O-Festivalen and last Czech WOC Camp

After some really bad middle distance results in World Cup recently, I finally had a decent race. No big mistakes, just a couple of small errors in the circle gave me 16th place, which was my best middle distance result since the World Cup Final in France when I was 15th.

Results

The long distance was a bit manic, chasing start based on the middle distance results. I had a long line of people to chase to start with, and I managed to catch a few places by the butterfly. Unfortunately I made a 2min mistake at number 8, and then another big mistake at number 17, and after that I ran the rest of the race in the pack of runners from position 13-20th. On the way to 31 I started getting cramps in my hamstring, so I had to slow down, and I couldn't fight with the rest of the pack. I managed to just stay in front of the next runners so I finished 20th.

Results

After O-Fest it was off to Czech for the final WOC preparations. We took part in the Swedish long distance test race (but I didn't run), and also the Finnish and Czech sprint and middle test races (maps below). I had a really good race in the sprint (beating all the Finns), behind only Dlabaja and Smola, but the middle race was a bit of a disaster. Really cool technical area, I managed to make 2 big mistakes - one 5 minutes! Can't remember the last time I made such a big mistake. Now I am back in Stockholm for 2 weeks before WOC.