O - competition race (Urho Kekkonen National Pk) 11:00:00 [3] *** 53.0 km (12:27 / km)
17c
Rogaine champs, Finland.
Map area was big: over 15 x 25 km. Decided to do the west side first, then come into the hash house for food and pick up headlamps for the east. West side was nice, flatter and more complete trail network (lots of lighted tracks for the Dec thru Feb period when the sun never actually comes up). Used those along with single tracks and bushwacking. More controls and they were closer together (2-3 kilometers apart).
Great day, beautiful terrain and low blueberry vegetation. Steady 12 min/km, except when we had wade a marsh for a couple controls. Covered 53 km and came in at 11 PM with 17 controls, still not using headlamps.
In for an hour for hot food and coffee (yay caffeine!) and getting into dry socks and polypro for the chill.
Out at midnight and straight up one of the highest hills on the course. Not huge as hills go but it adds up. Partner has been working way too hard and can't get free for training time, so bonked once we were into those eastern hills. Couple hours at a slow pace and finally the gu, Gatorade and Ibuprofen kicked in. But Sunday's results were disappointing, mostly because the terrain had bigger hills and some bushwacking was over slopes of loose rock at a slow pace. And the controls were farther apart at 4 and even 5 km between them.
We picked up a measly 10 controls over 11 hours, covering 39 km, with 3 of those hours as dark as it ever gets in the summer here.
Ended up with 1650 points for 6th in ultra vet. We were within a couple hundred points of 3rd and even 2nd, so could have done it. Hard not to think of the "what ifs".
Happy I felt strong throughout, although can't say it would be true if we were moving faster Sunday. This was certainly a test to see if the quad would fail -- no problems! -- and whether my lack of lots of running would hurt. Only fair in that, my speed was way down. Certainly the winter ski training keeps the endurance up.
As with most post mortums you talk about all the things to so next season. A few week long training epics in VA,VT or even CA were discussed. We'll see.
Right now it's nice finish the event in one piece and still be able to walk tomorrow. Well, we'll have to see about that, too.