KM langdistanse (08/09/2012)

Came 4th in the KM langdistanse on a very wet map with heaps of marsh. Ran quite well apart from some mistakes on controls 4 and 5. Up the 4th control I felt really good, orienteering fluidly and confidently but it went down from there. After the mistakes I ran cleanly again but didn’t have the same confidence as before because I’d seen too many other people who started after me. (1) A slightly sloppy beginning as I hesitated too much to get to the road. (4) Caught Johannes Okkenhaug (2min) at the beginning of the leg and ran with him for a bit to read ahead and come up with a plan for the first long leg. When we entered the green I got ahead and didn’t see him again. Almost ran past the control but managed to see it in time. (5) Didn’t run confidently at the beginning of the leg and had lots of unnecessary changes in direction when I should have just run straight. When I crossed the ride about 3/5th of the way through the leg I made a parallel error with the higher marsh between the two parts of semi-open. When I was running along the lower run I thought I was running the upper one, and when I saw the green approaching ahead of me, I thought it was the medium green after the indistinct marsh in the light green. However it was actually the light green with the distinct vegetation boundary after the semi-open. Swung around to the right and ran down the marsh, thinking I was running down the semi-open. Saw the stream to my right which confused me but since I couldn’t work out where I was I kept running on. As I got pushed closer to the stream by the narrowing marsh, I saw there was a ride along it. I decided to keep running until I saw something distinctive because there were still a number of places I could be. When I saw the large open marsh to my right I knew exactly where I was and ran up to the control. Saw Paul Sirum running up the track ahead of me but couldn’t catch him, he was too far ahead +2:00. (6) Another parallel error with the marshes. Got caught by another runner and knew I had lost too much time to take the lead again +1:30. (9) Got really confused in that marshy area again; couldn’t make sense of the open and forested areas. Also the hill was quite slow to climb; there was a lot of windfall. Thought I should take it really carefully on the downhill section but it wasn’t hard at all, picking off the clearings and marsh-free patches of forest. Not quite sure why I got such a perfect curve in my bearing though. (10) Nailed the bearing to this control, picking off the clearings again. (12) the marshes were really wet so I took the track around but even that was wet. Having a good race until the mistakes on 5 and then never really recovered.