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24<br />
Middle distance is by far my weakest discipline, I am much more<br />
suited to sprint, long and relay where the orienteering is much easier<br />
and I can use my running speed to full effect, despite this I do enjoy<br />
the intensity of middle distance and am motivated to improve. I<br />
decided to run the middle qualifier below full speed to make sure that<br />
I would make no mistakes and was confident that this would allow me<br />
to qualify for the final. I started well and caught runners that started<br />
ahead of me early on; I began to really enjoy the terrain and was<br />
flowing well through the controls. However towards the end I got<br />
confused coming over a hill top as the terrain in front of me did not<br />
look like I had imagined it would from the map. This confusion meant<br />
that I lost 2 minutes checking that I had not gone wrong, I finished the<br />
course strongly with no large mistakes but was 2 minutes away from<br />
qualifying which was very frustrating. It was difficult to be angry<br />
because the terrain and atmosphere was really enjoyable. Gustav and<br />
Kalle, who I was staying with, qualified easily, so I was happy for them and I could still run the<br />
final the next day, just not with the same importance.<br />
The middle final was all about Gustav’s run. After JWOC I realized what huge strength the<br />
Swedes have in their M18s so for Gustav to take the victory in such technical terrain by a clear<br />
margin was very impressive. It was great to watch him run in, obviously very happy, to take the<br />
victory and his first national title.<br />
We were very confident of a top ten result in the<br />
relay especially now that we had a Swedish<br />
Champion on the anchor leg. I always say that in<br />
relays you need a little bit of luck and<br />
unfortunately lady luck was not on our side that<br />
day. Kalle lost his SI card and only found it on his<br />
way back to the event arena and so obviously lost a<br />
lot of time on the leaders. I ran the course on my<br />
own which meant I lost time on people running in<br />
the packs at the front but overtook quite a lot of<br />
teams. Gustav took more places and took the<br />
fastest time on last leg. Looking at the results, if<br />
we had had a bit more luck a top ten would have<br />
been easily reachable.<br />
I would like to thank the whole of the Bergman<br />
family for being so welcoming and letting me stay<br />
with them for the SM weekend and the other times I have been over to Sweden to train and race.<br />
The weekend was really beneficial for me and I learnt a huge amount about my own orienteering<br />
and areas that I need to improve. The terrain could not have been better, in particular the relay was<br />
held in incredible terrain. I find it difficult to understand why such a good area is not used very<br />
often but I suppose in Sweden there is no shortage of great areas. Hopefully it will not be too long<br />
before I am back in Sweden training and racing in the forests.<br />
24<br />
John Rocke