Nordic Cross-Country Championships Qualification for Finland: 9K – 33:26min (9th place)

October 31, 2009

Embarrassing race for me. But that’s one reason I wanted to take part, making all those lessons again. It seems you never canb get experienced enough. Next time I will have some easy days before this kind of race. After all I was running against the strongest runner in the country. For me it was just another training and actually not even as fast as expected.

The fitness is there but the freshness is missing. Already after the start of the race I was feeling crappy and thought that the guys were going out way too fast and should come back after a while. The opposite was the case. The top group ran almost even lap times while I slowed down during the 3 rounds of 3 kilometers each. My training mates Juha and Miika, with whom I did the hill repeats took 1st and 3rd place and qualified for the Finnish team in the Nordic Cross-Country Championships next weekend. Congratulations! Anyway, I can’t believe that they are 3 minutes faster than me.

Guess also the stress from my studies affected me. All my muscles felt tight and I couldn’t really loosen up and find a relaxed stride. Once the academic stuff is done it should get better I hope.

Results:
Men (9 km, -2°C):
1) Juha Puttonen JKU 30.28
2) Mårten Boström SjuIF 30.37
3) Miika Takala JKU 30.42
4) Mikko Tyni HaminPo 31.09
5) Pekka Toivola JoKa 31.41
6) Miro Laurila KarhU 31.52
7) Joonas Lehtinen TuUL 32.31
8.) Konstantin Kutilainen AsikkRa 33.00
9) Erik Hass VaajKu (GER) 33.26
10) Panu Jantunen ImatrU 33.45

Full results here