Orienteering race 2:20:00 [4] 22.0 km (6:22 / km)
Although I'm way, way behind on logging, I thought I'd get to the meaty stuff now while its fresh in my mind.
Tiooooooo-mila. I had stated many months ago to the guys that I really wanted to run because it was in Falun and I wanted to see the famous stadium. I don't actually recall saying "and also run around the woods in the dark for as long as possible".
But, when I got the team list two weeks before the race, there it was, "Leg 4". Like you, I had to look up what leg 4 was. I was thinking "good gravy don't let it be the long night leg". I had just spent a week in Halden one month earlier flailing around hopelessly in the dark every night, and I regularly make 10 minute mistakes at Kurko cup, and I have definitely not run a night race of that length. And my head lamp is broken. And guess what leg I got!
I actually stayed up for an extra hour that night looking at the old map and pre-freaking out. I tried to give away the leg to anyone who could walk (though only half-seriously) because I was afraid of making regular mistakes and losing 40 minutes overall. The guys had this notion that our second team was going to be in the fight too, and so naturally I was super afraid of letting them down. As I got closer and closer, I wax expertly freaking out more and more, but also feeling more resolute. I couldn't sleep the day before much at all because I was super nervous about it, but more and more determined (possibly because there was no getting out of it now).
As the first few runners came in, it was quite clear we were nowhere near the front of group, which provided a little bit of relief, because I felt confident that anyone I was with I could definitely run with, and were hopefully strong night orienteers. I started around 12:35, feeling generally calm and surprisingly hopeful. I ran by myself for about..... 45 seconds, and then I could see people the entire rest of the race. No, that's not quite true, on the way to two I took a different ski trail and was maybe solo for another minute or so. I was caught by a pair of runners on my across the field to 2, and immediately linked up with them. One of them was running confidently, but I feel I took charge to three, because they were going too far left, and eventually they corrected towards me.
And then I went too far to the right on 3.
But, no matter, I actually corrected faster than them, and maybe it taught them to lead instead of follow me! The next leg, after three, was incredibly long, spanning the entire length of the map. They actually ran off quite quickly, and left me behind trying to find a route. I didn't want to lose their lights so I went hard to catch back up, and in the process completely lost track of where I was. The first half of the leg was leaping between ski trails, and so literally, for the first 2.5k of the leg, probably 15 minutes, whenever we were dead running, I had my map spread out trying to figure out where the bloody hell we were. Granted, we were all going to the same place, so its not a big deal, but its the principle of the matter. It wasn't until we linked up with another group of 3 (we're now up to 6, if you're counting, were they ahead of us or behind? Not sure) that I finally found a hill with a tower on it and figure out where we were. That was fortunate because shortly after we came to a trail junction, and I assumed we were turning right and going up the trail, but the three guys ahead of me just stopped, and I slammed right into the back of one of them.
So, all of sudden, I was leading again, because I was the only one who was paying attention, it seemed. But as we got to the top of the hill, I was still undecided on where to go, so I let up a little before the top and let someone be decisive. They decided to go straight towards the cliffs, so I shrugged and rolled with it. The control was ultimately easy to find, and then we had three that I just fully let whoever was at the front of the group take care of it. We were now up to 9 people in the group. Once we got to the second long leg, I paused briefly, found a route choice I was generally okay with (definitely not the one I would have chosen, in retrospect), and went in the same direction as anyone else. But then they ignored the trail and went somewhere else!!
Now, I really faced a conundrum here, go off on my own, or stick with the group. I went with the wimpy choice and stayed with the group, and we faffed around with a stupid, stupid route that made no sense and I still didn't have any idea where we were. I really just had to weigh the pros of going for it and maybe saving time or blowing it and losing the group all together and maybe bleeding time. So, dumb route choice it was. I suspect the guy in the lead made several mistakes and just kind of rolled with it because he knew no one else was paying attention. Maybe in the future with more courage I'll venture out on my own.
Once we hit the road, it was a straight run, some guys accelerated, and I was able to accelerate too, and hang with them fairly comfortably. This was another point where maybe I could have gone ahead, because at the next long leg we made what I thought was another dumb route choice with a road run, and then AGAIN on the long leg after that. But as the race got longer, I got more afraid of ruining my race. That's definitely a bad attitude, but it was going quite well so far and I didn't want to mess that up. After the third road run, I joined two other guys on a dumb route choice across the green, and once they got to this marsh, they both stopped and I took the lead briefly again, since I knew where I was.
Then it was the last few controls in the ski areas that were relatively easy, and our group returned back together and was up to about 12. The last 4 controls, being downhill and super easy, were just basically a battle of punching position, since everyone wanted to get in on about 3 SI-boxes. After being muscled out of the first two by guys who were literally just taking their hand and pushing my hand out of the way, I got some semblance of revenge back on the front three guys of the group when at the second to last control, they punched the ones on the high side of the exit, I sprinted to the lower side, punched, paused, braced myself, and they blindly turned and smashed straight into me.
It was basically a hockey hip check. That'll learn 'em.
Then it was the run into finish and.... really really pray I didn't mispunch. There were several times throughout the course that I realized I totally didn't remember if I punched the control or not. I remember several of the guys always let it beep twice, but sometimes I couldn't even remember if I did it once! Relief, I did actually punch, so, crisis averted.
As it turns out, I gained us 6 places, from 72nd to 66th. I was 45th overall on the leg, but still quite a distance back from the fastest time. I wouldn't have run that time if I had been fully by myself, though one could argue that I could might have run that time by myself because I would have made smarter route choices. Its really hard to say. But, given my low confidence level, I went into the race with the strategy of letting other people who were better navigators than I am to do a lot of the work and just hang on. The hanging on wasn't a problem, and I found a relatively competent group of guys. With more confidence I might have gone a bit slower out of the controls, made my own route choices, and occasionally pushed the pace in the forest and especially on the road. Do I want to do the long night again? Hard to say. I wouldn't mind trying to go first, or just being better and trying to hitch on to the first team.
In all, good times. I had fun. And only slept about 3 hours all weekend. Dead tired.