DM Stafett Uppland
This year, the powers that be decided to pick men's relay teams for the District Champs in a less traditional way to create more excitement, since normally the first Linné team wins, the second comes second, and so on. This year, teams were arranged by birth year, and there were a number of very competitive teams on the start line. The "weakest links" of all the teams were put on the first leg, and so I stood on the start line, looking over at my teammates Tomas Stenström and Jan Troeng (both medal winners at Swedish Champs in recent years) with high expectations.
I ran reasonably well in the beginning, and was with the "pack" of Henrik Boström and Simon Eklöv on the way to 8, when I jumped down a cliff to my control and landed with full weight on my turned ankle. Lots of pain, cursing, and hobbling followed. Then, the usual: Simon and Henrik are getting away, I am limping after them and not paying attention to the map. I missed the next two controls, losing about 2.5 minutes, and was quite dispirited and in pain through the spectator control. My teammates' cheering perked me up a bit, and I got my brain together to run a clean, if slowish, second loop and not lose any more time to Simon and Henrik. I exchanged 6th, over 8 minutes down on Niklas Aldén, Linné's next junior superstar.
As expected, my teammates ran well on the 2nd and 3rd legs, and gradually pulled us into a medal position. We ended up 3rd, behind two Linné teams, including the winning team of all juniors (!), and ahead of three more Linné teams before the first team from another club... My race wasn't great, and my ankle was pretty huge afterwards, but it was cool to get my second-ever DM medal.
Then it was awesome seeing Sam anchor her team to a DM-silver!
Results are here:
http://eventor.orientering.se/Documents/Event/5386...
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