Tio Mila

Pre thoughts:

My first run for Västerås SOK was awesome. Probably one of the most terrifying races I’ve set eyes upon but it was also the most exciting thing I’ve done in a long while.

Mats Haldin on the sprint

Airport:

We were met at the airport where we met Ben Strengell, one of the big cheeses of the Västerås SOKlubb and had a comfortable 20minute drive past the club hut to Sune’s house, the man who we would be staying with for the next few days – who was also the Men’s relay team selector.

Photos taken of us foreign athletes by Toyota (a sponsor) on the Friday moning next to their new car range was cool and made us feel like famous people... I really like the new Yaris - sporty!

Swedish Terrain Training:

Oli on the sprint

Training beforehand in the forests around Västerås was great – Rocklunda and Bjorksta were used and they were fast and runnable – nothing really like in the UK where everything is being eaten up by the copious amounts of brambles.

Rocklunda was used for the WOC2004 Sprint races, also known as Apalby (the south of the Rocklunda area). Me and Lizzie had a nice litte welcome to Swedish terrain and ran round the 5km course with a few problems and niggles technically, but fine really.
Then we had a pasta party with the Västerås SOK crew and met lots of people.

Friday was the Elitesieren in Eskiltuna Zoo - the top Scandis and World's best dprinted round in quick fashion and was a great spectacle (see the photos).

Women's Tio:

The women's start

Watching the women’s 10Mila was great. Lizzie and Helen were on first led and did really well. The Women had about 1.5km of dead running across the tracks before heading into the forest which was a great spectacle to watch. Lizzie had gained probably over 100 places on this part of the course!
Helen came back in the top 30 and Lizzie in 71st – great results for Västerås!
The race continued and at one stage we were in 5th position on 2nd leg!!
Jenny was on last leg and had an ok run with an amazing sprint finish to come in in 26th position, a Västerås SOK Women’s record!

Jenny in the sprint finish

Mens Race:

Oli on the run out for Västerås SOK

The men’s race was awesome – unfortunately I was asleep for the first 3 legs due to it starting at 2300!! I had been boosted up into the 2nd team on the 9th Leg (5.5km and ungaffled!!) rather than running the 6th Leg, 10km at dawn. I was getting nervous with more pressure on me now!

Me and Oli woke to see that the long night was very long and the courses were taking over 20minutes longer than expected…strange for a quite runnable Tio area.
We travelled the 45minutes to Eskiltuna and got ready for our runs.
Great atmosphere is the arena – used for speedway (the Swedes love this for some reason?!) and the bridges were huge – they’d even built one 40m tall in the middle of the forest to get over the railway tracks.

I was ready for my race in the box. I watched Oli go out on last leg for the 1st team and I stood waiting for Terje to hand over. - concentration lapsed along with talking to Jenny and I missed him - left him standing for 20seconds.

Me on the runout for Västerås SOK

Got it out of my system and had a great run! Awesome speed for an ungaffled leg. Caught up a pack of runners and passed them with ease. Had a wobble on the way to number one but other than that pretty clean. Made a crap route choice through a deep marsh to the last few controls but managed to only let 2 runners of the pack finish in front of me.

Great running and handed over to bring the team in 122th position: 10 places gained - RESULT!

Overall:

An amazing experienced that you have to do at least once before you die!

Bring on the rest of the season with

Västerås!