I'm okay with this one. On the surface a good run, but easily could've cleaned it up significantly. You can see on the
RouteGadget that small errors in the bearing cost me 10-15s on 3, 5, and 6, and at this point I could see Anton a little ways behind me. I poorly executed the climb route to 9, going too far around getting the worst of both runnability and distance, so he caught right up with me.
I knew he was a fast runner so I still had a shot at the podium and pushed hard, initially following him to 10 but then correcting his mistakes and actually staying ahead of him. I'm not saying this to dunk on him or anything, just a huge accomplishment for me to be the cleaner, more direct runner in a duo. That same trend continued all the way to 17, where I didn't follow the contour in time and he punched a solid 15-30s ahead. I caught back up again as he misread a rock wall on the way to 19 I believe, and led him into the penultimate control.
That was a fun race for a variety of reasons, but I'm particularly proud of myself for not letting a great runner distract me and even ran cleaner than him at a few points, being the man in front for a good chunk of the race. That's something that has never happened to me before.