The first half of the races

We arrived in Kristianstad on Friday evening, set up the caravan, had some food and went to sleep. On Saturday we went to a training map, where I walked a course with Freja just to get used to the terrain. One of the first things I noticed when we went for the training run was how similar the terrain was to New Zealand terrain (especially compared to Norrland!). I also noticed how many raspberries there were in the wild!! 

That evening was my first race. It was a junior relay race in central Kristianstad called Axastafett, which is included each year as part of the opening ceremony. I ran first leg for the Västerbotten team with Magdalena, Kristina and Albin running the other three. I brought the team back 1.38 min after the leading team, although it was a sprint relay and was in 47th place from 56 teams... Overall we placed 41st!

Photo: O-Ringen

Sunday was the first of the five day event. I started about 10th from the end of the 178 strong D16 grade. My race started slowly. I was not at my peak fitness and consequently my speed was a lot slower than many of the girls I was competing against. Navigation-wise my race went quite smoothly. For the first six controls. But I messed up the seventh control and lost it from there. According to winsplits I didn't actually lose any time, but I got so lost around the top of a hill, with nothing making any sense, I had to ask several people where they thought they were before finally figuring it out. This, however was nothing compared to the next control. En route to the eighth control I managed to lose about 7-8 minutes by running around in circles! (I think the reason I did this so badly was because I had not yet adjusted to the 1:15000 scale, and left the stone wall I was following too early). And of course just to make it the best of three I managed to lose a further 5 minutes going to number 9.

I placed 128th with a time of 73 minutes for a 4.5km course.

That evening was the elites sprint race in the city on the same map as the Axastafett.

Monday, day 2, my start time was 8.30, and as there was a 40 minute drive to the event centre, and a further 30 walk/ run to the start, I had to get up at around 5.40 (this was not nice). 

My race started very well. I only lost time to maybe two controls, one minute to number four, and around five minutes to number six. I managed to place 107th with a time of 60 minutes.

Day three was the middle distance event. My race started terribly by running straight past my control thinking it was not mine. After that the girl who started just behind me caught up and we ran together for the next few controls. After screwing up the first control I had a mostly clean race and finished in 84th place. This terrain was ridiculously similar to New Zealand beach maps, such as Woodhill or Wikawa. 

The aftermath of this race was super exciting! It was the day that Tim Robertson won the JWOC Sprint! I was hanging out with the rest of the New Zealanders when his place was confirmed and it was really amazing to hear! This was also the day I met Thierry Gueorgiou at the over croweded beach. 

Rebecca and me with the world champion, you can also see how crowded the beach was!