The past season was pretty good when it comes to success and the gap to the top of the world doesn't feel that big. In the beginning of the season I got injured, but that actually made a good ground for the success in the latter phases of the season. I didn't have to fatigue myself by racing and I was able to do basic training in May (which hardly ever happens nowadays). As a result I caught a "hypercompensation" in my physical form in July. In the very last races I was, on the other hand, a bit tired and came home from the World Cup finals only with a knee injury.
The fall has been rather interesting period of growth. I'm now (really) starting to realize, that I'm not a youngster anymore, the studies are close to the end and as a sportsman, I'm now starting to take the final committed steps. The feeling of commitment is especially interesting one and I will surely need that when it comes to work with my Master thesis and the three-year project in sports, lasting till the home WOC in Vuokatti in 2013. As an aid in this final sprint in sports, I will have some new sponsors for sure.
One more interesting thing happened last weekend: I got named as the Coach of Year by the orienteering coaches. It's a bit contradictory as I did a good season as an athlete and because the recognition based on the work I have done with Minna. I understood the choice as a reward to all people who have backed up Minna's success and that coach can be more (or something else) than just a coach. In my opinion, coach's duty is to help the athlete in building his/her OWN vision of training, competing and life. Nowadays Minna's view of sports and orienteering is on that level, that the coach just have to keep his mouth shut and admire ;-). Fortunately there are still things where she can be better and we have something to suggest to her as building blocks. We will see, what she still can do, because she thinks her pyramid is not ready yet. That's a good base for the last years!
We won't travel to Egypt learning from building pyramids, but head to Canary Islands (as we did last December). This time we'll fly to Gran Canaria for a 10-day training-camp. As a specialty, we'll do some measurements on acute training responses at high altitude, regarding to the WOCin WOC 2011 in France. Practically it means that heart rates, heart rate variability and lactate levels will be measured at different altitudes at varying speeds. Precise study-desing is not yet confirmed, but I'll let you know from the results later. Now I wish you a nice time before Christmas and take it easy with the training - the hardest training should not been done yet!
PS. Trainings updated on training-pages (i.e. wk 48).
PS2. Next year's competition and training-camp calendar has been updated on calendar-pages.