Smålandskavlen 2011
Linné 2: Josef Nordlund - David Lingfors - Boris - Ross - Olle Eriksson
We were 31st after the two night legs, and I got to go out at the tail end of a somewhat spread out pack, with about seven teams within a minute in front of me. I taped my ankle heavily and felt ok on it during the warm-up.
When I turned over the map, it was immediately obvious that this would be a fast and furious course with lots of open woods and some trail running. I went out 4 seconds behind Tampereen Pyrintö (TP) and 6 seconds ahead of Denseln.
S-2: We were all together at 1 and then split up at 2, where I had the shorter forking and got ahead.
2-3: On the way to 3 I passed Lynx and caught Skoksfalken, and ran with Skogsfalken for the next few. No problems orienteering on the tricky slope controls - I felt like I was in control of my orienteering while running at the limit of what I could handle speed-wise.
4-6:Climbing up into 5 we saw three more guys in front of us and ran hard on the longer leg across to 6, which I had already seen when going to 3. Punched 6 just behind the other three guys.
7-9: The leg to 7 was simple downhill running through some open woods and then on a trail, so I ran as hard as I could to catch the guys from Kangasala and Linköping in front of me. We dropped Skogsfalken here somewhere. I went straight on the flat, wide-open forest leg to 9 and came into it together with Kangasala.
10-11: A bit of tricky orienteering here, so I slowed down a bit, and Kangasala got a gap on me.
12-13: This was the worst part of the course for me. I saw Kangasala staying high leaving 11, and thought that I could do better by running straighter on the line. This didn't work, as the forest was a bit junkier going straight, and I lost sight of Kangasala, dropping about 20 seconds on the leg. Linköping came with me, and we saw Järla leaving 12 as we came in. I was tired here and took a stupid angle going around the hill between 12 and 13 and ended up at the power line, way off my line. After fighting through the powerline and busting out to 72 (losing 40 seconds here), I was suddenly in a pack led by Hällen's Per Öberg, who started almost a minute after me. He had with him my start-buddies TP and Denseln, as well as Pan Århus, and Järla, Skogsfalken and Linköping, whom we dropped quickly.
14-16: Streamered route through 14, then the climb up to 15. Hällen and Denseln got a small gap here, but missed the control, and so we were al together again, flying down the hill to 16. This control turned out to be forked, and I hit my control right on together with Pan Århus, while the others had a different fork.
17-F: I immediately decided to run right around the lake, and Pan Århus went with me. Kangasala appeared out of nowhere and joined us. The other two were running faster than me on the trail, but I took a better angle cutting across to the road and got ahead of them for a bit. We punched 17 together and split up going to the last control. Pan Århus was stronger and got ahead of me there. I held off Kangasala, and exchanged 25th, after picking up 6 places.
I was 32nd on the leg, 6 minutes down on Martins Sirmais, and 4 minutes behind Oskar from our 1st team. Also, first time I'd run under 6 min/km for a course (42:35 for 7.3km) in a long time!
Splits for common controls on my leg:
http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/sv/default.a...
Ross and Olle followed with solid runs on their longer, tougher legs, and we finished a very respectable 42nd, better than last year's Linné 2 team, which was 46th with a stronger line-up. The boys' first team was 3rd after some great runs during the day, and the ladies finished 10th after an awesome run by Sam!
Men's results:
http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/sv/default.a...
My map:
http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...
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