Pinseløp Kongsberg H55 dag 1 (23-05-2015)

Good news: I have indeed recovered most of my old running speed.

Bad news: I don't orienteer as well as I'm used to, particularly here in the Kongsberg area where I have 15+ victories over the last 5-10 years, usually due to almost zero time loss.

I had the second-best split to #1, the time loss was due to extremely wet conditions along the ride. Arve Glittum who beat me here took the first partial path and avoided some of the trouble.

Very good flow to #2, best split and took over the race lead.

OK to #3.

I considered going straight to #4, but the first green patch was both dense and wet so I bailed out to the road. This resulted in yet another 2nd best split and a lead of 22 seconds in the race.

#5 was a big disaster: My GPS track shows how I started out in the wrong direction up the hill and by the time I corrected my course I was making a parallel mistake, hitting the wrong set of boulders. I recovered relatively quickly when I hit the green patch, but I still lost 1:23 to the best split and the race itself here. At this point my club mate Sören Jonsson took over the lead and kept it to the finish.

OK to #6

Leaving that control I once again started out in the wrong direction and when the big blue marsh was almost totally open I believed I was directly under the straight connection line. I realized my mistake when I suddenly hit the half-way marsh, but I had to fight my way across this before I could resume my original route plan. I still got the 4th best split here, but I lost 45 sec to Lars Fremstad who finished the race in second place.

I ran well to 8 & 9, winning both splits and temporarily recovered the 2nd spot in the race.

I did not read the control description properly on #10, so when the flag was located east of a really tiny knoll, so small that I didn't realize that it was mapped, I passed it by 3-4 m, stopped 10-15m further along ("It has to be here!") and then saw it when I turned around. This mistake cost me 20 sec.

OK to #11, #12 and the finish.

I ended up in 3rd place, 1:10 after Sören and just 6 sec after Lars, with Arve 45 sec behind me. Sören ran a very nice race, with all his split times in the top-4 group!