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.