WOC 2006 Rollercoaster ride!

Sandra here:

Dissapointing start
This year’s WOC was really a rollercoaster ride for me. I had a very dissapointing run in the long distance qualification, where I skipped a control and didn’t notice. In the finnish the officials had me look at the map and asked if I had been to number 7. I took one look and realized that I hadn’t. My heart sank into my stomach, this was hard to swallow.

Recovered well
At some point you just have to put a bad race behind you and start looking ahead. I still had the sprint ahead of me and I enjoy running sprint. I knew my chances to make the final were slim, and that it would take a clean race to do it.
I was happy with my race when I finished, eventhough looking at my time on my watch when I finished I knew it wouldn’t be fast enough. I was happy to have had fun and run reasonably well after my disaster race in the long.
(click on map to enlarge)

Missed the underpass


I missed making the final by 30 seconds, which is a lot in sprint, but it turned out that would not have been hard to be even 45 seconds faster if I had seen the underpass on the map. Oh well, I ran a consistant race and I could go home satisfied that I was at least close. The day was a great success anyway, the US team got 2 runners into the final. The speedy Saeger sisters had shown us that all their hard sprint training and track workouts pay off. We were insainly proud to have them both in the final, and they did well too. Congrats!

Relay revenge



The US women’s team has been making steady improvements over the last few years and we are getting stronger than ever before. The relay showed to us that we aren’t even that bad… it was a nice feeling. All three of us ran consistant races and felt statisfied in the end. One of our main goals was to beat Cananda, which we did with success, but we also managed to beat many other teams. Usually we are fighting for the last few places in the field, this year we were 17th out of 28 teams. Right on!


Life after WOC
Directly after WOC, once arriving at home in Switzerland, I headed off to the US for a wedding. Erin Olafsen became Mrs. Kristoffer Nielsen. What a beautiful event! Best of all it involved orienteering. The happy couple had mapped Erin’s parent's property, and Mr Daddy-O Ken Walker Sr. field checked the map, put it into Ocad and set courses for the event. After a beautiful cerimony, a reception with class and before the pig roast in the evening, the party shifted gears, changed clothes and had a healthy tournament against eachother. The events in the tournament were volleyball, horse shoes, some kind of college frisbee game, and of course orienteering!! What a great time!

Getting back to normal
My daily routines are going to have to get back to normal again. This shouldn't be a problem, but I also feel like the summer events have flown by in a flash. Now there is time to look forward to all the great orienteering in the fall. Switzerland has all of it’s championship events coming up, icluding the sprint and long this weekend in the Wallis. Should be really nice orienteering. I am looking forward to the fall and am ready for the next challenge.