Finnish Championships Cross-Country 2009 in Savonlinna: DNS

May 17, 2009

Another screwed weekend!! Fortunately it was not completely my fault this time. I was planning on running the long course (12K) in Finnish Cross Country Championships this Sunday (17.05.2009), but in the result lists you won’t find my name. The reason: We came some 10 minutes late for picking up the bib! We were on the site of the competition 80 minutes before the start but the registration for the mens long course was already closed. Last year it used to close 60 minutes before the start but this year they changed it to 90 minutes. They said it was because of the TV-broadcast and they couldn’t make an excuse, even if there were two other runners with the same problem of not arriving early enough.

Great – 500km of travelling for almost nothing. Still I went on, to do a 25K on my own in the Finnish forests, but of course that’s not the same. As an athlete you want to compete, you always want to challenge yourself and the opponents. Anyway, I tried to make the best out of it and tried to be not too upset, even if it was the first time I was not watching such an interesting race and did my own run instead. Somehow it would have broken my heart if I would have watched the guys giving their best in a race in which I should have competed (I mean I wasn’t injured or something).

After all I see this incidence as a motivation for the summer and the upcoming weeks of training. The year 2009 so far was so totally fu%&=)… up that this was just another kick in the ass. It can only get better in the next months.