Sprint-SM Gold in Uppsala

I came into this weekend as reigning Swedish Champion in sprint, which has never happened before, and I was feeling quite optimistic about my chances for another good race, and hopefully a medal. My expectations for the event was sky high, since I really trusted the organisers in OK Linné, and I knew that they wanted to make great courses for us runners.

The qualifier, in south east Uppsala suburb Sävja, turned out to be really fun. A technically demanding course, with good routechoices and some, by the organiser, closed gaps in a fence that turned out to be really decisive. I had a good clean run, not pushing 100%, and felt like I was in total control. Until I came to the closed gap in the fence. I find it really hard to see theese ”artificial” extra fences on the map, especially if they (like in this case) crosses a path, or a road, in an unnatural way. You see the road begin, and you see it countinue after the fence, and it is just hard to see when you run in full speed. Anyway, a understood quite quickly what was going on, and could avoid the fence, only losing a little bit less than 10s, which compared to others was not bad at all. I won my qualification heat quite comfortably, and could enjoy the fact that I was going to start last in the final (which I really like!).

Map
Results

The final, in central Uppsala, with the arena at Uppsala Castle, also turned out to be just great. The beginning of the course was quite technical, and here I was feeling really good, and had the lead coming out to some longer legs around Uppsala Cathedral, where I lost some (not much) time just in running speed compared to Jonas and Jerker. But then I did exactly the same thing as in the qualifier! An extra fence closing off a road, and I was heading straight to it. I did, once again, realise my mistake quite early, and could avoid a disaster, only losing 15s, which wasn’t too bad compared to Jonas 45s. Apparently there was only about 20% of the A-final runners that took the right routechoice, and a lot of people lost a lot of time. After that we climbed up the hill towards the castle for an arena passage, where I heard I was 10s behind, which didn’t feel so bad, with my 15s-mistake fresh in mind. The last loop was tough physically, and had a lot of challenging routechoices, and it was here I definitly decided the race, almost catching up Jonas with 1 minute, and just pushing hard all the way, and I ended up winning with 14s.

So I defended my title as Swedish Sprint Champion, which feels great, and a little bit surprising, even though I know that I am a strong sprinter. I have never beaten Jerker on 2 consecutive sprints before (and you could count all my sprint-wins over him on one hand!), and I it just feels like I really have developed a lot in sprint this year.

Map
Results
GPS-tracking