Wander.Lost: Smålandskavlen

This weekend Ross and I traveled south to Småland with the club to compete in our last real race of the year, the relays at Smålandskavlen. The format of this relay is different and fun. For the men's teams, two men run a night-o course on Saturday night and their times are added together. For the women's teams, one women runs the night leg. The next morning, it's a chase start - the next runners on each team are started based on their time behind the winning team from the night before. Both teams have 3 runners the next morning. Ross was the 4th runner on Linné's second men's team (therefore the 2nd daytime runner) and I anchored the first Linné women's team.

Rebecka at the finish of her night-o (courtesy of Jonas Andersson from Smålandskavlen's website)

Rebecka was our lead runner and night-o champion. She had a few mistakes, especially near the greener areas. She ended up finishing 15 minutes behind the leaders, but with a time that was close to other teams. This meant, hopefully, that Hannah would have some other girls to fly by on her leg :)

Hannah did indeed fly through her leg, having the 3rd fastest time. I waited at the finish chute to cheer her in and was greatly amused by the tired smile she gave me as she ran by. Hannah had started in 31st place, but passed off to Lisa in 20th. Lisa also had a great run and passed 8 more people to hand off to me in 12th. I started off alone, but very quickly was with a pack of about 7 other girls. I think, sadly, that most of them had caught me. Our course was not forked in the middle at all, and we stayed as a pack, losing two people off the back along the way. The pace was quite speedy for me. I was feeling very tired and uncoordinated and it took a great deal of mental energy to push through and keep up. At the end there was one more forked control and I had the slightly shorter forking, along with two others. It was a long trail and road run to the second to last control, and I passed one of the girls and actually had the fastest time to that control (helped by having the shorter forking previously). I again had the fastest split to the last control, but never caught the girl in front of me. In the end, I passed three people and got passed by one, which means we finished 10th overall! The exciting thing about being 10th was that they gave awards to the top 10 teams. We got to stand on the podium and get prizes and be all cool :)

Ross will have to contribute more to the blog to write about his performance and his team's, but I know that they all had solid races and finished in 42nd. Linné's first team came in third. I love the pictures of a tired Mats and happy teammates:

Both pictures from Jonas Andersson from Smålandskavlen's website

It was a great weekend and fun way to end the season with the club. Over the course of the weekend we played 20 Questions, Mafia and Indian Poker. It felt just like home :)

In other news...

Last Tuesday we went to the Uppsala Short Film Festival with friends. We saw these eight international films. My favorites were Lumo and The Wind is Blowing on my Street.

Linné went a bit overboard with trainings this week. I think we all had so much fun at Smålandskavlen that no one could stop training. The training bank is where people can post their own trainings that they are doing so that others can join them. These are separate from the normally scheduled club trainings. I've never seen the training bank so full. This Wednesday there are six different trainings that I can choose from!