OBIK P20 / NMK 4 (22-08-2013)
Categoria: Competition
Mapa/Área: Mobekken
Organisação: Nydalens SK
Distância: 4.92 km
Tempo: 37:40
Pretty good race on a good map (new for the Norwegian Championships last year), but the course planner gave us a lot of vertical climb in just 4 km: 448 m according to my GPS (broken altimeter?), and 260 m just counting the crossed contour lines along the best route choice.

I strongly considered going all the way around to #1, just to avoid crossing the river, but it did seem too far to do so: The straight line distance was 290 m, while the alternative would have been nearly 3 times longer, while only saving a single contour of climb.

Good flow to #2

With another river crossing plus nearly 100 m of climb to get to #3, the route choice was obvious. My only problem was to locate the last (indistinct) path which started just before the green creek crossing, I didn't find it until after some bushwacking.

Another 35 m of ascent to #4 gave plenty time to check the direction, making it easy to hit it straight on. (BTW, my 4 year old GPS is starting to develop some problems, probably in the antenna connection: This means that my track logs are getting quite a few spurious wiggles and excursions which I've tried to edit away, but there's still a bit left!)

#5 was my best leg of the race: I ran to the path, dropped down 10+ m of altitide and then dared to run fast through the stony green forest. I did see the bottom edge of the initial open spot and the index contour reentrant, before hitting the control perfectly 15-30 seconds faster than everyone else on my course.

Good execution to #6, the top of the hill was so flat that there was very little altitude to be saved by going more directly over the last hill, this way I knew I could follow the edge of the contours down to the cliff.

Towards #7 there was several unmapped tracks on the top of the hill, probably started by the relay runners at NM last year. I followed one such until I got to the second top, then kept a careful direction downhill in the lighter green.

#8 was a bad joke, adding insult to the excessive climb injury: We could have gotten some more control picking in the white forest instead of this jungle excursion! :-)

The fields after 2/3 of the leg are logging areas, by now they were covered in chest-high growth that partly hid all the branches left behind on the ground, while the green marshy parts were just as wet and difficult to penetrate as it looks like on the map.

I therefore spent 5-10 seconds fretting before I decided to run all the way around to #9, it seems like an OK decision since I only lost 9 seconds to the fastest runner on my course and 5 seconds to the fastest in my class.

OK to the last control and the finish, in the end I won my course by 2 min and my class by 4.
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OBIK P20 / NMK 4 (22-08-2013) OBIK P20 / NMK 4 (22-08-2013)