Serbian Champs Relay: 1st/15
Today was way more fun than yesterday! The terrain was similar to yesterday concerning the contours and climbing, but it was so white and fast! I started off fast but controlled as I didn't know how the others would do physically except for Nikola B. from who I know he is a clearly faster at the moment.
I went very clean through all the controls and forking except for some suboptimal micro routechoices, I was leading just ahead of Nikola on the 10th control. Some had dropped off physically, and Nikola had a longer forking. To 11 I made a bad decision, I wanted to try and keep up with Nikola physically but this leaded to some confusion on the way to 11 and I was completely lost there (+3'40"). None of the roads were visible so in the end I found myself because of the big valley on the right. I was pissed off and started pushing on the way to the spectator control, catching some runners along. There I found out I was 3rd, not so far off Nikola actually. Apparently he had missed in that same area but on a different forking. I kept pushing all the way with perfect technical execution and on the 17th control we got together again. First I was thinking to push all the way till the end, but because he was stronger there was no sense in doing so. I let him take the lead to 19 and luckily he went a bit too far down so I had a 6" advantage for that last uphill towards the finish which was just enough to keep him off. Great fun and happy with the progress so far although I have to say his course was 300m longer than mine!
Results
Map