O-pleasure...;-)

The last stage was my best race this week! The terrain was brilliant! I just love these sink holes - they're so easy and nice to orienteer:) I made just 3 minor mistakes: looking for the 4th control too early, doing too much climbing to the 5th control and running too high before the 8th control. I was 3rd and lost 1:28 to Olej who had an almost clear race but he must have pushed much harder than me. What's more, I could have felt really tired after having competed in 17 races during 19 days!

Too fast and got furious:-D

On Saturday in the evening I took part in a nice Microsprint competition. Just before the start we had thought it was going to be very easy but we hadn't known how wrong we had been! The courses turned out to be extremely fast and I passed everything on the map so quickly...
I didn't manage to qualify for the final because of an over-a-minute-mistake to the 11th control. However, the organizers prepared more maps and we were able to run the Men's Final course as well. There was only one difference - we had no control point (9th) in the fountain!;)

The biggest hangover in my life!

The 5th stage of Hungaria Cup 2009 was a long distance. It was no good news for me because I think I had never felt so bad in my life before! The reason for this feeling was the so-called 'Day of my life' the previous day. I must say that vomiting just before the race is not a funny experience... AT ALL!
That day I fought to... survive in the forest. I did not run, I just walked and lost only some 45 minutes to the winner. Technically, my race was almost perfect; I made only one mistake while leaving the 11th control;)

However, shaking hands with Dwojager and hearing that I am his greatest fan was an unbelievable award for me:-)

AMAZING RELAY!

I know that relay competitions are very interesting and gripping all the time, but I could not have expected such emotions! And there was not only one reason...

Firstly, a dream race of Wojtek Dwojak on the first leg coming 6th to the finish only some 20 seconds behind Dmitry Tsvetkov from Russia. Then, on the result list we could see that Wojtas was 5th because the Russian runner was disqualified! And the new leader was Pavel Gvozdev from... Israel! However, this DSQ turned out to be a mistake made by organisers' computers and the Russian runners were in the game again, fortunately;)
Then, some bad luck in the forest and a worse, longer forking for Banan and 14th place after 2nd leg.
Finally, the last deciding leg! I hope everyone knows now what happened in the forest. Martin Johansson from Sweden got injured and 3 runners stopped to help him. These heroes were Thierry Gueorgiou from France, Anders Nordberg from Norway and Michal Smola from the Czech Republic. They gave up fighting for the medals and saved Martin's life! I think the very whole world is proud of You! Matthias Merz, who was some minutes behind, didn't see them and went on to the finish. Having had a really brilliant race (the best time of all!), he secured the gold medal for Switzerland. However, they didn't actually want this title and I am not surprised at all. The next runners came to the finish afterwards and a real struggle for the 6th (diploma) place began! There were 5 challengers but only one of them could win. Kowal punched the last control as the second one and started a magnificent, incredibly fast and strong finish. When he was passing a large group of Polish supporters (me amongst them), we already knew he was going to win the race just some meters ahead of the rivals. Nevertheless, these 'some meters' were so important for us all!

CONGRATULATIONS POLAND!

Fabulous sprint in Miskolc!

The terrain of the sprint race during the 4th stage of Hungaria Cup was absolutely brilliant! I just love this kind of sprints! It was a great fun to run (quite:P) fast in the streets of Miskolc. I enjoyed my every move and even making mistakes made me happy:) Even happier because thanks to it I could spent more time on this wonderful course:D and the place (2nd, just some 28secs behind Mate) is surprisingly high as well...:-)