Jukola, EOC, Tiomila..
2010-06-24 в 21:41:36
It`s been a long time since my last post in the English version of this website. I`m a bit lazy to translate and write the same thing twice. So now I`ll try to tell everything with few sentences.

It was first the Tiomila race. I was 10th last leg for Kongsberg OL and I knew it will be very tough and long race for me. I tried to avoid the mistakes but finally I ended up with lots of small ones. I`m not sure but all together about 5minutes. My speed on the 17.3k long course wasn`t as good as it should’ve been but that was the shape at the moment. Finally I sprinted into the final taking the 60th place for the club. You can see the map in my archive – ivansirakov.com/maps.


Then it was some time in Bulgaria, some competitions and a training camp just before the European Orienteering Champs in Primorsko. I’ve been chosen to run sprint, middle and relay. I made a really stupid mistake to the 1st one in the sprint loosing 30secs and some small after that (5, 5, 5, 15) so it was pretty much for a sprint race. I was 5 seconds out of the final!

Then it was the middle qualification, two big mistakes and of course out of the final again. I was disappointed about the result but I couldn`t do anything at that moment. I thought it is the physical shape that would be weak but it was the technical.


I started the 1st leg in the Relay together with Petar and Stanimir, the same team as in JWOC 2007 when we came 7th. I started well but then I made some mistakes and at the finish I was 3:43 down to the leaders at the moment. We finally took the 20th place in nations but we were faster than the other Bulgarian team:). You can see the maps in my archive – ivansirakov.com/maps.

Then I was back in Scandinavia – this time for Jukola. It was a great experience to run this year`s Jukola. Many top elite runners made big mistakes and there were big changes and differences all the way except for Halden who took the lead after the 2nd leg. They took the victory home and 1/7 of the victory was brought to Bulgaria as Kiril Nikolov was part of this winning team! Great! What about my race, my team? We also made some big mistakes.. but finally we took 68th position. I was 5th leg and my big mistake was to the 3rd control – about 5 minutes. But otherwise I`m happy with my race as I didn`t make any other real mistakes. I lost 2:30 after that but it`s all about stops and route-choices.
MAP: Kytäjä-Jukola 2010