Today, I took part in an indoor orienteering event for the first time in my life. It’s symbolic that it was also the first ever indoor orienteering competition in Latvia. And it wasn’t just interesting, it was phenomenal! I didn’t expect it to be that good and exciting, but it truly exceeded any of my expectations. The biggest and main news agency in Latvia LETA was also there to film the event and released a video already tonight. Altogether, over 170 runners took part. The event consisted of an individual qualification run open for 2.5 hours, during which you could choose a free starting time and head out into 400 m of labyrinth orienteering. The fastest 8 runners from each category (Open Men, Students, M16 and the same for women) qualified for the final. In the final all 8 runners started together on the same course. The entire event was broadcasted online through the event website and anyone could watch both the qualification and the final battles.

I was one of the last runners to run the qualification and despite some bad route-choices and one mistake, which almost lead me into a dead-end, I won the qualification with an absolutely best time 4:06, just 5 seconds ahead of the second fastest runner Mārtiņš Linde. The third place holder Andris Jubelis was another second down, though he used a slower SportIdent to his own disadvantage. Altogether, we were 4 club-mates and the same faculty members (Compute Science Faculty of the University of Latvia, who qualified for the final. Apart from myself and Mārtiņš Linde, Valters Āboliņš and Marģers Kietis also made it into the final. The final battle was fierce with the leaders changing all the time. The bad part was that we all had to use the slow SportIdents 5 this time and the punching didn’t go that quickly as it should have gone. Also, a single SportIdent station in most of the controls was as an obvious problem, at least personally to me at the end.

I had a very good start and was leading together with Valters until the 3rd control, but then we took a bad route-choice to the 4th, going right instead of left. Then again, going back and around from the 6th wasn’t a good idea. However, in the second small labyrinth upstairs I suddenly found myself in second position just in the back of Edgars Sparāns, with Valters again just behind. The sprint to the second-last and last control, as well as the finish was thrilling, but didn’t change the positions. I missed the chance to punch in front of Edgars at the 16th control and was just behind at the second-last, but even if I could close the gap made by the slow punch of the SportIdent 5, I still had to wait to punch at the next control. Unfortunately, I didn’t think about 2 stations at the last control and was unable to use it try to beat Edgars, and also I had to concentrate on running as fast as I could to save a tiny few meters lead over Valters. So, I was quite disappointed afterwards, even though the second place was really good in so tough concurrence. Both qualification and final maps, as well as the results and splittimes you can find here. A special thanks to Mārtiņš Līsmanis and Rolands Blumbeks, as well as the rest of the organizing team for this amazing event! Hoping for more in the future.