Training Log Archive: Thompass

The feeling after the race was that I had had a good race. I was lacking power in the second half, which was very apparent when Duncan came by, but I was reading well in the urban and no major mistakes. Theoretically I could have squeezed out a better time if this or that had gone better, but I felt that the preparation and execution went well and that I had raced properly.



Came into this with a bit of nervous energy but I thought it would help me get a bit of extra pace, especially at the beginning. Started quite well, reading ahead when I could and getting the right turns. Saw David on the road towards 5 and tried to turn it up a bit, but almost missed the turn into the courtyard so was brought out of that quite quickly. Lost time to 6 making the wrong decision, only lost about 5 seconds, in the grand scheme of things it wasn't important. I just saw that it was rounder and struggled to tell if left was better or worse on the run.

Key mistake of the race is 9, around 16 seconds lost; I planned this leg a few legs before this, and planned to go right, but when I got to it my map was folded over the leg and I couldn't remember if 9 or 10 was the long leg to the grass, guessed left and was incorrect. Was okay though, the route was still fine, but at the end of it I decided against turning right and going through the alley, which cost me quite a bit of time, and then while reading ahead lost another few seconds staring at the fence. Was quite close to catching David at this point but the double mistake saw him fade into the distance.

Now we're yeeting across the grass, looking up to take the good line, and the next bobble came to 13. Around 10 seconds lost, was not nice on the rough hill, then the white was not very nice and had to duck through some thickos. Trying to get across that grass but it's not nice, going left seems to have been the golden option. Was wary of the time lost at the time, Duncan had passed me by taking the other route.

Duncan's moving quite quickly and I'm not able to hold on for long. Other than my slow finish, the final time loss was only 5 seconds but it was a foolish 5 seconds, I came up the stairs towards 16 and was looking at the wall where I thought it would be, was standing still for a bit before I realized it was much further down the wall.

Thought that going around to 18 was a bad decision afterwards but it had a relatively small effect overall compared to the other things.