Blodslitet H55 (18/10/2014)
Category: Competition
Map/area: Østsidenmarka
Organiser: Fredrikstad
Distance: 13.27 km
Time: 91:32
Average HR: 164
Maximum HR: 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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Knut : Hi, Your route-choice to the first control was not good, but still better than me, I started the same way, but then went right to the field, but ended up taking the control from north same as you. Lost 36 seconds. To 15 I was in the lead but missed to the right, losing 25 seconds, but still being only 10 seconds behind the leader. to 16 I tried to go straigt over the hill, but hesitated first since everybody else went to the right. Then I missed on the way down, ending up being scared of passing over prohibited gardens, and had to go back a little to reach teh path before the road. Lost 70 seconds. Then I had a tough way trying to catch up with Eirik N-U, Jon K. and the others in the front of the pack. I succeeded towards 21 due to a bad route-choice by the three leaders (they went around to the right here). But unfortunately i lost my contact and could not read the map properly the rest of the way. Therefore I went along with Eirik on his small mistakes to 23 (went all around the cliff) and 26!! (went around the small triangle on the road!!). in the run-in it seemed that Eirik had control over Jon and me (in that order), but surprisingly he stopped completely on the wet final part, and we both easily passed him.Still, nice experience for me too, only a few days after a green light from the heart doctors to be allowed to compete again....
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Blodslitet H55 (18/10/2014) Blodslitet H55 (18/10/2014)