
boys room which was hilarious with lots of grunts & moans as we tried to
stretch after a tough long race. 
The last day was the sprint in Cesis – after driving
through the area to the parking (OOPS) we went into quarantine which was on a
VERY OLD track (which was rubber/gravel/broken up) and shared with the public
races meaning there was a huge toilet queue! I had a pretty early start time
with no ranking points but really enjoyed the race, trying to navigate properly
instead of being lazy and fluking it which worked really well. I was slightly
apprehensive before as I was worried I would find it hard to slow down/stop as
you realise the time you lose more in a sprint as every second counts more!
Anyway, I was happy and ended up positioning higher in the long or middle (17th!!).
After we went back to the accommodation & chilled there before going to
Riga for dinner at the pizza place with HUGE family sized pizzas each. We got
to the airport and I skyped Adam as it was our 2 year anniversary! The rest of
the evening was long – a plane & then a bus & then a lift with TOM back
round the M25 to work to pick my car up before home at about 1am!! And off to
work the next day! The Joys!
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