I decided to leave Helsinki for a fast trip to Basel, Swizerland. 3 races in 48 hours. An OK run in sprint relay in tricky Basel on Friday afternoon. Promising middle distance in shitty suisse terrain on Saturday and motivating sprint final in Liestal on Sunday.
Because of a rough time at school during the week I didn't feel good at all on my way to Switzerland. I came awfully late on Thursday, so late it was Friday actually. I didn't have time to think about my feelings for a long time because there was the first race already on Friday afternoon - mix relay in Basel. After a short training in the morning I was suddenly waiting on the start line for Milos who ran the second leg in my team. Míša Omová made a good race on the first leg and sent Milos out on 8th place. Miloš lost a bit but I had a good starting position in a group of runners on around 11th place. I made a good race. Surprisingly I felt quite well, I made a little route choice mistake in the botanical garden but then I avoided any more mistakes and I sent Janďa out on 7th position with a big lead to the other teams behind us. Unfortunately Janďa made one big mistake and we lost the fight against Norwegians. 8th position in the finnish and beating the Czech "A" team. Satisfaction.
On Saturday we decided to destroy ourselves in bloodthirsty-suisse-hilly-shitty forest above Liestal. It was basically quite simillar to some of the worst Czech terrains so I felt quite confident before the race. After little hesitations on first two controls I got into the right flow. On 10th I caught Mårten Bostrom and I felt I'm running one of those almost perfect races. The punishment for those feelings came on the last control in the forest when I got a bit confused in the small paths and then I got stuck in bush. I lost around 20 seconds and those 20 seconds meant a lot. I was quite dissapointed to see that only 7 seconds were enough to jump from my 12th position to 8th. Anyway it is a good signal for my winter training. I've never been so close to the best runners. Something to build on.
Surprisingly my poor World cup points were enough to run the sprint distance in Liestal on Sunday. Awesome suisse fans created unbelievable atmosphere. Unfortunately I suffered for the most of the race. I didn't feel strong at all. In the end I made some small stupid mistakes and finally I was 26th with a huge gap to the best. Because of a rough season when I focused basically only on forest disciplines there was no time to run some sprint-focused trainings recently and I missed mostly those fast track trainings which I hasn't been doing since the start of the season in April. Winter ahead of me. Time to speed up slowpoke!
Anyway I'm on my way back to Finland now but I will not stay there for a long time. Next Friday back to Czech republic to enjoy the atmosphere of Czech relay and club champs and then I will join the Czech team for the training camp in Scotland. Lot of travelling and lot of fun ahead! And yes, some school stuff as well, had better got back to reality now.