Triple tie - who would have thought it?!

Having said a tie for a medal doesn't happen very often in my last post I find myself eating my words somewhat - in the JK "long" distance yesterday, Mhairi, Riina and I tied for the bronze medal, all with a time of 61:01!!

It was held on Slieve Croob, a big open hill just north of Dundrum. I wasn't particularly excited about it in advance as the terrain wasn't very inspiring, but I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. I orienteered really well for the first half but dropped a bit of time (1 min 20 total?) in the second half due to a couple of hesitations and trying to navigate to the wrong control. Claire and Tessa took first and second, both with an impressive minutes so a fair bit in front of us in third. I'm just not fast enough up hill at the moment but looking forward to seeing how i'm running in a couple of months time after finishing the next training block. It's always hard to know when to peak each year. This year after having a bad winter I'm just aiming to peak for WOC in the summer. We will see if that is a good tactic...

The only disappointing thing about yesterday was the length of the course - I'd been looking forward to running a real classic, but with winning times 18 minutes faster than predicted that wasn't the case. I'll just have to keep running the mens course to get the long sessions in.

Today was the relay, back on the Tyrella dunes where the middle distance was the day before yesterday. The middle distance didn't go to plan at all - I made a big mistake on number 2 and felt generally drained and heavy legged the whole course. I obviously didn't recover well after the sprint. A good lesson to learn but a shame it was for the JK middle. Normally technical races are my thing, but not this one. Quickroute map

I was really excited for the relay this morning. I knew we had a fighting chance to win and it was great to see my team mates up for it too. Jo had a stable run on first leg, setting Mairead off in 10th. Mairead then ran a fantastic middle leg to set me off in 2nd, only 18 seconds behind Sarah Rollins (running for British Army). I ran well at the start and reeled in Sarah by taking a better line on the first control. We were neck and neck for the middle section, but then I made a route choice error, dropping more than 30s. Sarah ran clear to take the gold medal about one minute ahead of me, with Edinburgh Southern in 3rd, over 6 minutes down. We were happy with silver but I am gutted about the route choice error, the finish would have been really exciting otherwise. It was very satisfying to run fast through the dunes today and not make mistakes. It's amazing how relays make your legs feel fresh despite racing the 3 previous days. Or maybe that was the ice bath last night?! Quickroute map

JK results

JK Sprint: a good start!

This year's JK is being held in Northern Ireland and today was the sprint race round Stranmillis University College and Queen's Elms Village. After my 6th place in the British sprints a couple of weeks ago I was interested to see how this race would go. Not having a map in advance made it even more exciting!
It was a great race with lots of controls and changes of direction and some tricky routes. I ran pretty cleanly with just a few small time loses to take the bronze medal :) Team mates Sarah Rollins and Pippa Archer were 12s ahead in joint gold medal position, not something that happens very often in an orienteering race! Results are on the JK website.
Check out the map below - unfortunately the olive green is all offset which makes it quite hard to see where you can/can't get through...
Looking forward to the next 3 days of races now: middle tomorrow, long on sunday and relay monday, then off to Sweden for Tiomila!