Tiomila 2012, near Borensberg, Östergötland.
OK Linné 2, leg 7
I love Tiomila weekend, and I am so glad I went this year. Started by watching and cheering our amazing ladies on Saturday afternoon kick some butt and show amazing depth. Team 1, with Annika chasing Simone for a top-3 placing on the last leg. Team 2, with Elisa exchanging in 9th place on the third leg. Team 3, fighting with top teams the whole way, and finishing 38th. And we for sure had the loudest and most numerous fans out there. The 6 (!!) LInné women's teams finished: 4, 15, 38, 72, 128, 187.
Then - drive back to the hostel, have a team meeting, decide on departure times (2:00am for my leg), and crawl into bed.
I slept for a good 45 minutes until I had to start checking results. Sharing the room with Mats and Ulf, at least one of us was always awake frantically checking the live results. Excitement for Josef coming in less than a minute down on leg 1. Worry when Mandus shows up at the first radio in the lead, then relief when he stays with the pack and punches all the controls. When Albin showed up with a lead of 2:11 halfway through leg 3, pulling away from the pack on his own route choice, we exchanged glances, thumbs up, and smiles. There was no more sleep after that. More excitement at the arena, Janne fighting off the chasing pack for a long time and finally getting caught by it on Långa Natten, then Tomas, Rassmus doing their jobs. Finally, Ulf, just put into the first team yesterday, staying with Kalevan Rasti on his leg and exchanging to Mats in 4th.
Then it was my turn to run. I think I managed to put my cold on hold for an hour, because I felt great. So excited to be out there, running Tiomila on a beautiful spring morning in gorgeous Swedish woods. I saw a couple of guys start on my leg less than a minute before, and so I flew off in pursuit as soon as Lasso exchanged to me in 64th place. Running felt easy, and the controls kept popping up where I expected them to. At the start triangle I picked up a Finn who seemed to be waiting around for someone to follow and chose me. He stayed within 2 meters of me for the duration of the race. About halfway, I turned and asked him if he was reading the map at all. He said "not really." I then asked him to at least check the control codes for me, and he agreed.
Caught a small pack just before the long leg and got away from them on a better route. Then picked up a guy from Tisaren's 2nd team who ran well and stayed with me and my shadow for the rest of the run. I definitely had a moment out there when I thought to myself just how much fun I was having. It was awesome hearing Ross' vuvuzela from across the finish field, and the cheering of the fans of the world's most fun orienteering club all the way down the chute.
I exchanged in 57th, picking up 7 places. My time was 42nd on the leg, about 5 minutes behind the best, and 4 minutes behind Ulf on the first team. It was about as well as I could have run on the day.
The rest of the time was spent in nervous anticipation and then celebration when Loefaas emerged from the woods, holding off his pursuers to hold on to an awesome 4th place, best Swedish team. The joy on the faces of our guys was genuine and contagious.
Our team (Linné 2) ended up disqualified, but all the runners put in great efforts and many stepped up after injuries and sicknesses decimated our ranks in the last few days. Now, time to sleep and recover.
Final results:
http://www.10mila.se/2012/docs/Resultat.html
Splits from my leg (without #1):
http://obasen.nu/winsplits/online/sv/default.asp?p...