Tour of Lillomarka (17/03/2015)

Pretty good for a night race with a lot of controls: I have been in this forest many times, but with relatively dense vegetation and a headlamp that doesn't really matter, it is far too easy to get lost anyway!

Very good to the first 5 controls, at this point I was still in 3rd place and in front of Anders T, the eventual winner.

Bad flow and some hesitation to #6, but I was still disappointed when the split times indicate that I lost at least half a minute here.

#7 was the big mistake of the evening, at the exact moment when I should have turned right into the control I suddenly decided that I had to be on the big track 70-80 m further north and started struggling through the dark green area to the south (which was nearly impassable). When I realized what I had done and turned north again I had lost about 1.5 minutes.

OK to #8 and very good to #9, but then I should have turned around and gone back down to the big path to the left of the line. The time loss might have been another 20-30 sec.

I had pretty good flow to #11-15, but it was a mistake to go all the way back to the main path: Crossing the medium green and the open field was a little bit faster.

My final mistake was to the last control: I left #19 in the wrong direction when I just pushed through wherever the planted forest seemed most runnable, but I recovered when I saw the cliff east of the road. The real problem occured next when I followed an unmarked path up the hill, believing I was on the one shown on the map, and then I spotted a spurious reflex marker almost on the edge of the field.

This is still the fastest I've been able to run all winter!