25manna Top 5
12.10.2009 - (1287 views)
This weekend my swedish club placed itself as good as on the 5th place in the big 25 man relay in Stockholm - after solid performances of all the 25 members of the team, young, elite as well as seniors, a surprised speaker had to realize that Leksands OK is finally one of the best clubs in the world after all...
On top all the way
The relay started well and on the third leg - the first with four runners in parallel - our team was only starting a minute behind the leader. After a strong 5th leg we could for some short while even be the leader of this great relay.
Finally, after 23 runners had done their job, it was my turn. I was sent out on the second last leg on 5th spot, exactly in the aimed goal "Top 5". The gap to the runners before and behind was more than a minute, so I could take it easy and focus on my own race. I did manage to keep everything under control, and so when I came to the spectator control I was still in 5th spot, but now only 30 seconds up to the 3rd place. The cheering of the crowd made me feel very strong physically and soon after I could see the two teams some hundred meters in front of me. But as a reaction I increased my speed but decreased my focus on the map and there it was - the avoidable mistake. I was running up the slope to control 17 with no idea where I really was. Correcting the direction was also a bad idea and so I made an extra loop of maybe one minute and missed the contact to the teams in front of me. And so I was handing over to our anchorwoman, Rahel Friederich with a 1 minute gap to the podium.
She did a good job on this last leg, running all alone the all along. But as a larger group with high speed was approaching from behind, we were becoming quite nervous during the last loop. And finally it came to a sprint decision were we lost another place, but as the club of Södertälje had some organizational mistake and were disqualified, we managed to get the 5th place after all!
It was a lot of fun all along the relay, and the atmosphere in our club was just excellent! I am looking forward to run again in that great team next year!
Middle distance on Sunday
On Sunday I decided to start at the middle distance competition in the same forest. As I was not allowed in the main Elitserien class, I was starting in the normal elite class with many other strong foreign runners with the same fortune. I was starting early in the morning as the first starter in the class. Not many runners were in the forest and so I was doing my own lonely race. It was not so bad, but too many small mistakes after all, and so I ended up on 12th spot, almost 3 minutes down to the winner.
ECHT BIO Grandprix - also Top 5
The weekend before I was running the second last competition of the national cup in Switzerland. The program was a middle distance on Saturday and chasing start on Sunday.
I was doing quite a good job in the middle in the flat fast terrain near Thun. Only one bigger mistake and so I got a 4th place as starting position for Sunday.
On Sunday though I didn't feel that good physically as the day before and so I was soon passed by David Schneider who started about 20 seconds behind me. As I did quite a good race technically I still could see him close before me in the last part and I came as near as 7 seconds after on control 25. But the it was again a very physical part where I lost the contact for good and had to satisfy with the 5th place in total that weekend. As it is the best result in the national cup so far, I am happy about it and it gives me the opporunity to fight for the 5th place in the total next weekend in the final race!
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