Orienteering 1:56:00 [2]
shoes: VJ Ints (May 09)
Ankle still feeling very tender in the morning. Contemplated not running, or jogging the Red. But decided to give it a chance again, tape it up and see how far I could get on Blue.
Tape job looked pretty retarded but it worked. Also did quite the duct tape job on my right shoe which held it together nicely. Warmup was worrisome with a 12.8km 600m climb race looming and barely being able to run over the rocky trail to the start.
Very easy from the start, caught up and passed Giovanni at 5, then he passed me back on the rocky descent to 9. Tucked in behind him on the long rocky trail run to 10. Pretty much a Sunday morning jog up to this point. Stayed with Giovanni until 12 where I got ahead on the uphill. To my surprise, my ankle was starting to feel better, and so I started to push a bit on the uphills. Up to 15, despite the slow pace, I made many mistakes, which I blame partially on the fact that I was focusing more on my footing then on the map.
After the butterfly loop, things changed considerably. A swiss guy Michael, caught up to me at 18 or so, and I stuck with him throughout the next loop. My pace had definetly quickened, although I was still slow and very cautious on the downhills.
The highlight of this race for me was from 25 to the finish. On 25 and 27 I managed to lose Michael on the big climbs up to the controls, although he caught me back to 26 on the big discent down the road. To my surprise I had the fastest splits on 25 and 27 out of the B loop guys.
Even under the circumstances, I really enjoyed this race. Cruising along with the other runners was a lot of fun, and I take this to be good mental training for the crowded forests of Sweden. Physically I felt much better than West Point. I proved to myself that my shape is good, and I look forward to showing this at some point.