Hjalmarløpet H55 (26/05/2013)

A great race!

This competition took place alongside the Norwegian Cup races for the Elite classes, I ran a very nearly perfect race and won by over 3 min, with the best min/km speed of all the winners. (The NC competitors ran in a different part of the terrain, they were far faster than us mere mortals of course!)

Perfect to the first 4 controls, best split times and a lead of more than a minute. I passed Ingemar JH who had started two min before me on the path up to #4.

I lost a few meters of altitude leaving 4 so I had to climb up again as I approached the control circle, this allowed Ingemar to gain back a second.

On #6 I was a little surprised by the control as the two dot knolls in front of the cliff were part of an elongated knoll and the control flag was located in a sharp reentrant that the mapper didn't have any rom to show on the map. Hesitated maybe 5 secs here and was beaten by Harald T by 8 seconds, the worst leg result of the day.

I had the best split time on the rest of the controls, starting with 7 which went very nicely, just contouring along the hillside, intentionally hitting the control area a little bit high to make sure I would see it.

I had to walk a few steps in the heather up the hill towards 8, and it seems like I could have left the path a little bit sooner, but the final bend was to get around some brush.

Very careful jumping down among the scree and boulders getting down to the path, then full speed past the powerline and up to control #9.

Good direction leaving the control then just a lot of running to the final control.