Høydal: thinking about winning for one year
Posted on | July 24, 2014 | Category: Arena
Since JWOC last year, Gunvor Hov Høydal has been thinking daily about how to be at her very best in the forest races in Bulgaria. The Long Distance ended just as she wanted.
When Gunvor started the first forest race at JWOC this year, she also knew a lot about what to do. With her team-mate Borger Melsom she visited Borovetz in October last autumn and saw the terrain. That was good for her winter training. “I got to know where it would be and what kind of skills were going to be important”, she says.
Close margins
She got first place by just three seconds in front of Sara Hägström, the Sprint winner. “I don’t have words for it. It’s so great!” she says.
Her plan for the race was to have a good performance and she knew it would be difficult. The Norwegian was one of the runners using most time at the start point. She slowed her speed down a lot when she started, but got into her flow on the way to the tricky controls. During the race she made some small mistakes of five to ten seconds on some controls. In the very technical terrain the Norwegian had one of her best races ever.
A way of thinking
Gunvor thinks that mental thinking about what to do during JWOC races has been the most important thing for her success.
“A lot of runners have the technical level, but it’s just about doing it well at the right time. For me it has been very good to visualise how it will be in my mind. During training I have been thinking I am running here”.
– And winning?
“Well, that has been the goal and something I have been working for at every training session for the last year. When I was sixth in the Middle Distance in the Czech Republic I saw it was possible”, she smiles.
Lives close to the capital
Compared with last year she is also better both physically and in navigating. She suffered a lot of sickness and had a virus in both November and December last year, but all her training has gone well this year.
The final-year junior is from the club Fossum just west of the Norwegian capital Oslo.
In the Sprint she was 21st and she got proof of good shape. At Sprint she didn’t expect to be amongst the very, very best. Her running skills are best for forest, and Middle Distance is also a big goal.
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