Blodslitet H55 (18-10-2014)
Catégorie: Competition
Carte/région: Østsidenmarka
Organisateur: Fredrikstad
Distance: 13.27 km
Temps: 91:32
HR moyen: 164
HR maximum: 174
Oh Happy Day! :-)

I had absolutely no expectations for this race, I only hoped I would be able to finish it without too much pain in my foot, and not more than 10-15 minutes behind the winner.

It turned out that had recovered enough to nearly keep up with the leaders, this combined with a few good route choices and very few mistakes was enough to stay with the leader group the entire race. I ended up in 17th place, second last of those in my group but I'm still very satisfied: By next year my usual speed, fast enough to lead instead of barely follow, should hopefully be back. :-)

My worst mistake was to #1, I had studied the map before we started and decided that if the first control was so far north, then I would run alongside the hill to the second big path/ski trail, but I ended up going up and then down again, probably losing most of the 20+ seconds I was behind here.

The butterfly went nicely along with the following controls but I fumbled a bit into the drinks control, #13, misreading the exact placement and dropping a few seconds.

Nr 15 was my best leg of the day probably, I started by cutting away from the big crowd in front of me, gaining maybe 10 places, and then I hit the control itself perfectly while many others hesitated. At this point I was #7, just a few seconds behind the leader.

Towards #16 I had planned to go directly south, following the indistinct paths most of the way to the control, but when the entire group went downhill I stayed with them. I did notice afterwards on the GPS tracking that Bergmann who won men elite got his crucial gap to Kaas and Nordberg by taking the route choice I had planned, so I should probably regret not doing the same.

The asphalt road running towards #17 was horrible for me, it seemed like I lost 100 m to everyone else here when I couldn't run properly downhill on a hard surface.

To #20 I did consider going straight but simplified down to the path instead. As I was starting the final 100 m of this leg my brother Knut passed me for the last time of the day, he must have taken a very bad route to #16, losing over a minute to the rest of us.

From this point to the finish line I lost 1.5 minutes to Knut in pure running speed, but that is still faster than I've been all year.
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Blodslitet H55 (18-10-2014) Blodslitet H55 (18-10-2014)