Sørlandsgaloppen 4 H60 (09.07.2017)

This was a pretty good race with no control mistakes until the last, but a sub-optimal route choice to #10 allowed Arve Glittum to beat me and end up with 4 straight victories in the class.

I ran perfect to the first 7 controls, after the race Arve told me that he had seen me while leaving #6, at which point he thought I would overtake him (he started 1 min before me).

Halfway to #8 I made my first mistake, crossing the creek on the muddy path before I realized that I had to turn back and go up the hill there. Probably 5-10 s lost.

OK to #9, to this point I had won 5 splits vs 3 to Arve and 1 to a runner who ended up far down the result list.

My plan for #10 was to start SE along the indistinct path, then run around the hills before crossing the marsh where I eventually did, but as I left the control the path going ENE tempted me to try another option which turned out to be significantly slower. I lost 56 s to Arve here but 10+ s of this probably came during the final hill where I had to walk the last part.

The last control was the same as had been used the day before so I hoped there would be some tracks to follow but that led me too far north and I lost 25 s to the best split and ended up 50 s behind Arve but 6 minutes(!) in front of #3.

PS. H60 got maps in 1:5000 scale on all three forest days, that was a huge advantage in the incredibly detailed cliff formations which would have been very hard to read in 1:10K. :-)