Brazil Day 9 – Long Distance

Long Distance Race

Already in the early morning it was clear that today wouldn’t be as hot as the prior days. The sun was not visible at al and the temperature had clearly fallen a bit. Still a 16,5 kilometre long and tough stood everybody before.

I again enjoyed the atmosphere here in Brazil as well as the bus ride in a minibus with DVD Player a lot. Today I skipped the Warm Up map and simply did some running worm up. There would be enough (27) controls later on…

As every CISM Long Distance the course for every runner consisted of a first common part and afterwards two loops where both halves of each loop were exchanged in order to avoid following a bit.

Carl Waaler Kaas (6th yesterday) was starting one minute behind me so I thought about the chance that he would catch me already on the first 1,9 kilometre long part but he didn’t!
I really felt well concentrated and very focus on this first part, took a refreshment and headed out for my first loop.
Somehow it seems that I was too happy about the fact that he didn’t catch me at all and already on the second control of that loop I missed about three and a half minute. I was too high up on the slope where the women’s control was located.
From there on I again really concentrated on my orienteering and I’m pretty happy with the race except that I simply don’t have the right speed to achieve a better result now. I also don’t have the map besides me now so maybe I don’t know every mistake I did. Comparing the split times shows that I also lost some time on the ninth, tenth and nineteenth control – but don’t ask me now where or how that was…

At the very lead there was a big assembly of the Swiss runners. After his bad race yesterday Daniel Hubmann could show his skills today and achieved a time of 80 minutes on the course which means a speed of BELOW 5 minutes per kilometre which is really impressive to me. Matthias Merz got second and Holger Hott Johansen got third.

The Austrian runners achieved a 28th spot (Kerschi), 49th (Markus), 55th (Bindi), 62nd (Michi) and I got 63rd. A worse placement than yesterday with a better race – it’s definitely good for me that the season is over now.

As I don’t have anything else here now I’ll just put the text to the page, probably through the (European) night or around midday in Europe I’ll add some photos and hopefully the maps as well.

Posted on: 09.11.2006 21:08
Last edit: 09.11.2006 21:08

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