I belong to the group of people who started running orienteering as an adult, mostly because my daughter wanted to run orienteering. (Thank you Felicia!). In difference of many other sports, it seemed to be a well organized sport which made me as a parent glad to support the club we ran for. Before I knew it I was in Kungsängen and ready to help with the IT of 10MILA.
The competition 2005 in Kungsängen was my first 10MILA. As young I followed the live reports on the radio during the hours and I was fascinated by the whispering forest speakers that reported accompanied by twigs breaking in the forest. Night orienteering is definitely a good sport to follow on the radio.
I remember I was very fascinated of seeing the arena growing, being used and then disappear.
The arrangement went well. One very interesting incident was when we lost all power with less than one hour left until the womens relay’s start. It was the students from NTNUI who had connected their music system in the wrong way, with a power outage as a result. We could soon report to the competition director that we still could start the relay. Laptops combined with UPS to the server computers made us tolerant to this kind of problems. Anyways the power came back after a while.
Even though I wasn’t selected to run in our club’s team i brought my competing clothes and equipment. After all I got to run in the team because of a late cancellation. You can’t say no to that. I got to run leg 7. I slept a couple of hours under the table where the results are covered with plastic.
I was supposed to run in the night hours, but when I was changed over to, as team number 259, it was just before dawn. It was a little bit nervous in the beginning and I remember taking it very easy to the first control. After that I ran good. From the 4th to the 5th control I ran north, over the clearing to the trail and then over the hill to the control. Afterwards I discovered the other alternative, following the road to the control.
Daylight came and the headlight was turned off. I was lucky following the right runners in the forest ant I found the controls in perfect position. And when you have this flow, that’s when you start relaxing. That happened between control 9 and 10, and all by sudden I lost a couple of minutes. Same thing happened to the 11th control. After that it went well and my friends looked surprised when I turned up a little bit earlier than they expected. My total time was 1:09:25 on the 7,8 kilometer long course. My first time running faster than 10 minutes per kilometer in a competition!
When I came back from the shower and sauna I searched for my name in the results. I felt satisfied seeing my name there, 9 numbers better than the leg before.
My first acquintance with 10MILA started some kind of fascination of the competition. The size of the event, TV-production and of course the lights from the runner’s headlights. My interest still stays strong. To 10MILA 2013 I have taken the role as communication leader. I still wonder how It all happened.
Name Stefan Knorn
Club 2005: Rotebro IS OK
Current club: Attunda Orientering
Other: Communication leader 10MILA 2013
Do you want to share your experience of 10MILA in Kungsängen 1947, 1981 or 2005? Send a mail to tiomilaupplevelsen@gmail.com for more information.