As a half-professional orienteering athlete, I can't stand whole winter without any race, of course. Fortunately, there are some during winter months in eastern Denmark as well as in Czech. Vinter Cup is a series of 5 races organized by various clubs in Sjælland (a part of Denmark where Copenhagen lies). All races are mass starts with distributive techniques commonly used in orienteering such as a butterfly etc. Runners get points from each race based on their running time and a loss to a first racer in their category. The winner is a runner who collects the most points from at least 4 races.
Amager Fælled 5. 12. 2015
Let's say, the first race was in our home terrain. Amager Fælled is located in the northern part of Copenhagen. It's probably the biggest forest park in the capital. That day wasn't made for winning. The weather was chilly and partly rainy. Unpleasant wind blew at times. Moreover, we managed to move from a small town outside the Copenhagen into Amager before the race and we arrived at the venue right on time. Anyway, I enjoyed the time spent with map and occupied the 3rd position with 3:23 minutes loss at the end.
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| Course with my GPS track |
Ravneholm skov 19. 12. 2015
Second Vinter Cup race was situated in a small forest between Søllerød and Lundtofte - villages north of Copenhagen. The forest was partly hilly and I got totally lost when I had a first control in this contoured part of a map. I realized I forgot using contours in the map because of flat area everywhere around the Danish capital. I lost more than 3 minutes at one control but the worst thing was when I lost the fight with other girl on the final straight. At that moment, I also realized I have to train more.
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| Course with my GPS track |
Ravnsholt 9. 1. 2015
This race was a real winter one. There were finally about 5cm snow in a forest. I had a little problem to find a start point in my map at the beginning. Unfortunately, these problems continued during whole race and resulted in an erroneous scoop from one control. This time I had enough energy to outrun other girls in the end of the track which gave me an amazing feeling but only until I reached a finish line where were already two another girls which gave me 2:28 minutes. OK, I have to train even more!
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| Course with my GPS track |
Danstrup Hegn 23. 1. 2015
Unfortunately, I didn't participate this race because of illness. It started with small cold and ends with penicillin, a week in bed and 13 days without training :-( Fortunately, I'm back again and slowly gain a speed in my next workouts.
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| Map from the race |
Rude Skov 6. 2. 2015
Last and also the most hilly race took a place in Birkerød. I was after the illness and therefore took this race as a training. I tried to concentrate more on the map part and run continuously.
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| Course with my GPS tracking |
Even if I enjoyed all Vinter Cup races, I'm looking forward to some normal distance race where I can run most of the track alone. I appreciate the experience I have in these practice races gathered. But I have to say I wasn't able to get into a map for 100% in either of the races. I have to work on that until spring now. I hope a set of workouts with a map and a few weekend races will help me to achieve my goal. Let's start to work on it! :-)
