Maria Sá

This trip was absolutely terrific! Last friday (7th november) we just packed our bags and took a train to Vienna. After a few hours during the night, crossing the borders of Poland, Czech Republic and Austria the «crazy portuguese» finally reached Vienna! What a awesome city! I just loved it! Stephan's cathedral, St.Peters curch, Votive church, Burg theathre, Schonbrunn Palace, Albertina were just some of the places that we visited. We also went to the Opera on Sunday evening
Of course that between so many nice places that we visited I also found very beautiful parks to run in the morning;)


Schonbrunn Palace in the morning. Just perfect;)

On monday morning it was time to go back home but..going to Olomouc and visit some portuguese friends sounded very nice. So instead of buying tickets to Wroclaw we decided to buy to Olomouc;) This part of the trip had a special meaning for me. I was not really expecting to go to Olomouc again after woc. So I remembered all the ambience, races and so on! Besides that, I had the chance to run the sprint final race and also to run on the sprint model event map.



Well, after travelling for four days we came back to wroclaw. Interestingly I had the feeling of finally «coming back home»

Last saturday it was time to go a little to the south and visit czech republic for a small competition. I've never runned on such a map before. So many holes at the beggining and at the end, between climbing up and down a tipical czech moutain.
I did some small mistakes and one bad route choise as I lost some minutes running straight instead of running on track around (11-12).Althought I felt good as I was very focused and my brain didn't stop for a minute. About running speed was quite ok but it wasn't exactly the goal for this trainning. By the way I was 6tg between 25 runners.
My route choices:






Now is time to train in Wroclaw to improve my strenght and next weekend I'll run some small cometitions here in Poland.Do widzenia! =)

Yes..it’s a while since wuoc and I’m sorry for didn’t writte sooner.
The experience of running at universitary championship was great! It’s very different from woc: people (most of them) are more relaxed concerning to the competition, people live at friendly ambience and, maybe, becuase of that, I didn’t feel anymore so stressed as at woc races. For be true, I was expecting better results from myself, specially at sprint distance…but unfortunatly it was not my day. Absolutly! I felt so tired and demotivated..I can’t explain and I have no excuse for such a bad race. Long distance was one of the thoughest races and terrain that I ever saw. Everybody arrived to the finish área so tired and some of them, almost walking! Besides of that many didn’t finished, others did more time than was allowed by the organizeres and others got injured. I belonged to those that was disqualified. Unfortunatly I missed one control!
Well, and middle distance was my last chance to do a nice race. I was very focused at the start line and started very confident and focused. I caught two runners that started before me and that gave me even more confidence! I was so focused, that somewhere at that forest, there was a branch that pinched my eye while I was reading the map! Oh my God! I though that I was blind as I couldnt see anything. It was terrible experience (as you can imagine). After a few minutes break, my eye start working again (not 100%) and I continued my race trough that though and so green forest. Not big mistakes and classified between the 50 first of the race were some reasons to be happy at the end of the race. But the scratch on my eye worried me so much that I couldnt enjoy that. I went to the hospital to check it and then to the pharmacy (apteka;) to by antibiotics. Fortunatly it wasn’t so serious as I was afraid it could be. But all preventive mesures are important so, the opportunity to run the relay with the austrian girls was gone
By the way, my eye is ok now and I promisse that in the future I’ll use glasses during all next races

After bad sprint and long Q races, I was focused on doing a good middle race even knowing that reach a final on that discipline would be almost impossible for me.
I started quite ok and confident but after two controls I lost so much time at control number 3 as I was running on a different open area that i didn't wanted to. Control number 4 was ok but then number 5 was disaster again. The rest of the race was technically ok but i was not fighting anymore.(map here)
The good news were that finally I was going to run the relay at the world champs!Beside just me and Raquel had run the rest of the races, Susana joined the team to run the relay. Susuna Pontes is the best MTBO athlete in Portugal and very good runner on foot orienteering! It was absolutly fantastic to have the chance to run with Raquel and with Susana the relay race. I ran the second leg and it was great experience! (map here)
After relay I was very tired...but still some extra energy to left o the dance floor

Second day at Olomouc and the weather is warmer and warmer. Today portuguese team went trainning to Prostejov velodrom. Unfortunatly we just had one map so, we had to go on trainning all together. It was nice terrain, very flat and fast running orienteering map. I didn't feel particulary well, but I think it was because of the hot weather and because we were running at 12 o'clok!



After lunch, I splept «la siesta» and at 14h30 went trainning to the center of Olomouc for the sprint model event.Me and Raquel went walking together watching all the details and the special way that the cartographers represent the vegetation. A bit different than what we are used to...so it was important trainning for tomorrow!



In a few hours we'll know our start times and some more informations for tomorrow sprint race. Portuguese team is ready. Let's get it started!