SM on Gotland

Last weekend I was running my first Swedish Championship, when the Night and Sprint where held on Gotland. The highlight for me was the Sprint held in the old city of Visby.

Before the entry deadline I was not sure if I should enter for Friday’s night race, since I have only trained a few sessions with headlamp the last year. But I like night orienteering, and found it a good challenge to enter, sine I anyway was going there the whole weekend and the terrain on Gotland is quite special since it an island.

On the Night race it was a really long leg to the first control, and even if I tried hard to keep a good direction I lost the control in the diffuse area just before the control. After searching for the control some minutes I went out to the road, and took the control from the opposite side after having lost more then 6 minutes. After the huge mistake I had lost the chance for a good position, and I was running in cruising speed the rest of the course. It went quite well until the map change, but in the end I started to be tired, and did some mistakes. When I finished I was told by the organizer that I was disqualified, since I had punched the control just west of the first control I should have had. All in all a really bad night race for me, even if the area was cool. Oleksandr Kratov won, as he also did last year. Results and GPS tracking

The Sprint Qualification on Saturday was in a nice area just North of Visby centre. Unfortunately most of the course was really boring, with only a few interesting legs, and not many route choices. I did a clean race in “qualification speed”, and finished on 2nd place in my heat, 8 seconds behind Patrik Karlsson. ). Results and splits

Sunday’s Sprint Final was held mainly in the old city of Visby. It was several route choices and many narrow streets. I was satisfied with my race, but think I lost a few seconds on my route choice to the 2nd, 4th and 11th control. Jerker Lysell won, and I came on 4th place, 15 seconds behind. My running speed was OK, but I felt more tired than I had hoped, so maybe it would have been smart to skip the night race (like the 3 runners beating me did). Results, splits and GPS tracking