Siljanskavlen Relay.
Today I learned that running the first leg in a relay in Sweden is very different from doing that in England, which is where my last couple of lead-off experiences took place.
I ran for Linne's 4th team, which consisted of the left-overs that couldn't make the other teams: me and Mattias Karlsson, followed by Rebecka Österberg (who was mysteriously left off the second girls' team), and Tommy Lindberg from Roslagen, who didn't have a team. Our goal was to finish as the best team that had at least one girl and at least one American. We managed that just fine.
Anyway, when running 1st legs at the JK and BUSA in England this spring, both times I started off at my own pace, watched everyone stampede madly at the start, and then slowly reel them in as the race went on and they either tired or screwed up. This worked relatively well - I was 7th and 2nd on those relay legs, respectively. I tried the same thing here, partly because I thought it may work and partly because my stomach was not feeling good at all, and I couldn't go all out at the start. Well, it didn't work. I resisted the temptation to stampede at the start, read the map instead, still chose a bad route choice to #1, and was already a whole minute down on the pack at the second control! This meant that from here on in, I could only lose time to the pack, as I ended up with people who were around the same speed as I was, none of us able to gain time on the impressive collection of names running away in the front. Still, I was around 25th through a third of the course before going up into the vaguer, hillier part of the map. There, I attempt to break off from the pack, promptly screwed up (2 min), ran hard without looking at the map, came to the wrong forking (another 2 min), and ended up running the rest of the way basically having to navigate on my own. This actually went ok, and I didn't really make any mistakes in the second half of the course, but the speed wasn't that high, and I finished 32nd, 13:30 behind the leaders!
My teammates did a lot better and pulled us up to a final 18th place, to go with the three other Linne teams in 1st, 8th, and 11th. The girls won too - a very good day for the club! On the way home, the minibuses were loaded with all sorts of strange prizes, ranging from boots to pasta to motor oil to a rack for storing car tires....
Results:
http://www.leksandsok.com/arrangemang/2007/Siljans...
Winsplits of the common controls on my leg:
http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/sv/default.a...
Map:
http://my.opera.com/borisgr/albums/showpic.dml?alb...