In the dark at Tiomila

After 7manna, I stayed in Skåne until Tiomila with some Italian and Swiss runners. We spent some time close to Tiomila terrain, taking part in Elitserien and a night competition during the week, but also some time in åhus close to Kristianstad on the east coast. It was the first time I had been there, and it was a nice contrast from some of the rough Skånsk forests to run in the perfect sand dunes there.
But soon enough it was time to come back to Perstorp for the big one. Confidence was high in the Lidingö camp, and despite a slight scare when Emil had a small cold in the build up, all the team were in good form to fight for a top place. I ran the 7th leg, and before me the team had all run perfectly. We had been close to the top all night, and I started in 9th place, 3 minutes down on the leaders, but Fredrik Löwegren who ran the 6th passed on the info at changeover that he had had longer forkings so mine would be shorter. I started just behind Södertälje and I had his back to the first controls, but then as I took a different route choice to the 3rd, I was running along in the forest when my lamp cut out and I was in the dark. Not good. After some playing around with the lamp, I continued on my reserve lamp, a really small LED lamp powered by a single AAA battery. Not ideal, but I knew that I had no choice but to get round the course and lose as little time as possible. I ran 10 controls and half the race like that, and luckily I was able to change lamps running through the arena, so I finished the race with a strong lamp and very stressed.
I lost around 8 minutes to the leaders, and a little more on the best on the leg, but unbelievably I actually gained 1 place!
Jonn Are and Klaus ran really well after me to set Emil out in 6th place, and despite not having a great race, he was only passed by 2 world champions near the end to give the team a pretty respectable 8th place. Bittersweet - decent result, but with so much time lost on my leg, who know what could have happened if Emil had had the chance to fight for a medal.

I have written about my race in much more depth on my training log here

In other news -

I have been selected for the GB team to travel to the World Games in July, and I hit the top spot in the Great Britain ranking list for the first time!