JWOC 2017 Finland - Day 5

So after we finished writing the blog last night, the Sun - yes you did read right the Sun - of all things decided to pop out from behind the clouds and we thought that it would be rather scenic to go down to the lake and get some pictures of the view with the Sun in it. What was planned to be a 5 minute walk to the lake ended up being a 2 hour sit down on the pier to wait for Sun set. It was completely worth the wait, even though Sarah was hiding under so many layers that she "looked like a marshmallow". With the Sun down, we decided to head to the comfort of our accommodation and beds.

To make sure our legs would not be too exhausted for JWOC week, we took today slightly easier and rolled out of bed a little later than usual. With breakfast out of the way, we made our 15 minute journey to an area that had both Sprint and Middle training maps.

The training started off with a short control picking exercise where we planned our own courses on an all controls map. The map looked all nice and white and we were all hoping for the best... the keyword there was hoping, because that was totally not the case. The vegetation was super dense and green, which made getting anywhere at a pace really hard. Quite a few comments were passed that the area we ran in yesterday was nicer and more enjoyable than today.

Once we had met back at the finish, we decided to do a quick pit stop and tyre change (change of shoes) and head out to the sprint area. The sprint map was not the most technical and the main aim of the session was to get used to running on 1:4000 after a 1:10000 map. The plan for this session was to do multiple intervals with a high speed chase race in the last interval at the end.  The first intervals went well with quite a few variations in route choices which made for some interesting discussion. The second interval was unanimously aborted as it was in similar forest to the earlier session. Instead we did a team map walk to get to the next start. The last interval was a chasing start to add more pressure to the training. Christie went off first but was soon caught by Carl (15 seconds behind) due to a hesitation right by the start. Sarah did not catch the others due to the fact that she had forgotten to add a control to the others maps and consequently did an extra leg. Carl found that bare rock is still very slippery, even in a sprint environment as he almost repeated an incident from the national training camp where he hit his head against a boulder.

After wrapping up today's training, we headed back to the accommodation to prepare our lunch. On the menu was Quesadillas which were our first hot meal for lunch and for some might have been a little too hot. (Christie almost died, while Carl and Sarah thought it was only a little spicy).  We then proceeded with our daily ritual (napping) and later took a stroll to the nearby K-Market to stock up on the essentials (Oreo ice-creams and Fantas).

We headed to the pier and decided to be brave and test the icy waters. We only were able to get in as far as our shins before getting too cold. We called this our "ice bath" and then proceeded with our yoga/stretching.

Today's supper was a mix and mash of all the types of left over pastas that we had from the previous nights with some ham and sauce. Thankfully we seem to have finally mastered the use of the worlds smallest pot for cooking. With the sun still going strong, we have decided to have an evening of leisure and relaxation.