Smaaleneneløpet (17/04/2016)

OK for the first half, then disaster struck after I caught up to Lars H who started two min in front of me:

The first control was probably too easy, with road+path+path for the first 85% of the leg.

I took the path around to #2, if my legs had been more fresh I would probably have gone straight!

A small hiccup halfway to #3 when I found an unmapped deer trail and followed it for a few meters before I realized that it couldn't be the one on the map. 10 sec?

I decided immediately that I would go south of the midway cliff towards #4, this gave the flattest and easiest route.

Towards #5 I didn't see the path junction by Soria Moria but the deer trail I used to cross over 50 m later was probably at least as good as the muddy path. This is where I first spotted Lars who I caught up to and passed by the time we crossed the valley with the marsh.

I immediately made a one-minute mistake, going too far right and up instead of due north and flatter.

Towards #6 I had full control midway by the north end of the cliff but I still lost it in the green stripes where the vegetation had grown enough to take away most of the visibility. I lost about 2.5 minutes here and never saw Lars again.

I started OK towards #7, following the valley WSW and aiming for the opening in the long cliffs, but then I suddenly decided to go more north (for absolutely no good reason)?

I hit the cliff and immediately spotted a nice opening (which turns out to be unmapped), climbed up and then made a parallel mistake when I followed a bearing towards the control. When I spotted the large partly open marsh I decided that this had to be the one underneath the line and went on from there, arriving in a freshly logged area. Since such an area covering my control location was shown in the PM I thought everything was still OK!

I finally relocated when I hit the big blue-marked path, but I lost 4-5 min. :-(

The final controls all went OK, but coming in well over 10 min behind the leader was no fun.