Aston’s Gap Year

WORDS ASTON KEY PHOTOS DAVID JAFFE

Last year I was lucky enough to take a gap year after high school ended. I based myself with family friends in Turku, Finland. I headed over to Europe in early March for some of the early season competitions, such as Portugal O meeting, Danish spring, and 10Mila. I joined the Turku based orienteering club, Turun Suunnistajat, and joined in with their almost daily forest training (which was a big shock, that they could have forest orienteering training almost every day!) JWOC 2019 was in Silkeborg, Denmark. In April I went over there by myself to do some training in relevant terrains. I stayed in an Airbnb and hired a bike to ride to all the forests. This made for quite a big week with all the cycling to and from training, but it was definitely worth it as I could now put some context into all the armchair orienteering that I had been doing of the relevant terrains. As for the JWOC week itself, the Sprint was the first event, then the Long, followed by the Middle and Relay. Since the Sprint was up first, I was quite nervous, but I felt prepared. It was definitely a big relief to cross the finish line and hear that I had taken the lead, but the next hour or so of waiting for all the other competitors to finish was extremely nerve wracking. Celebrating after the race with family, team members and all the support was something I’ll remember for a long time to come. With the Sprint in the past, it was a little hard to bring all my focus back to the next race, the Long. I didn’t feel as nervous for this one, a little bit like the pressure had been lifted after the Sprint. So I set out trying to enjoy the day as much as possible and just see what happened. Fortunately, I managed to find all the controls relatively cleanly and crossed the line in a surprising 2nd place. But I knew some of the best runners had yet to finish, so just like the day before, I had a very anxious hour of waiting before I ended up placing 3rd, with two Norwegians ahead of me. This was a huge surprise, but a welcome one for sure as I had not prepared as much for the Long as I had the other races.

I went into the Middle Distance final with quite a lot of confidence given the previous two races and qualifying fastest in my heat. But one mistake about halfway through the race dropped me behind a little bit. I ended up in 5th place, which at the time felt like a disappointment, but now looking back, I am very happy with that race, I just had my expectations a little too high after the beginning of the week. But such is sport, sometimes things fall your way, and other times they don’t. I was extremely fortunate that things in fact did fall my way during the JWOC week. Finally, I’d just like to thank OV for all their support they’ve given me over the years, it's been a great journey so far, and hopefully only the beginning.