With two weeks of exams at the unversity there was not much time to recover after testraces in Czech. So my body wasn’t really ready for tough training. But after the exams were done I got 4 pretty decent weeks of training (containing one week in Sweden).
So I was pretty stoked for the testraces in Arosa and ready to take on the fight for a spot at the World Cup in Idre. Buuuut sadly the feeling doesn’t tell much sometimes….
The first testrace started with stomach cramps to the first control (nothing that serious, just a bit bad for the mental game). But also otherwise I felt like my body wasn’t responding. It’s just frustrating to never bring it on day X this year… Anyway I fought till the end and accepted that it was at least technically a decent race.
The middle on the next day was then something completely different… A big part of the race was just really steep and pretty easy downhill-O. It was just about who wants to risk his life the most. It wasn’t me so I again lost a lot of time especially in the second part. As you can probably tell these two races were not nearly enough to even fight for a World Cup position… So another disappointment to the book of 2021.
U23 Skyrunning World Champs
Luckily there was a next chance to shine one week later in Fonte Cerreto (IT) at the U23 Skyrunning World Champs. Knowing my shape was pretty bad my highly set goal for a medal was becoming pretty unrealistic. Also because for the vertical km the forecast was 36 degrees for 16:00.
Standing at the startline starting 15s after Jonas Soldini my plan was to stick as long as possible to his feet and then survive. Sadly there was not much seeing Jonas in this race… After starting a lot too fast my race was practically over after just 10min. So after fighting for another 10min I was just walking up and saved energy for Sunday (and cheered for passing athletes like Kasper;)).
Sunday then started pretty early… Waking up at 5:45 and standing at the startline at 8:00. I was not feeling great but pretty good for me at eight… An early little disappointment was that the course was shortened because of heavy wind. The first part then went up the vertical km again, so a tough start for a «not that much hill king». I was staying in the first 10 and not loosing too much time. But then as it got less steep I couldn’t play my «speed card». So I just saw the gap to the top 3 and even top 6 getting bigger and bigger. In the second uphill then I lost the contact with the pack in front of me completely and just tried to survive on my 8th (U23) place. Wasn’t easy but with a fast second part of the downhill I managed to win the battle aginst the next Swiss. Overall I can say I was pretty decent in the technical downhills and really slow in the uphills. Easy to say now what to work on!
But even though it wasn’t the results I was hoping for it was a great experience with meeting a new great team and some other amazing international skyrunning people, so I will be back (and learning Italian until next time won’t be the worst in a Ticino team;))! To finish a big big congrats again to Jonas and Kasper who showed the skyrunners the strenghts of orienteers!
