Kapa I (27.06.2014)

I arrived at the competition center only 15 minutes beore my start and my warm up lasted around 3 minutes.
That partly explains the very chaotic beginning with small mistakes to 1st, 2nd, 3rd and a bigger one to 4th where I saw many rootstocks and tried to bend around them but ended up under power line.
Physical shape was not the best to put it mildly. I lost time to 8th, 9th and 10th as I apparently had started too fast. When leaving 11h control, I saw Algirdas Bartkevicus, my 2-minute man crossing my path and going directly into mistake. Mysuperslow pace in clearings to 12th and 13th allowed him to approach me but I finally "woke up" and from 15h onwards started to feel good and run faster. He never caught me and in the end I had the upper hand with 12 seconds. I had my best splittimes in the last part of the course and from 15th place at 10th control I climbed to 8th spot in the finish, 8:44 behind Rudols Zernis (still a junior) who won by 5 minutes. While on the course I was anticipating that I would lose more than 10 minutes to first few places but it seems that almost everyone had a weak running day.
1:35 in mistakes.