Jukola (19.06.2010)

Very difficult terrain, I was scared by the model event! Due to this I was very careful, checking the map often to know exactly where I was at all times. This worked more or less for the entire race:

My 1st control was so far NW that I decided to run around the initial big hills, this was very successful since the ladies had started in the same direction and generated big tracks, making for good runnability.

2 was OK initially,but I spent about 20 seconds locating my control flag.

I found a very good path to nr 3, except that the map is slightly wrong on the control itself:The control is indicated to be on the S foot of the south knoll, which is the largest of the two, but when I got there the control knoll seemed much smaller than the brown dot north of it, so I ran around for 40 seconds locating the flag.

Nr 4 seemed like it would be easy, just follow a coarse compass direction and hit either one of the ditches or the little knoll between them, but I followed the wrong tracks, through #171 and didn't relocate until I got to the other side of the green marsh. I only lost a little over a minute though.

Nr 5 and 6 were very easy, then a longer leg to 7 where I found a very good route choice and got my best split result of the race: Nr 28 of 1397 runners.

All this was setup for the extremely tough leg to nr 8(104) where I basically tried to run as straight as possible, only making short detours where that would save me considerable climbing.

Nr 9 was another setup control, to get to the next forking. To nr 10(175) I considered going down to the right, but was afraid of the climb up through the green lined areas, so I ran over the top instead. Had pretty good control all the way.

The short 11th control was relatively easy, but I had big problems figuring out what to do for nr 12(207), eventually deciding to take a chance on trails along the green marsh to the left, then follow the road until the bend and cross over to the TV control. I look forward to the official detailed timings to see if this was a good idea or not, but from the effective km time on the leg I probably lost some time here.

Both nr 13(186) and 14(165) were very slow legs, with lots of dense forest, steep up and down, but thankfully no serious mistakes.

At the end I lost a few seconds, and three positions, because I had misread the control code for 15(184) as 185, so I stopped and had to re-check the map before I dared to punch.

The team results are at http://online3.jukola.com/tulokset/en/j2010_ju/kilpailijat/1243/