2019 NSW Championships Long Distance
Willagalong
M45 2nd place
A good race in parts, but my forest fitness let me down in the third quarter of the race.
I started strongly on 1, but I failed to follow my compass enough on 2 and lost confidence as the slope didn't appear as I expected it to. I veered left. The damage was minimised as I stopped nearby, but I still lost over a minute with that detour. My GPS shows that the termite mound mapping may have been a bit dodgy too, although it was the contour shapes that confused me.
3 and 4 were better. I was fastest to 4 and was moving well through the forest.
After the climb out of 5 I struggled to maintain a good speed in the forest as it got a bit rougher and slower. Perhaps I relaxed a bit too much and should have pushed harder. Steve was much faster from 5 to 13.
I still felt fresh at 13, but there was only 3 legs remaining. I raced hard to the end and won those splits.
Maybe I was expecting the course to be longer, but I didn't really get my pacing right for an 8.5km course. I had wanted to push harder at times, but the fallen timber and hills in my legs from yesterday restricted me from picking up the speed that I needed in the forest.