This story
was initially supposed to narrate of my proud and happiness being qualified to
my first ever World Champ..., but no, it didn’t happen and I won’t be running
in Italy this summer.
Russian
Championship in the end of May (which was also named as qualification for WOC) was 4-days in a
row event with races 2 and 3 (middle&long) of primal character for
selection to the Russian team. The other 2 races were middle mass-start and
chasing start, based on the results of long. Really, I’m not inclined to blame
myself for reaching places as 2nd, 2nd, 16th and 9th(actually, with clearly
the best time of the day in chasing start) there. But I still feel a bit
frustrated about the fact that my only disaster had found me on the day of long
distance which recently proved to be my number 1 priority and there I was
defending my gold medal from last year’s RC. It just didn’t work on that day,
my body refused to move and I was spent already after 20 minutes of the race.
Running on slopes of Khvalynsk Mountains in the heat 4 days without rest hadn’t
been an easy task. Of course no one forced me to run all the races, but very
naturally, as it was National Champ for each event, I signed up for all 4 days,
being quite confident of my physical condition. Now it looks like that was
where I little underestimated it…
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| Middle distance prize-giving |
