Swedish Long Distance Championships: Silver
After 2 weeks struggling with a cold, I was hoping for good legs in the toughest competition you run in a year: the Swedish long distance championships. With all the SM-competitions being held in Göteborg this year, I was really looking forward to it since I enjoy the terrain very much. Before I caught the cold, I was really confident about my shape, and was definitly aiming for the gold medal. To be quite frank, I would have been really disappointed to miss out on the medals, since I know that there is where I should be, despite feeling a bit slow because of the cold.
In the qualifier i felt quite good actually, better than I could have hoped for beforehand, and even though I took it quite easy, saving myself for the final, I won my heat, after a solid technical performance. Map (coming soon). Results.
The final was not at all as stable as the qualifier. In the beginning I was feeling really bad – exactly what I was dreading after my period of sickness – and that made me become a bit defensive in my orienteering. At the 5th control I messed up, and missed just under a minute, and in my annoyance over that (in combination with my bad physical feeling), the rest of the first loop was a disaster. When punching at the spectators control, I was almost 3 minutes behind, in 11th place. But since Jonas Leandersson hadn’t yet caught me up, I started to feel slightly more positive, and I decided to take the spectators control as a new start of my race. But didn’t work out to well, and I missed the next control as well, and was really slow to the next short one, but heading out on the long leg I still hadn’t been caught up, so I thought ”fuck it, I’ll just win the long leg and show my capacity”. And so I did. I picked from 12th place to 4th, and I started to feel better and better physically. After that I actually had a really good run (apart from one very stupid 45s mistake, and that the sole of my left shoe came off), and winning most of the legs left, I continued to pick places, and finished 2nd, almost 3 minutes behind Filip Dahlgren, a bit disappointed with my run, but happily surprised that it was enough to win a medal.
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