10mila 3rd leg
Some night...
Felt really up for this race, had prepared well and felt confident in strange terrain than I knew most people was not as prepared as me.
The team was all set and we sat into watch the start of first leg on the telly.
Unfortunately, we could see that poor Gosha wasn’t his usual reliable self, out of the top 150 for much of the race. I steadied myself and we prepared for what was to come... Unfortunately, his nightmare wasn’t over and turned out he punched the wrong gaffel and was disqualified. I found this out as I was leaving to go to the start when Rinat was looking at live results and then shouted, "why does George have NOK next to his name instead of a time?" ... that means Not OK.
We woke everyone up and had a quick team meeting where we all decided to race anyway.
Then as I left, I bumped into Petri and poor George so tried to help here before going back towards the start.
I was finding this all quite hard to process and prepare myself to race as normal (tougher than expected).
Any how Lari ran well and brought us up to the top 80.
I started pretty hard as I was full of aggression, frustration and with adrenaline. On the way not no1 everything came to me pretty fast but I had enough control to get the control well.
Small error into no2 (30s?) Miss understanding the map and not using my compass
No4 made a simple plan to push thought the green and “aim off” to the right but stuck in the green and pushed off line. Should have stayed closer to the red line as it was whiter forest. I didn’t feel this was a mistake during the race.
No5- Coming into no4 I saw the control was a TV control so started to look ahead to no5 as this was a longer leg with route choice leg around the green and undergrowth. Team tactic was to run wide on faster running and safer options. I saw nothing good straight and entering No5 from south wasn’t as good as from the north, I didn’t check the routes to the south because of this and set off on what I thought would be a good wise route. Rushed a little here and for a long time I thought I had took a bad route but now I am analyzing it probably isn’t a bad option but not the fastest.
Now I the south route and round behind the control to the path bend is probably best but didn’t see it in the night and would have took some bravery to run it.
No6 and 7- Good and got together with a small group
No8- This looked like a typical leg from this region, go wide in the beginning and the route goes straighter and nearer to the control. We had discussed legs like this in the team meetings in the days before. I left no7 a head of a small group (5 or so) who all ran straight to no8… It was really nice to hear them struggling in the green as I ran down the path. (My route was 20-25sec faster).
No9- Wanted to run straight, then changed my mind and head up to the path to use the big stone next to the path bend. The plan wasn’t complete, I didn’t know all the way to the control… I thought I would see the reentrant easily. As I got to the path the group had caught me back up (shorter gaffel) I guess I was a bit distracted me and I missed the big stone, but noticed the path bend… should have paused here (or at least slowed down). The one of other boys said “its further along”, I tried not to listen but felt myself believing them.
I saw the vegetation change so followed it down but again didn’t pause to reassess, relocate and replan. I didn’t stop and calculate what I should do properly … I am pretty frustrated with control. This behavior cost me 90-100secs.
There was 4 time on this leg I should have stood still but I didn’t!! Before leaving no8, at the path bend, at the vegetation change, when I saw the water… If I had stopped at any of these the mistake would not have happened!
After this I was pretty good to the finish.
I know that there was nothing huge or very bad about my race in the sense of a 12hour relay. I would have told any team mate that this run was good and what we want (minimal damage and average performance)… But I still feel slightly disappointed with myself.
Also I am pretty pleased that I was the one who took the brunt of the pressure after our issues with leg 1… Of course this isn’t ideal for anyone but I feel like I could deal with it better than most and I would rather take it on myself than let an other team mate take it.
And I am proud of my team and how they dealt with everything, especially Anssi and Lari. Both reacted very differently but complimented each other very well. We climbed from out the top 150 to be the 45th to finish 10mila!
https://www.livelox.com/Viewer/Tiomila-i-Ostra-Goi...