 |
|||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
|
|
Holidaying in Bali and Training in Czech :: September After WOC I needed some serious relaxation and Bali was just perfect. It's an amazing country with lots of really cool things to see and do. We ate lots of delicious seafood, visited some temples, watched a traditional dance, made our own silver jewelry (remarkably successfully), went snorkelling with brightly coloured fish and eels, and went surfing on Kuta beach. We also saw lots of monkeys. They are so cool and definately my favourite animal. It was an amazing holiday and I'd definately recommend going!
Almost straight after Bali I went on a GB training camp in Czech. It was good to check out the terrain before next year so I can plan focussed training over the winter. The camp was really good, although I did too much training and got really knackered out. We ran the austrian champs relay on the saturday (after 7 hours training in 3 days which was alot for me after doing 50 mins in 10 days!). I was surprised at how good I felt in the forest and anchored the girls team to a clear win. Unfortunatley we didn't quite managed to finish before the boys team. nest time! We also ran the austrian long distance champs on the sunday. I ran pretty cleanly but was just too tired to get up the hills and ended up walking quite alot. Rest and relaxation now before I start real trianing again in october :) Written on 26th September 2007 WOC Reflections :: August
WOC in Ukraine was definately an experience, although I'm not sure it's one I want to repeat. I actually enjoyed it more than last year, the team atmosphere was good and highlights of the week included the bead shop in the market and watching Minna and Heli get joint gold in the long. The "official" banquet must go down as the worst in history, we stayed about 10 minutes and unfortunately I missed the last night party (and the wedding I was trying to get home for due to the incompetance of Borispil airport grrr). At least I didn't get ill this time, and it's definately nice to be home and able to drink the water and eat 'normal' food! Written on 26th September 2007 WOC Preparations :: July - August
Ooooo, and I passed my PhD so I am now a doctor!! (although not officially dr Elder until i graduate later in the year) Written on 14th August 2007 WOC Selection Races :: 29th June - 1st July I am one relieved person this week. The WOC selection races didn't exactly go as I planned, and with a 4th, 6th and 7th I feel lucky to be in the team. I didn't get selected for all the races I hoped for, but I'm satisfied that I will get to run my favourite, the middle distance :-) I think I am still suffering after the PhD stress as I feel tired all the time at the moment and am not running nearly as well as I was earlier on in the season. But, next week I am off to France (yay!) to run the french 5 days and chill out on the beach, so hopefully I will feel revived and ready for training when I get back. My maps from the selection races are here: Sprint, Middle, Long. Written on 5th July 2007 Woop Woop! Venla 12th :) :: 12th - 17th June
The thursday before Venla I ran the world cup race which was also in Lapau. I made only one small mistake in the qualifier, coming 13th in my heat and earning me a place in the final. The only other brits to get through were Jen and Pip, but Helen P was very unlucky to miss out. By the time it got round to the final, some 7 hours later, my body had gone to sleep. I found it really hard to run and my time wasn't great although the orienteering had been fairly clean. I ended up 38th which is 3 world cup points. Not bad but should have been better! The qualifier map is here and the final here here. Written on 20th June 2007 Croatian fun and almost a doctor... :: May 2007
 
Written on 27th May 2007 South Africa, Getting old and GB squad training :: 2nd Feb - 4th March
This coming weekend it's the national cross country champs and a world ranking event in the lake district, I predict the first will hurt alot and the second will be much more fun! Written on 8th March 2007 Skiing :: 6th - 13th January
Written on 20th January 2007 Winter Training Feeling Good :: 12th December I'm now three weeks into winter training and feeling good! After almost two and a half months of being ill it's great to finally feel strong again. I've been on some cool long runs in the peaks, with spectacular views until this week when it's hardly stopped raining... I've also started a new strength programme. It's fun doing something different and although it doesn't hurt too badly when I do it, i most certainly notice it the next day. On sunday I ran the Calderdale Way Relay for Dark Peak. Kirtsy and I ran leg 2, the same as last year. This time we were a minute and a half slower, but the ground was a lot boggier and the winds were really strong. Coming down the first descent felt like having a parachute on. My hamstrings were aching from doing the weights sessions but I think we ran well and we picked up from 3rd to 2nd place. We ended up 3rd overall, pretty good considering we lost some of our team the day before. The boys were even closer in their race, coming 2nd only 15m behind the winners. Well done to Neil and Craney for overtaking everyone on their leg and thanks to alex and Grace for being our support crew :) This week I'm on a "medium" week which means 10 hours of training. So it's back to the gym for another weights session and then a night orienteering race tonight which should be alot of fun :) Written on 12th December 2006 World Cup Relay, Banquet and Maps :: 7th October
The banquet took a long time to kick off as we sat through nearly 90 mins of tedious speeches and prize givings, but when we finally got there it was worth the wait. Good food, lots of free wine and a lot of fun dancing made for a very good night :-D Two hours of sleep later I was on my way back home and i'm now suffering with a cold, probably from too much racing and partying and not enough sleep! Written on 11th October 2006 long and rocky :: 5th October Today's long race was long, rocky and very tough. I started slow but well, but then had a disaster on the long leg from 3 to 4, losing 10 minutes. I picked back up after and ran well to the butterfly but then made some annoying mistakes on the way round the loops. Atfer catching Pip on the second loop we were together for the rest of the course. I finally made it to the finish after 1 hour and 50 minutes. Probably the longest orienteering race i have ever run and definately the rockiest, greenest and toughest - I have never hit myself on so many rocks, fallen down so many holes or crossed terrain so slowly in my life. Now I have a large lump on my shin to the remember the race by! Maps to follow soon... Written on 5th October Steep sprint :: 4th October Yesterdays sprint was good fun but very tiring! After the slow middle terrain it was a bit of a shock to the legs to run a sprint race. The area was partly on a steep rocky slope and partly in a park. I lost time on the way to 3 when i forgot you are allowed to cross fences, doh. In the end it was a very average performance on a pretty long sprint race. Bring on the winter training :-) Written on 5th October Gale force winds :: 3rd October The middle distance final was postponed today due to gale force winds of over 100 km/h. Over half the girls had started the course by the time the winds got too strong and the race was abandonned. They were all stopped at various points in the forest and had to run straight back to the finish due to the risk of falling trees. Fortunately everyone was ok, although one german girl did get minor concussion after being hit by a falling branch. I found out the race was cancelled 15 seconds before going into the start box. I'd done my warm up and prepared for the race only to see minna and martina coming jogging back out the start lanes saying the race was cancelled. Initially I couldn't believe it was happening, but as it sunk it I was left with a very low feeling. I've looked forward to this race for a really long time so it was a big disappointment. Fortunately the organisers have now decided they will run the race on friday, which should have been a rest day, using wither the B courses or new courses. I'm looking forward to getting out in the forest and running a course. Everyone will be allowed to run instead of just those that qualified, which doesn't have much of an affect in the girls race, but is very lucky for most of the british boys! Tomorrow the sprint qualification has been cancelled and we will all go straight to the final. Written on 3rd October 2006 World Cup Final: Middle Distance Qualification :: 2nd October
Written on 2nd october 2006 House Building :: 6th September - 29th September
Written on 2nd October 2006 Golden Girls and Banquet Champions! :: 19th August 2006
Being on top of the podium was awesome. We got medals and flowers and also tree crowns from the boys. We look like we're in a jungle up there! Big thanks everyone for the support, especially David, Miriam, Jon, the boys, and most importantly Aislinn for looking after us all all day, calming us down before the race and being a great 5th team mate. Then came the banquet...
All in all, one of the best days ever. Top of the podium, top outfits, top dancing, top team spirit. Top of the World! Written on 21st August 2006 Another "almost" race :: 17th August Today started off great. I was feeling confident and running well. At the third control I saw Noemi and some other runners ahead of me and caught them by taking a better route to 4. The next few controls went well. A small miss at 9 by dropping too low but then disaster struck at 11. I didn't drop far enough crossing a slope to find a small hill, but decided i must have dropped too far and went up instead of down. Nearly 2 minutes later i found the control. I then took a bad route to the next control losing another 40 s and a small miss in the light green at the one after put me back another 20 s. I finished 10th, 2 mins 56 down. I would normally be pleased with 10th place, and yesterday that would have been great, but today it's incredible frustrating as it should have been a podium place. written on 17th august 2006 World Students Classic Race :: 17th August Big congratulations to Helen for SILVER today! The long race was in crazy karst
terrain with big sinkholes everywhere. My race started off well but then i
lost contact during the long leg and lost almost 2 minutes. A few other
mistakes meant I was at the back of a pack at the end and finished in 20th
place. 3 minutes quicker would have been top 10. At least I know it's
possible and the race was very good training for the relay which is in the same
style of terrain on saturday Written on 17th August 2006 World Students Warm up :: 14th & 15th August Yesterday and today we've been out training on relevant areas for the world
students races. The long distance and relay are going to be crazy. It's Karst
terrain which is full of ginormous depressions and really rocky. Some of it's
lightening fast, but other bits are real ankle breaking stuff. The races are
going to be great and compass work and ultimate control will be essential.
Bring it on!
written on 15th august 2006
Team mate Jenny Whitehead had her hen do today. I'm not telling any secrets but
the theme wasn't difficult to guess shhhhhhh. written on 14th august 2006 WOC round up and Party Time :: 29th July - 5th August
Jamie getting a bronze medal was a big highlight of the week, woop woop!
10th August 2006 WOC Middle Distance Final - dissapointment :: 4th August
Written on 4th August WOC Long Distance Final :: 2nd August Yesterday was my first world champs final. I came 28th, which i'm fairly pleased with. The long has never been my favourite distance and I know I can do better in the middle. The race was definately long but I did really enjoy it. The map is here. The long leg was interesting, I went mainly straight although the route round to the north was equally as good. Towards the end of the course I made some mistakes due to being too tired. I think this is probably the longest orienteering race i've ever done so not too surprising. Now i'm looking forward to the middle race tomorrow... Written on 3rd August 2006 WOC Long Qulaifier :: 30th July Another close call today but I qualified for the long final coming 13th in my heat :-) It was an almost clean sheet for Team GB, but Oli was unlucky to have one the controls not register. Q had a good running coming 7th in her heat, whereas Jenny and I were a little closer to the line... I messed up the first long leg losing a minute and then also messed up the next long leg taking a route that turned out to be less than ideal costing me 2 minutes. The second half of the course went a bit better but i again had trouble on the long leg. The route choices were alot more complicated than anything we'd experienced in the forests up til now, with a lot of green areas. A good learning experience before the final. The map and routes can be found here. This evening I learnt how to play cricket. I'm not very good at bowling in a straight line or with a straight arm but i did catch 2 people out. Tomorrow will be a day of rest and relaxation, and hopefully some icecream eating :-) Written on 30th July 2006 WOC Middle Qualifier :: 29th July Today I qualified for the middle distance final by the skin of my teeth - 15th place and 15 get through. I had first start this morning and suffered a bit bashing tracks through head high bracken... some of my routes through the first few controls weren't ideal and i think i could have minimised the bracken a bit better. A couple of small misses later on and a 30s miss at the second last control almost lost me the race, but fortunately i scraped through. The map and my route are here. As Nick Lightfoot, my coach, put it: "phew!". Bring on tomorrow... Written on 29th July 2006 On Top of the World - SOW 2006 :: 17th - 23rd July
On the "rest" day I ran alex's course from day 1 and almost beat his time (teehee) then in the afternoon we ran the sprint course in Tasch village. I hadn't really planned to do it and turned up without a compass or SI card thinking i'd just be a cheerleader, but then I found out the course was less than 2km so decided i'd give it a go. The lack of compass and slightly dubious mapping stumped me some what at the start and I lost a minute but after that went well and it was a lot of fun. Day 4 was another fun race, although having ran well for the first (downhill) half I then struggled with the second (uphill) half. I almost crawled up the run in... Afterwards we swam in probably the coldest lake i've been in. Might be something to do with it being glacier melt water. Good ice bath for the legs though.
The last day dawned, well actually it had barely dawned when I got up at 5:45 to get the trains/cable car to my 8:10 start... For day 6 the start was higher than the finish. It was still seriously hard work though. The courses started through a very rocky area, then down a steep slope into the trees and back into the open for the finish. Unfortunately I made a big mistake on the 4th leg and ended up having to climb back up the hill. Apart from that there were a few other misses but i was pleased with the majority of my orienteering. After we went swimming in Leisee (pronounced lazy, i like it.) It had been billed as the warmest lake around, which was quite possible true although it didn't feel very warm to be honest. It's always nice to cool off after racing though and we were joined by hundreds of little frogs sunning themselves in the water. That night we went Swiss and had fondue for dinner before heading off the the North Wall Bar for some drinks (very cool bar and they make very good pizza and show dvds of mountain running, biking and ice climbing... maybe in the future they'll be one of orienteering too?!) and then off to find the party. It was the most disappointing orienteering pary i've been to with people just watching themselves running on the big screen. Apparently it got better later on but my eyes didn't stay open that long. Middleditch enjoyed his 30 tequilas though ;-) Today i'm back at work but it's good to know i've reached fame at last in the local paper! 
Written on 24th July 2006 Denmark Final Preparations :: 12th - 16th July Having returned from our final training camp I now feel fully prepred for WOC this year. I ran some great training sessions, on both 1:10000 and 1:15000 maps to practice for the middle and long. The low vis areas in the middle should make the orienteering much trickier and i now can't wait for the races :-) On the last day we ran the middle distance race being used as a test race by Denmark and Finland. My legs were feeling very tired after a tough weeks training, but the race went well and I only made a few small misses. Unfortunately I don't have my map back yet, but the results are here. Written on 16th July 2006 Girls can catch :: 3rd - 10th July Last week I spent more days in Sheffield than I will in the next month... and last week I was coaching in Dimmingsdale for 2 days :-) It's been a good week of training hard and relaxing hard too. I've watched a lot of football, tried to avoid watching cricket and taught alot of 11 year olds that orienteering is great. On sunday we did the Hallamshire Harriers Funathon, a 2km race walk, 3km orienteering, 3km bike and 3km run. Surprisingly tiring and very windy but good fun anyway. The highlight was playing rounders and catching alex out ;-) Yesterday I managed to make it in to the department AND do an experiment. Not very often that happens. Fortunately there are 2 hour gaps between taking samples so there was plenty of time to play the Volvo Hunt. A team effort between me and brother Alan via MSN messenger and we completed all 15 puzzles and await the semi-final tomorrow, with the chance of jetting off to the carribean to search for the volvo, unlikely but would be fun! Some of the puzzles on the way were great, worth a go if you're bored. This afternoon I'm taking a train down to London and staying chez Rollins tonight before flying out to Denmark tomorrow for WOC preparation. Then Sunday it's straight from Denmark to Switzerland for the Swiss 6 days in Zermatt. Should be awesome! Written on 10th July 2006 Multi-talented Athlete? :: Week 26th June - 2nd July This week has been a fun mix of training including some killer sessions with Hallamshire and a long fell run with the boys on Kinder on saturday. On sunday we headed over to Hull for a track and field meet. The drive to Hull is not very exciting, nor is Hull itself, though we did get maltesers icecream on the way home. It was absolutely baking hot all day and sitting around in the sun for 3 hours probably wasn't the best preparation for a 3000m but it was good watching the others race. My first event for the day was the triple jump. I was taught how to do triple jump on a bit of grass after track on tuesday so I was mainly hoping that I'd reach the sand. Which I did! and I even jumped far enough to get 3 extra jumps, although after the first one I had to stop and get ready for the 3k. I got 3 PBs in it though, my best now being 8.56m. There were only 4 of us in the 3000m, team mate Jules and two girls from Hull so in order to get maximum points in the 'b' stream all I had to do was not come last... I've never raced on the track before, apart from doing a 3k test 3 years ago when i clocked an unimpressive 12:54, but the training seems to be paying off as I ran 11:40 in 25oC + and with sand in my shoes! Next event for the day: high jump. The last time I high jumped was in year 9. That's a long time ago so it was good to get a practice and make sure I could clear the opening height of 1.10m. In fact I managed a few more too and made 1.25m. I almost managed 1.30 but my bum kept knocking the bar off grrr. Thinking that was it for me I wandered back only too be told I'd been entered for the javelin. I can't even remember the last time I threw a javelin and had no idea what to do. I could make it go a long way but it always landed on it's tail instead of it's head. My best legal through was 11.60. Needless to say I didn't get any extra throws for that performance. I don't think I'll be challenging Jessica Enis at the heptathlon any time soon but it was good fun, even though I can hardly walk now! Written on 2nd July 2006 World Champs Debutant! :: 23rd - 25th June I've been selected for middle and long at the World Champs :-) My preference was for middle and relay, but i'm happy with the selections and congrats to Sarah, Helen and Q for some impressive performances. I feel like I ran good but not great in all 3 races. I was surprised by how technically easy they were, but the terrain was good and the races very enjoyable. WOC here I come! Written on 26th June 2006 Denmark training :: 22nd June Final forest training before the selection races tomorrow. I'd forgotton how nice the forest here is... open beech and oak... :-) 
Written on 22nd June 2006 Sprint training, London-town :: 17th June A nice relaxing weekend in London, lots of sunshine, a bit of shopping, good training and picnic action. We ran two sprint races in Victoria Park in east London. I forgot the map was 1:10 000 and planned the courses a bit long (oops), apparently sprint races aren't supposed to have legs that are 800m long... We mainly used the permenant controls, although some of them seemed to have vanished. Had to make a few route choices around the games of football going on! 
Me - Course 1: 20.50, course 2: 16:13
Alex - Course 2: 13:13, course 1: 15:50 Written on 17th June 2006 Fun in the Sun :: 10th & 11th June Summer is definitely here. Went running with Alex and Emma on saturday, one of my favourites out along White Edge then back along Froggatt Edge and through Longshaw. Beat my PB by 3 mins getting out to the trig point (hurray!) but that wasn't fast enough as still got sunburn even with suncream on! We made it home just in time for the start of the England match. Good timing. I think most of Sheffield were having BBQs on saturday as Tesco had sold out of sausages/steak/burgers but we joined in anyway. mmmmmm. Sunday was just as good, kicking off with a district event at Honley. A very nice little area even if it is all on the side of hills. A little bit hot for my liking but the course was most enjoyable and i wasn't toooo far behind oli and craney. Then we ate ice cream and i learnt how to finger-flip a frisbee. Written on 11th June 2006 New Website! Welcome to www.rachaelelder.com! The site's still under construction so some of the links don't work yet, but don't fret, they'll be up and running soon :-) When something exciting happens i'll stick it up... Let me know what you think. You can email me with the funky form under contact me... |
 | |||||||||
© Rachael Elder 2006 :: Last updated: 11th August 2006 |
|||||||||||
Looking back on this years WOC I can't help but feel a bit disappointed with myself. I ran well in the qualifier apart from one mistake at number 6 where I lost 2 mins. Despite that I qualified fairly well and was looking forward to the final. I'd put a lot of time in in Ukrainian terrain and felt well prepared for the race. However it wasn't to be my day. I managed to run over a track on the way to one without seeing it, ending up in the wrong block of forest and losing 2 mins. Not the start I had hoped for. I made another big mistake later on losing more time and by the end I felt too tired to run hard round the last easy loop. I finished =23 with Jenny, much lower than what I had hoped for and what I knew I could have achieved. The race wasn't really what I was expecting, with much more green and undergrowth than anything we had trained on. It almost felt like all the training time put in had been irrelevant.
At the weekend we definately proved that IFK Lidingö is "Sveriges roligaste orienteringsklubb"... and also showed we're damn good orienteers too! The men's team were very impressive, especially Emil who outclassed everyone to take 4th place. In Venla we showed true depth, the first team coming 20th and my team (the second team) coming 12th. woo hoo! It's always nice to kick ass :) Maybe next year i'll be kicking ass in the first team instead?! I especially enjoyed the (!) we got on orientering.se after our name in their list of top swedish clubs. Soffan and Alex were impressive too, I bet that's the first time ever a third team has been lying in third place after 2 legs! Big congrats to my team mates emma, linda and malin for some impressive running. It was exciting (and pretty scary!) going out on last leg with the big guns. I made a couple of small mistakes and ran 60% of the course on my own, but then got caught up right at the end when i made a bad route mistake. It should really have been 8th-9th place. Something for me to work on for next year... My map is 
At the start of February I went on the GB squad training camp in South Africa. We had 10 days of excellent training in really hot weather. We stayed in huts in a forest near Belfast which were really nice, and quite entertaining when we had a power cut for 24 hours! 
We did a lot of long runs in groups which were really good and it was great to get away from work and concentrate on training and relaxing. The photos are all up in the photos section. We also ran/jogged a 10k race whilst we were there although i didn't race it, 3 hours of safari wasn't very good preparation but spotting animals was alot of fun. The impala are my favourite :) 
We own a house! scary stuff. In the last three and a bit weeks we've painted the dining room, stripped, replasterd and painted the living room, painted the back bedroom (it started off bright purple urgh!) and destroyed and rebuilt the attic. The attic has been the big project. 100 years of coal dust was a joy to get rid of and turned everywhere black for a while, including us. We've taken out the walls, celing and floor, added in new perlin beams, strengthened 
the ceiling joists, relaid the floor, put in 2 velux windows, put in new insulation and built new walls. Hopefully by the time I get back from France the plasterer will have finished and we will have a bedroom, hurray!
We won the relay gold medal WOO-HOO!! Mhairi had a storming first leg, coming back in 4th place only just behind the slovakian and a minute down on the hugarian and russian teams. The Czech girls were the strongest team on paper but unfortunately for zuzana she lost more than 10 minutes on the first leg, knocking them out of the picture. Helen ran a solid second leg, holding on to 4th place but now ahead of Russia and Slovakia but behind Norway and Switzerland. Then it was my turn. I set off hard knowing the hungarian wasn't far ahead and confident I could beat her. I had the long gaffle at the beginning but overtook the Hungarian just before the spectator so now we're in bronze medal position. The next couple of legs took us up a beastly hill and I started to tire, then made a mistake in the tricky area at the top, losing a minute. Salla Sukki of Finland caught me just as I was heading down to the pre warning, so as I handed over to Helen we were back in 4th place, 6 1/2 mins down on Switzerland and 3 1/2 mins down on Norway. I knew that Helen would have one of the shorter gaffles at the beginning and that she was riding on a wave of good form so we were still confident of getting a medal. Coming through the spectator Helen had caught up time on all the teams and had almost past Norway. Then it was a nervous wait as we watched an exciting sprint finish for the medals in the men's race before the commentator headed back over to the women's race...
During the afternoon a coach from one of the other teams and noted to Jon that the British team used to win the banquet but that seemed to have changed. I hope he was there to watch. I'm sure we'd have changed his mind.
A while back I got an email saying the boys were going to dress up as the village people for the banquet and would I consider being a spice girl. Would I consider it? I LOVE to dress up! Much discussion followed to determine who should be who, but on the night we stepped out as Baby Hel P, Sporty Ash A, Ginger Rach E (more luminous orange than ginger but close!), Scary Hel B and Posh Mhairi M. We strutted, jumped and pouted our way through Wannabe and the crowd went wild. Really wild. Absolutely loving it. 
Teaching the boys how to dance had been an entertainment in itself. left and right seem to get muddled up when music is playing. The outfits were awesome (loving the tashes!) and the dress rehersal was so funny there were actually tears in my eyes. I hadn't laughed so much in a long time. Unfortunately technical problems meant the boys had to wait a while to move their bodies as I ran backwards and forwards trying to find a way to play the CD (for some reason only the first 4 tunes would play on the music man's CD player and he didn't have his own copy. What respectible DJ doesn't have YMCA?!!!) Neil D very kindly let me take his laptop into the party (thank you so much!) and then it was action. The boys were awesome. The room was packed and every single person was dancing along with the performance. I was proud.
Jenny's Hen Do 
Well my first WOC is over, and overall I'm pleased with the results. It's good to know that top 10s aren't far off and after some hard work over the winter I will be fighting hard next year.
The banquet was great fun. When they said a live danish band was playing visions of aweful foreign music sprang to mind, but "On the Radio" were fantastic and they played top music all night :-) Even the WOC song seemed alright (note: not good, just alright) at 2:30am... 
Today's middle distance final was in some tough and technical terrain. I ran well through the first half, making only 2 small mistakes costing me between 40s and a minute in total. Coming through the spectator fly by I was running well although misheard per forsberg and though he said I was 3 mins down as opposed to 3 mins behind the expected time. I failed to reconcentrate after the run through the field and made a big mistake going down the hill at the wrong angle on the way to next control, costing me at least a minute and a half. The bulgarian girl I had passed earlier in the course caught me up again and for the next controls through the heather and bushes we took very similar routes. Towrds the end my legs were feeling very heavy. The uphill run to the last control was mean! I ended up 28th - the same position as in the long distance 2 days ago - although this time I am very diassapointed. Without the big mistake it should have been top 15 and there were the other small mistakes as well. At least I can take away the fact that with a clean run I could have been competing with the best. Hopefully I will be able to put the good form to use in the World Students and get rid of the silly errors :-)
