Saturday, July 5, 2008

Long Day Out

Today was the long distance final. The men’s course was 10.2km with 400m of climb. We were expecting a tough map with big contour features and few paths. Alex saw a thermometer at the start at 12:30 reading 30 degrees.

Dylan had the better result. He finished in 1:47:39 in 119th place. He limited his mistakes to ‘medium sized’ ones. Soren Bobach, who started 4 minutes behind, passed him on the way to #3. Soren finished 7th in 1:15:15. Johan Runneson won another race, bringing his tally up to 2 golds and 1 silver! Dylan’s route is below.
Alex had a steady result. He finished in 1:51:05 in 126th place. He made a mistake on #3 and messed up the route choice to #7. On his route below, you can see him exiting #6 and then spotting the route on the road. He decided it would still be quicker to take the road. Soran caught Alex at #7 – the beginning of the butterfly. Soran started 16 minutes behind Alex.
The splits are here

Tomorrow we are running the relay with a Belgian Orienteer. He has been getting similar results to the us.
This is a picture of Soren punching the last control. An Eastern European runner (?) is falling over in his wake. Peter was too busy taking pictures of the 'scenery' to get any of us.

2 comments:

N said...

Hi Alex. Garry wants to know if you went into town for a beer between #6 and #7. Well done both of you anyway. Very good results.

Alex said...

With the time I lost aborting the forest route and going through town I could have stopped for a drink. About 3 minutes wasted - but I think it was safer and less work than the forest.