OBIK P3 - H55 (07-05-2015)

Good orienteering but still bad running shape: Before the race I visited the Blood bank at Ullevål where I have been a donor for almost 40 years and it turned out that I was very anemic, so they gave me a bunch of iron supplements and told me to come back in a couple of months. This does explain why I've had to walk all uphills for some time.

I managed a pretty good start on this race, almost matching the speed of Christian Vogelsang, the fastest runner on the Long course, to the first three controls, but then I slid past #4 when I tried to avoid crossing the reentrant just west of the control circle. This cost me about 30 sec.

The next controls were OK but by the time I got to #6 where our course separated from the Long I was three minutes slower than Christian, I had to walk all the way up the hill to the flag.

OK to 7 & 8.

I hesitated a bit towards #9 and when I tried to take a shortcut along an unmarked new path it disappeared after just 50 m, at which point I should have just kept running in the same direction instead of bailing out to the road. The second-place finisher, John Hansen, beat me by a few seconds on this leg.

The finish sprint might have been the longest I have ever experienced, at least when I except mountain marathon courses, it took nearly 4 minutes!

I did consider going straight over the final hill but with rainsoaked hillsides the descent would have been both tricky and dangerous at speed.