Training Log Archive: Craney

Jim Sawkins mass start race at Wild Deer Sands. Small field of 5, but a great fun fiddly race - 34 controls amongst loads of small dot knolls and weird earthwall features, with bits of low vis light green. All the gaffling was over after about 5mins and unfortunately I hadn't managed to build enough of a gap over Marty in that time to get out of sight. So ensued a good 40min burn-up with Marty watching my every move and gaining a few seconds on me every time I had to wake up a control. It was great fun having him there though keeping my nav sharp and under pressure through the fiddly bits. Really happy with my flow for the most part, until #19 where I took us on a bit of an unnecessary excursion to the top of a parallel hill and lost a couple of minutes up there - lesson is to pay just as much attention (even more to direction) on the vague legs. Anyway, as the end drew near my mind started to turn to how I was actually going to win this thing given the chances of outsprinting Marty were nil. Distracted by these thoughts I made a small miss on #28 and Marty punched that one ahead of me. Ok I thought, no point just going back past him straight away so I let him lead on the way to #29. He was going the right way but hesitated in the circle, so I stopped too and worked things out. Then I saw the flag but realised that this was going to be my chance so I waited a bit til he was out of sight, then quietly punched (cursing the beep) and hammered it away. Unbeknownst to me, he saw me sprinting off and thought I'd seen the flag elsewhere so came after me for a bit, proceeding to lose some more time, and gave me the gap I needed. Kept it clean round the last few controls. All very sneaky and probably not my finest hour but he seemed polite enough about it afterwards anyway :s

C • Relay practice 5

Feeling pretty worn out on the warm-down.