The first day of US Individual Champs was at Moses Lake Sand Dunes. It was a great and very unusual terrain. I did enjoy my run, even though it was very hot and no water stations. I was running flat without mistakes, and after 2/3 of course I start catching my competitors. That was my biggest mistake because on dunes type terrain, everything looks the same and you cannot lose the contact with the map, which did happen. I got 3 min mistake, which cost me 5th place. I am an athlete, who specializing on Long and Sprint course. So, 10th place at Middle course was not bad for me.
The next day was a Long course day and located at Fish trap Lake. There were 16,5k with only 24CPs on desert type of the terrain. We were around 8 water stations and I stopped at every single one. I got a really clean race with one 40 sec mistake, which is ok for 2 hours course. I will remember this course because I got caught by Nikolay Nachev (US O-Team member), but with the smart and hard Orienteering, I managed to run away in the end of the course. I lost 8 sec to Eric Bone (#1 US O-Team member), who finished 4th with 1:55:31. Fredrik Eliasson (Norway) and Michal Besta (Czech R.) had finished with 24 sec difference with 1:48:31 and 1:48:55. It was not the first race this year that in 1,5 hour course I lost less than 1-2 min to 3d place and finished 5th.
The last day of the US Individual Champs was Sprint race, which in the end of the weekend was the worst day for organizers. The map quality was not to Sprint standards; elite runners had a hard time to read the map. I will leave it to organizers. I finished (walked) 12th.
In the end, my goals were top 5 in Long and Sprint. I got it done, so it was successful weekend for me. I got 5 days to rest before North American Orienteering Championship 2010. The next post is about the trip to NAOC Cranbrook, BC Canada.
