World Cup Long distance, Masstart. Crazy race!
60 riders and less then 1k to the first control.... luckily I was somewhere around top 15 going in to that control so it didn't affect me that much. Going to second I got in to this big group on the singletracks going out to the road. Once we where on the road some of the guys just exploded and i couldn't really keep up with them. At the end of that leg I had so much lactic acid that I was woundering if I would be able to finish the course.
Dropped some guys going to 3rd and was caught by a gruop with two of the other swedes. After tailing these guys for 2-3 min my legs started to feel better. I started working with Markus Martinelle, one of the other swedes, to catch the group that was ahead of us. We caught them at the 5th control. To 6th the group went left around the lake. We where working together to keep the speed up and we kept catching guys. At the butterfly most guys had a different forking then me. I got into this group with Ruslan Gritsan, russia, a polish guy and a guy from lithuania. Our group kept catching guys, especially on the controles after the butterfly. We went stright through the forst going to 15th and 16th and gaing a lot of time.
At 16th i had to refold my map (it was really big!) and I lost Ruslan and the polish guy. On our way to 17th me and the lithuanian got into a group with another russian and a guy from estonia. We split up at the second butterfly and I passed Hans-Jörgen Kvåle, from Norway, during one of the loops. Got out of the butterfly with the estonian. Here we made a massive mistake. We didn't se the bridges that was just by the control and instead went across early and took way to much climb. We lost over three minutes and where passed by all the guys we had passed in the latest butterfly.
he was stronger then me on the last couple of controles so I decided to just stay with him and wait for a mistake that would give me the opportunity to pass him. It came at the last control. He tried to punch while still on the bike, I took it safe instead and put one of my feet down. He missed the puching and I could pass him. Ended up in 28th place, best swede. I'm happy with the result considering that there wasn't much orienteering at all.
I haven't gotten my map yet so I'll post a link to Marks map (he hade the same gaffling as I had):
http://www.stodgell.co.uk/2010pics/2011/06/DSCN060...