10Mila - långa natten (10/05/2015)

One question bothers me after running this long night (unforked leg): is it always good to be in a group? I guess it depends on the group, but hardest thing is to spot when group is good for you and when it's not.

I've started good, catching 2 runners on 1st control. For the next few controls we were fast and were able to join on back of bigger gropu with 20-30 runners heading towards 5th control. At that point, as I was on back of that big group, I started to read map less and tried to focus on running and getting in first part of the group, thinking that 30+ people group can't make big mistake. I was obviously wrong, first because our route to 5th was strange and second, because we missed it for more than 5', getting outside of the map. Good thing was that I was able to relocate after some time and punch control first.
After that I started to lead the group towards 6th (straight line), but I was obviously slower reading the map than others, so soon some guys passed me and again did mistakes on #6 (15''), #7 (35'') and #9 (60'').
At that point I realized I have to read map more, so on next few controls, I was losing some time on running compared to first part of the group, but gaining it again, while they were doing mistakes in circle.
On #14, another long leg, I should have left the group and did my own route-choice (south through open areas), but kept running with them first losing some time through green and later another 3' on mistake.

So in total, I've had 10' mistakes in first part, all with group, but question from beginning is again would I lose more (slower running + mistakes), if I was alone. Well, for this answer I guess I need more experience from running big competitions, so I can decide what is good for me in that moments and what is not.

Second part of the race was completely different. After leaving #17 and getting on the road, I was starting to feel tired and average pace around 4:10 was max I could get on road, while group was getting faster and after some time I was left alone. At that moment, it was important for me to do safe route-choices and not lose time on mistakes, because I'm already losing some seconds on running. I've managed to do so until #22, where I didn't really have plan what to do and control was quite tricky on flat area between some tiny green areas that were hardly visible, so there I lost 1'30''. After that it was just surviving to get to the finish as I was out already 2 hours and did 21km in total, so it was really long night.

All in all, I would probably perform better on shorter and easier leg, but I'm really satisfied that coaches put me on this one as I've learned a lot from this night and hopefully I can transform this knowledge into something good for next races (and preparation for next year).