Tiomila 2010- 11th place, better than expected
Mittwoch, 05. Mai 2010 um 05:04 Uhr
The goal this year for my new club, Stora Tuna OK, was to be among top 15 to top 20 teams. In fact with an 11th place we performed better than everyone expected from us, but it could have been even better.
Already on the first leg one of our juniors in the team, Anton Sjökvist, did a great job. He came in 2nd place just a few seconds behind the lead. With his fabulous race Anton built the basis for a series of good races always staying within the top ten. On the 2nd leg Johan Israelsson was running for Stora Tuna. He also performed very well and made it to the changeover within 4th place about 1 min behind the leader at that time.
I was chosen to run the long night for our team, the leg I preferred the most. This year it was the first time, since my debut in Tiomila 2004, that I was heading out into the forest among the top 10 teams within the competition. It was an unexperienced situation that made me a bit nervous before my start.
Starting from 5 th position the goal set was to stay in the leading group. I knew that the probably best runners on that leg, Anders Nordberg (Halden SK) and Jan Prochazka (Kalevan Rasti) where some places behind me, and I think also the other runners starting in front of me have been told about the intermediate ranking of the top teams.
To the first two controls the running speed within the leading group was very slow. Already at the first control it was a small pack of runners running together, trying not to get away from the ideal route in a more or less moderate speed. It seemed to be like in a cycling race where everyone is just waiting until someone starts an attack. The reason for that was very simple one. To the third control there was a quite long routechoice and none of the leading runners wanted Anders Nordberg to pass by unseen, by taking another routechoice to that control.
On halfway to the 2nd control the time has come, Anders Nordberg caught us and he took the lead. From that time of the race it was mostly Anders running in front and everyone else following him.
He took the direct option to the third control on narrow tracks so the field was turned into one long queue very everone was struggling to get one of the top positions behind Nordberg. The running speed now was much faster than just after start and some teams already passed to the end of the queue. In fact, the speed was that high that I had real problems following the routechoice on my map the first half of the way to 3rd control. On the second half it got a bit easier because the group got smaller and I could put more effort on mapreading instead of fighting for positions.
For quite a long time the situation stayed the same, with only a few runners loosing contact to the lead.
The first time I could see that the field got smaller dramatically was on the route to control 12 when we were running on the road. There a small group of 10 runners could manage to make a small gap to the other teams. To the next controls on the way back to the spectators passage in the finish also that group got stretched quite a lot. I was running on the last position of that group (10th) and lost a bit the contact to the lead. Just after the runthrough in the finish I could manage to get back into the group because there was a longer uphill part.
During the whole race I felt a bit of relief when it was going uphill for some time. In order not to overpace on the flat parts I was consequently running a bit slower, loosing some meters within the group, which I could win back on the uphill parts, where I felt really strong that day. For my competitiors it must have looked a bit strange because i was always pendling from one of the last positions in the group, when it was flat, to one among the first, after uphill parts.
There was one place during the race where I could really feel that strenght. On the last loop there was one control just running uphill on a skiing slope. One more time I was running at the end of the group before the slope and while most of the other runners started walking uphill I continued running and got to the lead in the group. On top of the hill I realized that it also was a TV control, so Stora Tuna appeared on the lead at one of the last TV controls of the race. As I heard in the finish afterwards that must have been very surprising to many people because just some minutes earlier the speaker announced that Stora Tuna lost the contact to the lead, so I think he might have been surprised as well.
The last controls back to the finish it was a like a real knock-out race than. The speed on those easier controls was very high and the group got split up until the finish. I couldn't manage to keep the speed of the fastest and lost 14 seconds to the finish. With a 4th place at changeover and 8th best time on the leg I am very satisfied.
Also the next runners did a very good job. Our second junior in the team, Joakim Svensk, took the team to a 3rd place at the changeover, After Pavlo Ushkvarok we have been on 4th place again. Peter Löfas, at his comeback in the first team, changed on 6th place to Rikard Claesson who had the best running time on his leg and took the team to 2nd place. After small problems at the last part Jan Sedivy changed on 5th position. Pelle Engstrand had a good race on the 9th leg. Most of the time he was running alone only slightly slower than the leading teams. So we changed to the last leg on 6th position.
Our last leg runner, Jan Mrazek, had some problems with the swedish terrain and lost about 20 minutes to the fastest times. At the end we missed the top 10 only by one place.
Nevertheless it was a really good race for the team. We achieved our goal and we were also best Dala-Team.
For me this Tiomila was real fun to run, it was a bit different to the years before because I have never had the chance to run within the leading teams during the race.
There is one more episode from that weekend: On our travel to Tiomila my clubmates and I talked about my family name "Lang" and I joked about it and said it once was "Markus Sprint" but because I was much better in longdistances changed it to "Markus Lang". Than Rikard said if I am performing well on the long-night I will have to change it again. That's why now he is calling me "Markus lange-natten"
Tracking and map 3rd leg:
Newspaperlink Dalarnas Tidningar:
Newspaperlink Dalademokraten:
Rikard Claesson:
