 By Anders BurmanTeam Herkules kept their act together to win the Open Nordic Adventure Championships 2009 after 2 days, 3 hours and 21 minutes of strong performance.
\"I`m very glad our strategy was the correct one. If you take your performance seriously from planning to the finish line it usually works out and it really went well for us this time,\" said a smiling Gunnar Hallneus, Herkules captain.
Herkules took the lead early on the first paddling stage and stayed there for all the race. Few mistakes, superb navigation, total focus and only 20 minutes sleep were the keywords in their concept.
\"Before the race I asked the team if they where prepared for pain, because this sport hurts, and they all said yes,\" says Gunnar.
Sadly Team Finland had to withdraw during the night due to Seppo Makinen\'s illness. Merrell Haglofs Multimania and IKSU then took over the roles of first challengers. Both teams put in all their effort in the battle against Herkules, but since Herkules kept their pace and made no mistakes Merrell and IKSU instead had to struggle for second place on the challenging last day.
IKSU had a 50 minutes lead at midnight but when they made some navigation mistakes during the beautiful early morning paddling stage just outside Karlstad the Norwegians passed them and IKSU could not repair that damage.
New in Merrell team was star navigator Felix Braitshadel.
\"This competition was an experiment for coming events and it worked out very well,\" he said, \"I was never really tired, but maybe I will feel differently tomorrow.\"
Henrik Enberg of IKSU, was not too sad about third place. \"The first paddling stage was a catastrophe for us. After that we had a good race but we had minus in the sleeping account today.\"
In the shorter classes the fight for glory was harder. Team Intersport Holmestrand of Norway, won the Male category and City Wolfes of Sweden, did the same in mixed.
And yes, the myth that the sun always shines in Karlstad was true this weekend, at least for most of the weekend. There is anyway always something sunny in this competition. | 
