Last weekend was Sjælland Mesterskab (Zealand Championships) in Grib Skov just North of Copenhagen. Saturday was the relays. Unfortunately Odense didn't have a team so I just ran around the longest open course. I only ran at 90% to try and have a perfect run, but I still made some dumb mistakes. I think I was too relaxed. When I am running at 90% I have picked up a bad habit of only concentrating at 90% aswell :)Sunday was the SM long distance race. I was unofficial because I am living on the wrong island, but I still wanted to have a good run against the Rasmus's. I started really well. I felt quite fast and only made a few small mistakes. Just after the 8th control disaster struck. I was jumping over the small ditch after the control and a sharp stick went right through the bottom of my shoe (Inov8 Talon 212). Luckily it didn't pierce the skin. (This is the 2nd time I have had this problem. It happened to me with my Inov8 mudroc 280's when I was warming up in Hungary last year... I think the rubber they use is a bit too soft and thin for rough dry forest. I wonder has this happened to anyone else or am I just that unlucky???) I tried to pull it out, but the rubber had squeezed tight around it. I took the shoe off and spent the next 6 minutes or so fighting to get it out. I had to watch the 2 starters behind me go past. Finally I managed to push the stick into the shoe using another stick and pull it out from the inside. 
I raced through the next 2 controls and caught up to Michael Sørensen who had started 6mins behind me. We ran through the rest of the course together. We were running pretty fast, I was struggling with the pace a little as I had run so hard to catch him up again. On the way to the 26th control I took a different route choice. When trying to jump over a ditch I fell in up to my neck in slimy black mud/water. It really freaked me out, any deeper and I probably wouldn't have come back up. It was the last straw. I got the next control then walked back along the road to the finish. I missed out the last 1-2km loop and DNF'd. After vigorously wiping the mud off myself and bathing in my cologne I saw Michael Sørensen come in to finish in first place. On a day where just about everything seemed to go wrong, I at least had the consolation that I had been running well enough to win if things had gone a bit differently :)
I raced through the next 2 controls and caught up to Michael Sørensen who had started 6mins behind me. We ran through the rest of the course together. We were running pretty fast, I was struggling with the pace a little as I had run so hard to catch him up again. On the way to the 26th control I took a different route choice. When trying to jump over a ditch I fell in up to my neck in slimy black mud/water. It really freaked me out, any deeper and I probably wouldn't have come back up. It was the last straw. I got the next control then walked back along the road to the finish. I missed out the last 1-2km loop and DNF'd. After vigorously wiping the mud off myself and bathing in my cologne I saw Michael Sørensen come in to finish in first place. On a day where just about everything seemed to go wrong, I at least had the consolation that I had been running well enough to win if things had gone a bit differently :)
2 comments:
Hey Ross! Matt Scott put a stick through his shoe a few years ago at the Canterbury Champs out at Spencerville. He was wearing a pair of VJ Twisters so maybe its not confined just to inov8's.
Ok. I had a feeling I was just unlucky :)
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