The season is over and hard everyday life is on - but this time the feeling is strong. My Master thesis study is about to start with an information meeting for the subjects. A lot of time has already been spend in the preparations. In our faculty, the Master thesis studies are usually really big ones and finally I faced the truth, and started to do the final hard work. It might be, that during the 480h of measurements and the same amount of analysing and the writing itself the feeling is not always so strong as here in the enthusiastic starting phase...Anyhow, this means that next year I'll be working with this project the same amount of hours as I use yearly for the physical conditioning (training, muscle maintenance and massages). In other words, this winter i won't be able to check every orienteering news and maps in the internet. This might be a good strategy on some other years as well, if you ask Minna ;-).
Well, some time is left for orienteering still. In the photo (by Touho Häkkinen) above, we are chatting about the route-choices last night in a KurkoCup event. It's easy to forget studies and other stressful things, when you´ran in the wilderness, on a course with some really tricky controls and legs. Concentration is pretty much in the map reading: how to do the next leg and how in the hell I am going to find the next control. This "survival-strategy" has worked well in the first two KurkoCup events and of course the good season helps on the psychological side. In both of those night-o-races I have faced pretty ugly situations, but somehow you just do well even though the uncertainty is the most fundamental feeling ;-). It would be nice to investigate this phenomenon more, as now I am able to orienteer "without limits", which was often the case when I was a young stud...
Right now I am too busy to write anything about last season. But I will surely do it after the training season really ends in the beginning of November. Maybe I'll find some wisdom about the training and orienteering done during last year? Until that, only the map trainings will be updated on the training-pages.
Peaceful autumn for everyone (at least for those who have the chance to take it easy...)!