MOC in Italy
Last week was spent in the warm and non-snowy Italy, with MOC and the MOC sprint camp. My main goal for the week was to get really high quality trainings, and doing well on the competitions had to be secondary to that goal. The week went on really fast, with some great sessions (not only sprint, but some nice forest orienteering as well). Already on wednesday, my legs were killing me. After 4 hours training on monday, 3 hours on tuesday and two tough sprint sessions on wednesday, I was not feeling my best.
But I felt slightly better on the thursday, and after a nice forest session with Tove, I was ready for the MOC prologue; a sprint realay in Castellaneta. I was running with Johan Högstrand, but we didn’t have that high hopes of getting a good result, as the startline was full of extremely qualified sprint runners. I ran leg 1 and 3, and during the first race I realised that i was feeling strong, and after a very good technical performace from me, I managed to run in first with a small gap (almost 10 seconds!). Johan lost some time on leg 2, but once again i felt strong and could catch up all runners but one, picking almost 20 seconds at the top teams. Johan did a good race on the last leg, and we ran in on 6th place, which was a lot better than expected. Map, leg 1. Map leg 2.
On the friday it was time for stage 1 at MOC, a middle distance race in some nice sand dunes. Me legs didn’t feel too fast, and I made some mistakes, but was happy to see that is was enough to take a 3rd place. Map. Results.
Stage 2 was a Mass start long distance, with very little gaffling (only two butterflies), but still very fun. The terrain suited well for a mass start, because of the high speed running that made the pack split up. I felt quite strong, and made sure to do my own orienteering and run in front in the butterfly loops, but stayed close behind the first runners when it was ungaffled (mostly Thierry, Kyburz or Ulf Forseth). In the end (the last 10 minutes) the speed increased significantly, and and the top group bagan to stretch out. I was suffering a bit from the high speed, and couldn’t quite follow Matthias Kyburz, Kiril Nikolov and Thierry. However, when I felt that their speed stagnated a bit, and when I saw that Thierry couldn’t follow either, I made a sprint and passed Thierry quite easily. Kyburz and Kiril were a bit to far in front for me to pass, but i closed the gap a bit, and could run in to, once angain, take a 3rd place, only 8 seconds behind Kiril. Map. Results.
The final race was the one everybody was talking about: The sprint in Matera. I had a good total position, and I was aiming to keep Thierry behind me and defend my 2nd place overall. But my race wasn’t that good, I felt quite slow, and made a few too big mistakes, and when Thierry completly crushed the rest of us, I could only find myself being surpassed to the 3rd place overall, a result that I am most satisfied with. Map. Results. Overall results.
