What you believe you will achieve!

"In 1954, the entire sports world believed that it was humanly impossible to run a mile in faster than four minutes. Their limiting belief was supported by research reported in more than fifty medical journals throughout the world attesting to that "fact". We now know that Roger Bannister challenged and broke through that barrier. What is not so well known is that the sub- four-minute-mile was achieved by more than forty-five runners within the next eighteen months. It is difficult to believe that all those athletes increased their performance within that short amount of time. A more likely explanation is that once the four-minute barrier was broken, they all believed it could be broken again."
--Thinking body, dancing mind. Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch

Arizona Christmas

Christmas1.JPG
Originally uploaded by SaMa News.

Arizona Sun… did us well. Here are some pictures from our two weeks adventure in the US. Click on the picture to see more!

Visiting my family in Arizona over Christmas was such a treat, not only have I not been to Arizona for 2 years, it's also been that long since I celebrated Christmas and New Years with my father, step mother and brother, and I could share the amazing desert of Arizona with Marc who had never been before.

Our days were filled with morning jogs in the near by South Mt. Park in Phoenix, and then with the variety of events and activity that sprinkled our vacation. We did two big trips; the first was to the Grand Canyon, where Marc and I ran down to the bottom and back up, a 30 km round trip with 1335 meters climb at the end in 4 1/2 hours. This was the highlight of our trip for the both of us. Marc says "Arizona was incredible. I always feel at home with high mountains around me, but I have never experienced something similar in any way to the Grand Canyon. A deserted plain, and then suddenly, whoof, a huge negative world opens itself. I told every Swiss person it is a must to see before they die!"
The second big trip was a 9 hour hiking tour on "The Ridgeline". This included 1800 meters of climb and was 22km long. We kept a good pace, but enjoyed ourselves along the way. On this one hike, Marc took over 100 pictures… which he seems to do almost every day we were in Arizona. (This is one reason why it's taken so long to get this post up; I have been sifting through photos for weeks!!)

Marc and my father, Peter, also climbed Weavers Needle, a two pitch technical climb after a 3 hour hike to the base. There are pictures of the needle in our album… it's certainly not for someone who doesn't like heights, like myself. I think this may have been a big disappointment for my father that he couldn't talk his daughter into climbing it. Oh well, I left the climbing to the boys… and they certainly enjoyed it!

We certainly had a shock returning to Switzerland after two weeks of sun and 25°C weather. But, on the other hand, it has made the long winter months a little shorter, and recharged our drained batteries. Thanks to my dad, my step mom, and my brother for a wonderful time. Lets do it again!!

High training volume hasn't left time for much less…

We apologize for such a long gap in our news. It's been on our list of things to do for several weeks now, we want to update you on our wonderful trip to Arizona over Christmas and to share results and maps* from our first race of the year the Effretiker Sprint.

The first National A-meet and first round of the Biofarm Cup took place on Sunday, January 15th in Effretikion. s-sport, SaMa's sponsor for orienteering and sporting equipments organized this annual sprint. The event proved to be of high class level, with a spectator control in the event hall, GPS tracking devices provided by FWRD for all the elite runners, and over 1500 runners from other categories to accompany us. It was an exciting event, and it certainly gave me a touch of anxiety at first, but then thereafter reinstated how much I enjoy orienteering and competing. It's a good feeling to get the first event of the year under your belt, although this felt almost "too" early to being thinking about competing, it also felt like the correct timing to evaluate my physical fitness from the winter training months, and also time to start up on a much needed interval program in my training.

The results are here, and I have made a comparison of my spits with some of the runners ahead of me. The GPS tracking device also gave me some addition information.

For instance:
Maximal speed: 14.8 km/h
Average speed: 9.6km/h :-/ seems really pretty slow…
Actual distance covered: 3.2km

Effretiker Stadt-OL (Elite Sprint) 1. Nat. OL A 15.01.06
DE (2.8km, 60 m, 19 Po.)

Sime (1st)- Lea (5th)- Jenny (8th)- Barbara (12th)- Sandra (17th)
1) 1.05- 1.23- 1.23- 1.17- 1.27-
2) 1.54- 1.56- 2.12- 2.24- 2.36- slow (route choice?)
3) 0.39- 0.43- 0.49- 0.51- 0.53-
4) 1.39- 1.46- 1.54- 2.02- 2.07- slow (good route choice)
5) 0.19- 0.19- 0.24- 0.27- 0.24-
6) 0.36- 0.41- 0.46- 0.46- 0.46-
7) 1.34- 1.24- 1.25- 1.45- 1.29- good! Route choice correct.
8) 0.13- 0.27- 0.18- 0.20- 0.29- 12" lost (went to 9 before 8)
9) 0.08- 0.07- 0.20- 0.09- 0.08- fast:-)
10) 0.31- 0.33- 0.35- 0.37- 0.37-
11) 1.34- 2.12- 1.55- 2.08- 1.54- fast, don't know why (better route choice to the left supposedly)
12) 0.44- 0.49- 0.54- 1.00- 0.54-
13) 0.14- 0.15- 0.17- 0.17- 0.16-
14) 0.15- 0.15- 0.16- 0.16- 0.19-
15) 0.37- 0.43- 0.48- 0.46- 0.47-
16) 1.00- 1.15- 1.18- 1.26- 1.55- 45" lost (should have stayed flat around and the up, not up and down, missed the control coming down too!)
17) 0.59- 1.03- 1.14- 1.19- 1.06- Good split!
18) 0.40- 0.43- 0.49- 0.51- 0.53-
19) 0.13- 0.14- 0.16- 0.16- 0.22- slow??
ziel) 0.28- 0.27- 0.30- 0.33- 0.34-
15.22- 17.15- 18.23- 19.31- 19.56-

*I am having technical problems posting my map. When I have actually achieved doing this, I will add my map and routes. For now, if you want to get an idea of the course and see Sime's routes, look here.

Marc did not have, what we would call, an optimal day on Sunday. He writes: "Fortunately the hectic environment of the race stimulated me enough to get out of my haze I had been in for the last few days. Actually, I don't think I would have made it out of bed if Sandra wouldn't have given me an ultimatum. As for the race, well, my brain is definitely in hibernation! Made a 30sec, a 45 sec, a 10sec and 60sec mistake... all only in ONE race! Not such a great start to the season! I ended up 2min31sec behind the winner, our "recently junior" now elite runner Fabian Hertner... in the 18th place. Fabians race was really strong, I am impressed."

When asked if these types of races can also be a positive "wake up call", meaning that a sloppy race is good once in a while to give you a sharp reminder that you've got to pay attention to navigation, too? Marc answers with "Actually, I think you are very right with the "sloppy race" theory. I did learn a lot from that bad race. I hope I can put my experience into practice. To bad it is a long while until the next race."

Marc and I managed to round of some Biofarm Cup points, Marc with 8 points and Sandra with 9 points. The next opportunity to get points is also the next National A meet on March 19th in Welsikon.

2005 a thing of the past!

2005 was a successful, yet unsuccessful year for me. I see it as a success more now in retrospective than during the year. Clearly it was successful for me in a personal aspect, starting a new (first) job and being good enough at it that they have hired me for several more years is certainly successful. I feel, however, some remorse is in my orienteering success, or lack there of. I felt bitter towards the progress I have made in orienteering throughout the year, but now I can finally see it as a success. I, of course, wanted to be better than I was, and felt like I wasn’t making any progress. But now, I can look back and see that I have made some really visible progress and that where I want to be (in terms of results and orienteering technique) is very close to where I am. I am on the edge of the next big step; I just need to take it. 2006 will be all about orienteering technique and mental preparation. If I can work on these two important parts of orienteering I will take the next step and I think I will be happy with my results. Of course it can’t go without saying that when I make this next step I will only be looking forward to the next goal. But for now I should look back at 2005 as a success, preparing me for what I will achieve in 2006.

Here are the stats on ’05:

Total hours of training in 2005 = 414 hours
Goal 400 hours☺
Running hours (including Aqua-jogging) 225 hours (54%)
Orienteering 66 hours (16%)
O + running hours = 70% of training.
Strength 27 hours (6%)
Cross training 96 hours (23%)
Sick days = 27 (this includes days where I rested in order not to get sick, but it’s way too high!!)

Orienteering races = 40 races and 32 hours
Orienteering training = 34 hours

2006 Goals
Increase orienteering hours (over 150 hours) but mostly in training hours, I feel like I race enough… I was certainly surprised that I had so little orienteering hours, I was doing quite a lot of O training in May and June, but I didn’t do enough orienteering in January through March. I took a break after the World cup races in October, but had a training camp with the US team in Denmark in November.
I plan to increase my overall training hours, but I will be more cautious in order to keep sick days down. Should actually increase training hours anyway, by reducing sick days. Rest days will stay about the same.

As mentioned above, my main goal for 2006 is to increase my O technique and mental training. This already began last year, and is in process now. I am doing an analysis of every race I ran last year and documenting the problems. I hope this will help me figure out why I make the mistake I do. I will make a list of problems I have and work on one in every training I do this spring.

Ironically my first race is already on Sunday January 15th, but it’s the only one for months. I will have to prepare mentally because I don’t feel prepared to race yet. It is my first challenge of the year.