sandrazürcher

The 2008 orienteering season is over for me and I have to admit, I have not yet mastered the sport of orienteering. This season has had a lot of ups and downs and even though I have seen progress in my ability, I am not satisfied with where I am. I want more, I want to become better. But do we really ever master a task, or does the inner perfectionist in us always drive us to try to become even better. I wonder if Simone Niggli or Thierry Gueorgiou feel like they have mastered orienteering. Probably not, with every race different from the next, there is a continuous search for perfection.

I have decided to try to master something else and I have gone back to school in exercise science and hopefully in two years time I will have a Master’s degree. At least this tunnel has a light at the end of it and I feel confident that I can improve my knowledge of exercise science in this very interesting degree that is focusing on elite sports instead of sports as a promoter of good health.

It will be interesting to see how I handle school and training, but I am determined to continue with orienteering. In two weeks I will go to Hungary and see what the terrain looks like for next year. Until then I am taking a training break and focusing on school.

Here is a picture of me at the World cup in Switzerland (picture from Martin Jörg). I ended up being the 41st ranked participant after Saturday’s race and couldn’t run in the Sprint on Sunday. What a bummer. I hope to change that ranking next year and be a part of the finals more often!