Latvian Championship in night orienteering (26/04/2013)

Snow was almost completely gone but in some places it was still present. Fast melting snow had left skiing tracks very wet and mudy so running on them and uphill asked for pure strenght which was not my ally at that night.
Course was rather easy but it doesn't mean that I didn't make mistakes because running speed was so high on tracks and slow in terrain and it was not always easy to be adaptable.
Biggest amount of time i lost on:
6th - didn't read map careful enough and also my lamp fell off when hitting a branch. I got confused when ran out on skiing track and it took a while to relocate.
11th - leaving 10th control I stepped in one deep snow-hole and bruised my leg on fallen trees. It was rather painful and I recovered slowly, then rushed too much to gain back time and came out on road in the wrong place. After a while I understood that I am on the wrong road going in the same direction. It was easy to correct the mistake afterwards.
13th - After coming out of the green, I apparently didn't check compass carefully enough and ran to wrong skiing track. After realizing that, I corrected myself wrong and managed to make a small mistake in the control area.
Afterwards I performed better and caught some other runners from which Davis Sars remained with me until the finish. I felt very tired and weak in the last part after the spectator control but had good split times and even the best run-in time. It seems that it was hard for everyone.
Altought I couldn't be satisfied with my race neither technically nor physically, it is a night race after all and people made various mistakes.
I managed to grab a bronze medal, which is my second championship medal in elite classe. I lost 4:49 to the winner Andris Jubelis and 3:05 to Andrs Kivlenieks. Both my rivals were members of the relay team that right in the same area took 6th place in ski-orinteering, representing Latvia in ESOC this winter.