Covered in Grey

European Ski-Orienteering Championship in Bulgaria

3:30 am - time go wake up. 3:45 - time to set off the journey. 17hours in the car. I don't mind. Lot of time to chill.

We arrived in Velingrad late in the evening. It was really warm. And full of smog. Accomodation was nice. The only problem was with one blanket shared for two people. Fell asleep immediately. Sorry Hanna if I stole a bigger part of our blanket while sleeping.

Good morning! So much sun. I haven't seen sun for ages! Morning jogg in one shirt only. Feel like summer. Velingrad has really beautiful surrounding. I wanna run all mountains up!

It takes 35min by car and 1000 metres of climbing to reach some snow. Model event looks really great! Looking forward to competititons!

Two hours to the start of the first EC race - sprint. When arrived to competition arena, it starts to rain. And it keeps raining. Nice sunny weather is gone, everything is cover in fog. Surprisingly, I am really happy and looking forward to race.

Start. Puuuuf. How the hell shall I move forward when my poles goes deep in the snow despite skiing on the track? I have strongly underestimated my double polling skills in this kind of conditions. My speed is like a turtle. So hard to move forward. To make it a proper propadák, I missed one cross junction and made a 30sec mistake just before last control point. Not happy with my performance.

Feeling physically really good. Looking forward for a revanche. Until...

...very sad news came from home. My grand dad passed away. It was good I have a day off before next race. I tried to get ready for upcoming races.

I decided to do my best at middle distance. It was quite OK race, no bigger mistake. Wet snow got frozen and it was possible to ski on krusta just straingt from one control point to another. Like in summer orineteering. But my place 27 doesn't satisfy me. I felt really fresh just few minutes after the race. Did I really push on maximum during the race?!

Rest day ve znamení skiing and photo shooting at Belmeken. 2000m above a sea level.

I kept the feeling of good physical shape. But I had a difficulties with the mental one. I was absolutely not in a mood for any racing. I went for an extra run to get some peace.

I felt even worse when organizers decided to change the mass start to interval one. That meant another bad starting position for me. I was really looking forward to the mass start as I believed I other runners around could make me to push harder than in previous races with individual start.

Some mistakes from organizers (such as wrong map change information or some ski track totally missing in real despite being marked on the map) made me really pissed off. To make it even worse, there was one downhill no one (so far I know) managed to go down on skis without any fal. I hit my ass really badly and lied there in a pain for a minute or two. With eyes filled with I decide to lift up and finish the race. Place 23 didn't make me happy.

My bad results made me to run relay in Czech team 2. I was happy I got to run first leg as I wished. I wanted to find out whether it is my my condition or my mental "strengh" which is that bad. I was happy to find out I could keep up with girls having much better results than me in previous races. I confirmed myself my physical shape was good. It was my best performance during this European Championship . First race where I raced properly. First race after which I had a smile on my face.

And the biggest kuriozita of whole week? Organizers gave wrong maps to the runner on the first leg which meant some teams had only short forkings for all three legs and some had only long ones. Without any doubts, race like this had to be canceled. Fortunately, this happened only for one (our) class.

Like always, the baquet party was held in the last evening. It is sad to say, but it was the biggest success during this championship. Without any doubts, unicorns overmastered the party!

My official apology to whole senior team as I wore the youth'n'juniors suit instead of senior's one: "I am really sorry, but my heart desperately mooned over the pinky unicorn and the feeling of being junior girl again." :)

Beside from lost room keys, one bag and one phone it was one of the coolest banquet ever (surprisingly, I didn't loose anything). I am really happy to be surrounded by all those great people who do ski-orienteering. Despite the shadow of the week I did have a great time with them! When results go in a wrong direction, all these people are the reason to keep working on.

I am really dissapointed to miss the World cup round in USA. But I have a chance to show my strengh already in ten days at World University Ski-O Championship in Estonia!

Za lepší zítřky, skol!