Photo: (c) Touho Häkkinen
Yesterday it happened. Precisely at two o'clock on a skiing trail towards Ampujien maja. I noticed that I was running at 4½min/km pace, even though I had once again promised before the training that all of these long runs should be as easy as possible. I slowed down and started to wonder what was the cause. It didn't take long to realize that I had been thinking about next season. Italy had entered my mind.
In fact, the meaning of that episode is two-fold. On the other hand it means that even if I want to "live this moment", I am still unable to make it. The future and the past have effect on the present. It's maybe not so big deal with this particular issue, cause you need to have dreams in sports. But the other meaning was more interesting: I have always consider myself somehow handicapped when it comes to ambition (excluding those years before becoming World Champion) and wondered why I am doing this stuff so vigorously year after year? I have admired other top-athletes when they want to win and "want to be better than others" and seen myself as a person who just "makes interesting things with skills" and has a goal of perfect orienteering. Maybe I have just sneaked behind that skill-goal and want to "crush other competititors" like others. Open questions indeed, but for sure that speeding up on a single training session tells me that the ambition is there and it hasn't diminished...
I still love what I do and I do things with the same eagerness what I had when I was 16yrs old. In fact, in that training session I was 16, 33 and 49 at the same time ;-). But I hope I won't be doing this stuff at the same level in 2029...Some of the sharp edges of the young adulthood have been polished away, but most of the idealism is still there. For example training analysis: when I was 16, I used to measure all the legs with a ruler and count km-speeds and used HR data also to produce some ideas over my orienteering. It was slow, but beneficial work. Nowadays it's so much easier with the help of all the hard- and software and more time is left for the real thing, my own discussion. To be honest, I don't get big ideas so often anymore (sometimes I have these moments, when I invent the wheel again...), but if I see something new and interesting I use all my skills, strength and every possible technical system to learn something new from a particular case. This year, I have used a lot lidar-data to understand the new lidar-based maps better (see the map piece above, even though it's from next year's race ;-)).
Some words about next season: I approach every challenge from discipline analysis perspective. What is needed in every single race next year? How are the tours in general? Then I plan the dates and places, when I execute these special trainings. Next year's challenges are pretty clear: hilly middle distances in Turkey, Spain, even in EOC?, Norway and in Italy. Going up and down, making the best route-choices. Economical running on the slopes and on roads, paths and flat areas. The most important thing is to get the body as aerobic as possible in the hills, and on the other hand to recover from the inevitable anaerobic phases and then combine these to aggressive and "anticipating" o-thinking. Today I am in a good situation, because my body is very suitable for those hilly middle distances. And my mind is not too bad in those, too.
But hills are also the biggest challenge, when it comes to long distance. For some reason, I have had diffulties in those (excl. France 2011) and it may have something to do with the genetics, because my fater suffered from same kind of problems when he was a top cross-country skiier. But with very good preparation it's possible to do well in those races too, and that's what I saw in France. But how to execute careful preparation for long distance when the season is long and full of competitions? Well, what I can do is to skip all the unnecessary races (incl. sprints) and start to do hard long distance trainings already early in the spring. This year I will do them, even though they would harm the overall training, because it's so damn important issue to me. I don't want to find myself insecure with my long distance physical condition ie in EOC. I have learned that it has negative effect on other races too.
I won't publish exact plans here, because my plans change so much all the time. You can check my new training diary to see how things are rolling. Unfortunately, I have changed the language to Finnish. During the autumn I will exercise quite a lot (this week and next week are good examples) and orienteer much until the snow falls down. Then I will try to reduce my running mileage (to 100km/wk) for a while and hopefully do cross-country skiing a lot before christmas. The christmas holiday I plan to stay in South Africa. Other camps in program: Turkey in the end of February and Spain in the early April. Italy comes to picture more in May and probably during the summer holiday as well. I am so old and experienced that I wouldn't need to spend so much time down there, but if it's possible, I'll do it. The most important work, 200-400hrs of playing with the maps I will do during the winter already. In the end, orienteering is the same everywhere. When you figure that you are already at top level ;-).
Stay tuned and have a nice autumn!