25mannakorten. Basically the side event to 25manna held on the same map. Much nicer than yesterday I thought. Enjoyed it a lot more, maybe not having hoards of people over such a small area in the forest...
Anyways, I started quite well, maybe my route wasn't as good as it could have been to 1, but quite good, nailed it and running fast. Very fluid through the next few controls and running really well, pushing hard and going fast, keeping really good contact too. By number 6, it was going very well! To number 7, I was a bit too rushed and went a bit off line at the start, corrected but I was very hesitant to the control, and thought it was a little strange, but alas it was not, lost more than I thought, about 20secs. To 8, all seemed fine, I had taken a good bearing, and could tell exactly where I was on the path, but I mustn't have watched the compass enough and was slightly to the right, hitting another boulder, for a moment I couldn't find this on the map as it was where the circle should have covered and the gap they had cut was quite small, but I found it, relocated, and lost maybe another 20secs, which was disappointing. To 9, I was fine, maybe a little low, but not very much lost really. To 10. Oh God. I was being far too rushed. I wanted to push on and didn't take enough time at all to take a good bearing, I just ran and spotted another control on a similar looking spur, but in reality, it was a boulder on a spur. It took me a moment to realise what I had done, but I still couldn't place myself on the map, so I ran where I thought it should be, luckily, I was right. 45secs lost. To 11, I steadied it a bit more, I knew I couldn't make another mistake like that and navigated fine again. To 13, I knew where I was going, knew where I was, but the other 3 guys seemed to run really low, and I was just put off by them. My relative height awareness was right, but I doubted it and dropped a little too low, realised quite quickly though, and lost about 20secs, which was annoying way to finish. From here on, it was easy, I felt I should have run a bit quicker her, but the splits are still quite good, so... Unfortunately, while I felt I was running quite quickly, I was passed on the run-in by some russian to take the final prize! 2 SECONDS!
5th place H20, about 2mins lost, really positive in terms of running though, felt I was running fast. Gleb Tikhonov took 1st, and having come 6th on the JWOC Long, was never going to beat him anyway, Conor was 3rd with a cleaner run, and the Russians took 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th and 7th so no Swedes at all. Really should have been running H20E, but we didn't enter ourselves, ah well. Good confidence booster I guess.
Winsplits