Cherrymapz :D :D :D

Extremely nervous before this, despite it being my 7th time running Jukola 1st leg. Reasons for this are both: 1) the scary appearance of the terrain after the woman's relay 2)The fact that I made it into the team by the skin of my teeth with way more than 7 extremely good runners in my club who would easily take my place.

Start was carnage as usual and didn't look at my map much until we reached the powerline. I could maybe have saved a bit of time by running further east, but the route to the control along the open marsh was nice. Spiked the control and then saw a long line in front of me into the TV control, was 70sec down due to the longer gaffling. The next setion until 7 was pretty easy and I ran very hard (blood in mouth) to catch the leaders.

By 9 I was back in the leading pack and the next section (9-21) was some of the nicest terrain I have ever run in, just epic. After 16 everyone(!) in my group ran off at 90 degrees and I was alone. I was surprised by this so I ran to the road, stopped and double checked I had been to all the controls, I thought I might have missed a loop or something. Then I ran to the drinks point and got the control, still alone. Here I lost 1min to the group on the other gaffle. Then one other guy from Vaxjo showed up and we were together through the next two gaffling sections.

I saw the group about 1min in front on the road but only about 6 people and nobody was behind, strange it spread out so much... The last gaffling section was tricky, but I saw 25 out of the corner of my eye as I was about to run past it, lucky. Changed over in 9th place 90sec down.

Never run so much of the course alone on jukola 1st leg, good experience and pleased with the leg. After legendary running from the others on the more important legs we finished 6th overall- something we are extremely proud of. :) :)