What can I say? I finally had a good run without bigger mistakes in an important competition this year. What a big relief!  And then the run was even good enough to win the title. A perfect end of some good days spent on the Asiago plateau.

After the 2 days of good training I felt ready for the weekend. The qualification race on Saturday was ok, but still too many mistakes to be happy and feeling well prepared for Sundays challenge. Thanks Chiara for the helpful talk on Saturday afternoon.

It was raining on Sunday, as expected. I love to compete in the rain. Well, getting prepared and warming up is terrible, but once you have the map in the hand it is just fun.  I wanted to have a safe start and to get the orienteering mechanisms working well. The first 3 controls where quite easy and the speed high. So I started to feel confident. Some smaller loops and stops on the next controls until the map change.  From that point I had an almost perfect race. I started to catch the runners started before me. Save route to nr 13. A little more speed and risk on the next controls. Pushing hard uphill to nr 19 and 20. What a great feeling at the second last control when I had just to run down to the last and to the finish.

Maps: challenging terrain and good courses:

first part

second part