European Championship - virosis, broken ski & stubbed toe

Sick in January. No big surprise after last years… This year I got sick already just after Christmas. I was pretty optimistic about my situation as it was quite far to the important races. Unfortunatelly, this sickness turned into flu and lastest almost THREE WEEKS! Last two weeks were very hard mentally. I was pretty down. In December my shape was the best ever. In January I was loosing my power with every day of sickness. When I finally got over the feber and started to train slowly my ankle decided to tease me, I was really down and considering not to compete at European Championship, I knew my shape would be far from my plans. But the pure happiness from doing ski-o overweighted all my troubles.

Two upcoming weeks after the sickness went pretty well. I felt stronger from day to day. Hovewer, five days to the first race of EC and…

…I felt somehow weird. I rather skipped last hard trainings. On Saturday, I took part at a regional ski-o race in Oulu, not running with full speed. I wanted to test if I am healthy enough to go to EC. The day after, I felt really good and moved to the Imatra, EC competition centre.

I got excited about competing. But during model event I sweat a lot and in the evening I didn’t feel 100% OK. Next morning I woke up with a high morning pulse. I felt I sweat more than usually but decided to warm up before EC sprint and see how my body feels. I had to change all my clothes after the warm-up because it was so wet as I sweat more than usually. I didn’t have any other sickness symptoms and my body felt good – I decided to start. I felt good physically but made a huge mistake to the 1st control. Furthermore, I took a wrong key route choice to the 4th control which made 90sec difference!!! 27th place in the finnish. My best EC sprint result. But very dissapointed about my performance. When being positive, it was still enonugh to qualify to the sprint realy – team 3. I was really unsure about my health and had thoughts about skipping the sprint relay. Save some health. But when I found out I will run with Jakub Škoda, I decided to put all effort in! Jakub has been the best Czech man in last years and I believed we could beat Czech teams 1 a 2 and make it to the TOP6.

But this day was not about me. It was about my boyfriend. Jyri won silver medal EC, his far best career achievement!!!!!!!! I am sooooo proud of him! :-*

I woke up with the similar health situation as previous day. My morning pulse was even higher. I decided to risk it and run. I had a very good start and manage to keep on good position during whole first leg, coming to the finnish just ahead of Czech 1 and 2. Jakub lost some seconds on his leg and I started behind Czech 2 ahead of Czech 1. I did a very good performance again and came to the change over ahead of Czech 1. Next three legs very pretty similiar. I lost some time in my last leg (5th all and all) but still satisfied with my sprint relay performance. At the end, Czech 2 managed to be the best of our teams. Finnish at 7th place, just behind the podium. Jakub had a fight at last metres with Petr Horvat running for the Czech 1. And Jakub was faster! Nice „skalp“, Czech 3 beats Czech 1.

In the evening I felt really miserable. My stomach was not good and I was really tired. I was sure I won’t be able to run next day’s long distance. But I woke upe and felt sooo good. My morning pulse went finally lower (but still higher than usual) and I felt most healthy from all days at EC. It made me decide to race again. I had a strong start, but my physical shape was not good. I had difficulties to keep up with other girls in the „atleticka vložka“ to the first control. It was nice surprise when some strong Finnish girls passed me on the way to the 4th control. It made me think positive that I am not as bad as I thought. But on the way to the 4th point, I made a navigation mistake - about 2min. In addition, I broke my ski just before the 4th control. I don’t really know what happened. Shit happened… I decided to skip the race to save my health for upcoming days. I was not far from the material control so I made it there, changed skis and skied back to the finnish.

There was some kind of no-alcoholic party in the evening. Last year I twisted my ankle at this event so I decided not to join this event. Just to be sure. The others also decided not to join as we lived quite far from the event centre. Believe it or not I managed to injure even if staying whole evening in our house. When going to pee I stumbled over the doorsill. Yeah, there was that "crack" sound. It hurt a bit so I decided go to sleep. I believed it will not be so painful next day.

When I woke up I could hardly walk. I asked our physioterapist for a help. She said she thinks my toe is broken :( She taped three of my toes together. My day's task was to find a way how to ski and race at tomorrow's middle distance. It was really hard to get my feet to any ski boot. But I passed after couple of minutes. Next, I had to walk about 10min to the ski track. I There were tears dropping on my face. This was my problem and I knew I MUST be able to race tomorrow. First minutes of skiing were really fearul. But the longer I skied, the less pain I felt. Not sure if I got used to the pain, my toes got frozen or the painkiller started to work, but I skied! Skied skied skied! I knew I will be able to stand on the starting line the upcoming day.

Middle distance morning. I woke up with a huge pain in my feet. I guess I kicked with my feet to the wall while sleeping or something. I also had a high morning pulse and sweat. Not a good start of the day. But I was ready to fight against all these troubles. I warmed up. Couldn't walk, couldn't run but could ski! I started as a very first woman to the middle distance. I had no expectation. My only goal was to make it to the finnish with all control points. And I made it. It was a big surprise to me, I did not feel my toe at all during the race. I could 100% concentrate for my performance. I did some wrong route choices, but I was really satisied with my performance. I ended at 22nd place and was the best Czech woman! Furthermore, this has beem my best individual result from any European Championship! I was really happy in the finnish and I really liked the course.

My middle's results made me qualify to the last race - relay. I got to run 2nd leg and I was very happy about it. Petra Hančová came from the first leg on 4th place with not a big loss to the best runners. I did a good performance too and managed to hold our 4th place ahead of Estonian girls. Kristýna Kovářová did good race too and we finished at a great 4th place! Even though, "můj muž" was better again - their team won a bronze medal. Congrats!

And in the evening there was a time for banquet. For us, it was clear who was the king(s) and gueen(s) of this year! :)

All and all, I am happy with my performance at EC: I did couple of personal best results desipte my huge healthy troubles. Now it is just about to wait, whether these results will be enough to qualify to the world championship, which takes place in Krasnoyarsk, Russia in three weeks.