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