10Mila (2012-05-06)

Jerk passed me the relay in quite a good position (155/350), in a group of 4 people. Perfect conditions for the long night. But we have being a bit too confident, and relying on the others for control 1. Lost time: around 2 minutes. “OK, this will be the only mistake for tonight”. We refocused, and being joined by 2 other guys, everything went alright for the following controls. At control 6 we decided to stay together for the long choice (7th control), and to take the road. The idea was good I think, and we were constantly accelerating and going at a good pace. At control 9, we joined a group of 20 runners, stopped in the forest, looking apparently for the control. We will give it to them. A group is formed, and at control 11, it is almost 30 people running high speed through the forest. The choice we discussed with our small previous group was to take the road choice south. I still maintain that we should have done so. But the group headed straight, and staying as a group is very important for such distances (17.5km for the whole course). Then we headed straight. The group was too big to see the leading runners, and the speed to high to try to read the map. But after a while, the group started, and nobody (even the leading guy) had any idea of our location. Then started an interesting poker play... Faking you are reading your map, and if anyone try to run in a direction, follow him. It lasted for 10 minutes, as a creepy Charlie Chaplin movie. I never experienced that before, strange moment at 3 in the morning. I came a bit away to try to relocate myself, and when I finally found the control, the group was gone. I found the group back precisely on the way to control 16. Small problem, they were heading to control 17 already… The end of the race went quite easily, but slowly. The 2 long choices really tired me, and I was feeling my legs for a while. For the story, it seems that I passed the pre-mentioned group somewhere at the end (after control 24, as I win 40 places after it to the finish line)… This was the “Rasti-panic” group, and it seems that they did the whole race like my control 12! I pass the relay to Jakob in 176th position. 20 places lost, but mostly 20 minutes mistakes… Still to much. Anyway, crazy race. And a personal service directly after the finish line, with chocolate and sugar drink. Thanks team leaders!