Vestjysk 2-dages

Whilst all the fast guys were strutting their stuff at the world cup races in Norway, I had a nice weekend with great weather in west Jylland :) The 2-day event was held on an inland dunes map near Holstebro. It was quite tough running. There is a lot of heather to push through and the ground is very sandy. So naturally I felt a bit tired, but I'm sure it was the same for everyone :)
The first day wasn't the greatest run for me. I made a few small mistakes and one huge 7minute mistake on the 17th control. I found it quite hard to make sense of the vegetation and contours.. I nearly went to the control in the beginning but came across some depression with no control there and I couldn't see any others on the map so I went on a small adventure. I came back from a different direction about 6mins later and found it straight away :) I came in 3rd place 1min 43sec behind and a little disappointed. I think that in a more important race with a bit higher conventration things might have gone a little differently, but who knows!
The second day was a little better. I made a lot of small mistakes around the controls but nothing too huge. My biggest mistake would have been the 17th where I didn't check my compass too well and ran too much to the right, then made a mistake near the control as well. It was a really hot day, especially with no protection out in open. I found myself dreaming about every drinks control. But it was all worth it to get to the finish and have a nice cold coke, and to win.
The results for both days are here (I ran 'Sort 10km'). The link for results on the second day doesn't seem to be working :S but maybe it will soon :)

Dansk Park Tour 4

Yep yep. Last weekend was the last round of the Danish Park Tour races. I ran the first race really well. I maintained a high speed through the whole course (after a tough week of training with 3 interval sessions I didn't know any different!).
It's a bit boring (and arrogant) to talk about all the good things I did. So I will now, as usual, sytematically list my mistakes and shortcomings :)
I made a couple of bad route choices on the 3rd and 4th controls. I also made a mistake early on the way to the 11th where the purple line obscured an impassable wall. I lost 30 seconds maximum from these mistakes but still managed a convincing win.
I realised in the next hour or so whilst trying to recover that perhaps I had pushed a bit too hard in the first race. I felt fatigued from the beginning of the 2nd race. I tried to put it in the back of my mind and concentrate on the navigation, but as it turned out my mind had also not fully recovered :) My first mistake was on the 4th where I took a risk that I would be able to find a nice hole in the green to bash through before the control, but I just kept getting stuck and had to go around. I lost 5-10 seconds standing in the middle of the control circle at the 5th before I saw the control stuffed down in a ditch instead of on the vegetation corner. On the 10th control I made the coolest mistake I have made in a long time... I went straight, only reading the buildings on my map (lazy tired mind) and came across an impassable hedge. Instead of looking at my map and minimizing my mistake I just thought 'oh, I'll just run around it. So unluckily I chose to run right and then ended up going backwards and then did the exact same thing one more time before the map spat me out again back at the 9th control :)
I lost some time on the 11th because I didn't see the track coming into the control from the left, and also some time at the 12th where I just ran past the control looking for a bush instead of a tree. I managed to get my mind together for the last few and finish well, but still only managed a 4th place.
Luckily my big win in the morning was just enough for me to win the day overall, and as it turns out the whole park series :) I just hope, well, I plan to pull out a sprint like the morning at the World Games in a few weeks.

Jukola

It's been a while since Jukola, and since I actually wrote anything on here :) But I thought I'd have a quick spiel about how it went.
I was running first leg for Pan Århus. I had run first leg in Tiomila this year and I felt that I could do much better in Jukola, but for some reason I felt really tired from the start of the race and totally died (physically) in the last half. Other than that it was an awesome experience! Running around the racecourse at the start was incredible, so much noise and excitement.. all I could do was try not to trip on the guy infront of me. My plan was to get as close to the front of the pack before we got into the forest so that I would be in a good position for the rest of the race. So I ran pretty hard in the first kilometre. I just glanced at the map and folded it around the racecourse leaving a bit of room for the first control. When I started to get free of the stampede I searched my nicely folded map for the first control but just saw a line going straight off the page. I had to completely unfold my map to reveal a huge 4km lst leg :S The run to the first control was brutally fast, leaving me a little out of breath. But I really focused hard and forced myself to read the map. I ran a pretty good race (routegadget). I didn't make any mistakes apart from drifting a little far to the right on the way to the 9th control. I managed to get within 18 seconds of the leaders at 6.8km through the course but then, like I said, I died. In the next 5km I dropped from 18 seconds behind to 5min 19 seconds behind without any mistakes. I finished my leg in 78th place. I was happy with my run. I just put the fatigue down to all hard training in my build up to world games.
Our team ran pretty well in the rest of the relay. Our secret weapon Greg Flynn brought the team home to finish up in 121st place. Not a bad position to start from next year :)
You can see the car at the start doesn't start fast enough and everyone freaks out :D