Viikin vitonen 5k race today. +2C and a bit windy. 22:52 or 4:33/km. 1km splits: 4:26-4:30-4:31-4:39-4:37. Maybe slightly too fast in the beginning which made the 4th and 5th kilometre hard.
Here are some views from the area:
Tag: 5k
Länsirastit, Kaitakorpi
Very long #2->#3 and #4->5 legs on this course. No major mistakes but not that fast going either..
Iltarastit, Tali
Still lots of snow on the ground, and a temperature just barely above freezing this evening.
The first red (slow) bit between #19 and #20 could not be avoided - just too much snow for running. A bigger mistake on the #11-#12 leg where clearly the better choice after the bridge would have been to run up the hill. Instead I continued north along the stream looking for the small and steep trail up to the control - which was of course completely covered in snow and invisible. Having not learnt much from this I then sort of repeated the same mistake on #25-#24 where my route is direct, but very slow because of snow up to knee-level or above. A small U-turn on #23-#15, but it probably did not cost much in terms of time lost.
My timing-receipt from the EMIT-system shows strange split-times. We'll see if those are corrected in the final results.
Itärastit, Latokartano
Saturday orienteering again.
#2 a short but steep hill to climb from #1. Better fitness would not hurt 🙂
#3 and #4 not much to report
#5 biggest mistake of the day as I ran too far to a bigger road, not finding the small path that would have led directly to the control. Maybe 2-3min lost here.
#6 and #7 ok.
#8 again up that steep hill, resulting in not-so-great running speed once on top of the hill towards #8
#9 through #12 and finish were easy. Could have possibly saved time on #12 by running on the road instead of through the woods.
Time 51 min 19 s.
Iltarastit, Stensböle
They have been running the "evening" orienteering events on Sunday midday for a while now, since it is quite dark after 17-18 or so. This is the last event for Iltarastit, but there are a few other clubs organizing these for a couple of weeks still this season.
Nothing too dramatic on #1, #2, and #3. Then a lot of deep "canyons" and other steep places around #4 which caused some confusion - probably cost me about 5 minutes here. No problems at #5 but a bit of searching for #6 (not too much lost here, max 1 minute). Then I chose to run not straight, but along paths and roads to #7 - we shall see if that paid off when all the results are up on the web. Again a longer route along a path to #8. From #10 it would probably have been slightly faster to run in-between the houses to the road more directly. Nothing special at #11 and #12. Then #13 was drawn close to a fence, but I didn't really know on which side of the fence the control was - luckily there were others running to/from the control so I just followed them.
This took me about 57 minutes. If I could have avoided the big mistake at #4 and some smaller mistakes the time approaches 50minutes, which is OKish for amateur/fitness orienteering on a 5km course (for me anyway!).
Tuesday 5k
The GPS has serious problems on "Nokia avenue" in between high buildings...
Legs still feel a bit heavy from 10k on Saturday. Pace is 4h marathon pace, or around 5:32 to 5:40min/km.
5k
A 2 hour half-marathon corresponds to a steady 5:41/km pace, so it's "only" a bit more than four of these evening runs done one after the other.