Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Travel Day! WOC in France in finished, and this morning we quickly packed our things, and got a lift up to the Geneva airport with a couple of the swiss coaches (Thanks to Marc and Sandra for setting that up). Then a picnic lunch with Ali and a couple of short flights back to Sweden with Boris. Mari met us at the bus station in Uppsala, took us shopping and dropped us at home. Time to learn Swedish!

WOC Relay. One embarrassing mistake on the way to the first control, and then a feeling of running alone in the forest for the rest of the course, even though I guess there must have been quite a few teams out there with me. I picked my way pretty well on controls 2-4, and really started to feel like I was getting good flow on 5. A few steps later, on the way to 6, I got very much lost and could not trace myself backward and only saw one way to correct the situation, which was to run and hit the trail. I did this okay, and came up at 6 from the far side. Was okay through the spectator loop but had trouble on the way to 13... I crossed the slash and thought I was following the hilltops over to the control but then things started to seem vague and confusing, and I drifted right... luckily finding a deep pit to relocate from, and then heading around the last few controls. Wyatt had warned me as I ran through to be careful on 15, and I was able to interpret the vegetation mapping in that area okay, and then it was just a matter of running into the finish and tagging off to Jordan. I was 12 minutes behind the leader, which is farther back than I would like, but I probably dodged a bullet by recovering on my big mistake at 6, so I won't complain too much.

Jordan had a rough day, but he always keeps pushing hard, which kept us in contact with Canada and then Sergei brought us home. Ending 27th. Certainly room for improvement, but this terrain is tough and I'm proud of my teammates ( Men and Women) for their efforts and results here.