Maria Sá

Were you looking for nice sprint distance races at stony florests or at tricky villages in Portugal? So you must had come to Naom! This year, also sprint and middle distance national championships, Naom was a huge competition held at Castelo de Vide, one of the most interesting places in Portugal for orienteering!

The sprint forest race was at a tricky and stony place close to the small village of Povoa e Medeadas: 1:4000 scale, 2,2km, 22controls...I took it slow to the first control because it was not very easy to understand the scale and put all the stones on the map at the same time...but quickly at the second control I started to push up my speed and my orienteering was almost perfect until control nº.8.I lost almost two minutes at all race Besides that, It was such a pleasant race running at full speed between the stones with a beautiful landscape...
1. Maria Sá 18:22
2. Elin Pettersson 18:44
3. Raquel Costa 20:21



But the sprint distance national championship wasn't still decided..it was missing another stage!At Castelo de Vide it was required a lot of concentration and hard running trought small streets and so many stairs!! I did the second best time overall but the best portuguese time.I took the victory and won the national sprint distance title!
1. Tiina Kivimäki 18:39
2. Maria Sá 18:49
3. Elin Pettersson 19:26

TOTAL: 1.Maria Sá 37:11
2.Elin Pettersson 38:10
3.Raquel Costa 39:59

On Sunday morning the clouds came to castelo de Vide and the sun came back home:( Besides that, a lot of stones where still out there and the middle distance was waitting for me:) I felt very motivated to run a good middle distance and also concentrated to run at full speed without mistakes. I took a nice speed but did some mistakes The first was at tv control(about 40seconds) and then to the 13 and 15 (almost 3minutes).
It was very bad and I ended my race a bit unhappy. Althought, it was difficult for everybody and everybody lost time! Fortunatly I took the middle distance tittle again;)
1 Tiina Kivimäki 82 [1910] HS 34:26
2 Maria Sá 86 [052] GD4C 38:51
3 Hanna Ruhanen 82 [1910] HS 40:35
4 Raquel Costa 83 [136] SRSPGafanhoeira 42:36
5 Elin Pettersson 88 [1970] Täby OK 43:04


It was very nice weekend and I came back home very satisfied and confident on my trainning.

Last week I took some rest and also went to party with my friends:)
Now I'll start trainning more seriously then last week and yesterday I started it running a long distance trainning at Coruche with 7,3km with 600m uphill!!