Middle and Relay SM

We have to go back in time a bit for this one, but it was fun and worth writing about. Two weekends ago we again traveled for many hours in a van to Västergötland for the middle and relay championships. Ross and I both had decent races in the middle qualifier. I just made it into the B final and Ross just missed out on the D final. In the middle final I had a huge disaster on the third control (you can see my wanderings here). Ross had another good race and finished third in his final group. My splits (look near the bottom!) and Ross's splits (look near the top!).

Marta and I trying to make some sort of expression... it's hard to tell what we were going for

Löfås, Tomas and Jan

One of the exciting moments of the day was when Hannah and Albin, both from OK Linné were on the victory couch. If you finished your race and your time was the best so far, you sat on the couch until someone else beat your time. Both were there for quite awhile and in the end Albin won H20 and Hannah was second in D20. Well done!

Hannah and Albin on the couch of victory

The next day was the relay and both Ross and I were running on teams. I ran first leg for Linné's second team and Ross ran anchor leg for his team. The night before we joined in on the team spirit. Can you tell who is who?

The relay was by far my best performance so far in Sweden. Helps when it's mass start with about 65 other women. I wrote up my race on my log.

Our next race is this weekend and it will be similar to the first leg of the relay. It's the Swedish Ultralong Championships. It's a mass start race with forkings. Ross will be running 24k and I'll be running 17k. I think it will be super fun, although certainly challenging. There are *only* 37 women signed up. Back home this would be huge, but here it seems tiny. I'm feeling nervous about it already. I hope I find a pack to run with, but I'm a bit worried since I'm ranked second to last in the registration list. It seems only the strong and confident signed up for this race - I'm going to be happy with not finishing last :)