SM Ultralong - 2h35min of running and much more time in the car
Dienstag, 13. April 2010 um 10:00 Uhr
This weekend the Swedish Championships in Ultralong were held in Ettebro, next to Ronneby.
It was my third competition in Sweden since I moved to Borlänge and Stora Tuna OK in early March.
Ultralong, it's the race where in Austria maybe 5 to 10 people are fighting for the medals, in Sweden it is a bit more.
After having a look on maps of former SM Ultralong races, to see which forking systems were used and how the course could look like, I got a bit scared by winning times around 2h and 50min and I thaught I might get that long this year too.
23,6 km on three loopes was the distance to handle this year, I needed 2h 35min for a total of 28,4 km according to my GPS watch. 2h 30 sounds quite tough but in fact I was enjoying almost every minute of the race.
After the start it was quite obvious that there will be more than one first control, because the big group began splitting itself into several smaller groups. After some short controls we had a long route choice and the group began splitting even more. I was not quite sure if it was because of several route options or if it was another forked part that started. Thumbs up to the coursesetter, he did a good job.In the middle of my first loop (control 9) I had a mistake searching at a wrong hill/knoll followed by another mistake to the next control. There I lost the contact to my group, which was slightly running behind the leading runners. From that part of the race I was more or less running my own race.
The second loop was quite OK, I only had some smaller mistakes, sometimes missing the control in the controlarea. Nevertheless because running alone my speed was not as high as it could have been running in a group.
On the last loop I could catch some runners at the starting point of the unforked course and we were running and making mistakes together than. We missed the first two controls in the green area and also had a mistake in the control area of the second last control before the spectators passage.
On this last part from the passage I was running quite well. I started on place 5 within my group and could overtake 3 runners by taking a slightly different route to the control. The next control I was already in the lead of the pack because the other runners were slowing done when approaching to the control. Running in front my only goal was to keep this position until the finish. I started increasing the speed to the secondlast control so the gap within the group began growing. After hittingthe control without problems it was only the last control left. One more time I raised the speed in order to stay in front. I could manage to keep that position until the finish and took the 29th place.
I am very satisfied with those last controls, but the race itself could have been much better. I failed to reach my goal, to get into the top 20, by almost 10 minutes. Nevertheless running and orienteering in scandinavian terrain gets better and better but there is a lot of possibilities to improve until WOC in Trondheim.
Yesterday I could feel that some muscles are a bit tired, but I am not really sure if it is because of the 2h30min running or if it was the 15 hours driving in the car to get to and from the competitions this weekend.
Results: SM Ultralong 2010
