Rumsey Spring Opener, 11.7k, and, as is typical of my first events of the year, this was abysmal. This is never a good time of year for me. All of my bad habits and non-habits have remerged, and I navigate very, very poorly. It was positive that I was able to get another opportunity to run on a 1:15000 map, but I just could not, in any way, gauge my distance properly and made several horrific parellel errors. Hard to work on scale when most of the Wednesday night meets are at 1:7500. Its especially frustrating because I know that Europe has started their season 4 months ago, with several countries already having their national championships! I feel that any technical gains I made with my year in Europe has slowly faded given my inability to find new terrain or get even remotely good training here in Edmonton. This is exacerbated by a club who is happy with the status quo and is unwilling to consider any ideas or suggestions or
any ambition at all yet expects me to volunteer my time to their own pet projects. Unfortunately I am between a rock and a hard place because moving elsewhere would require finding a real job and significantly reduce my ability to bugger off for several months and compete.
/unrelated rant that just perpetually frustrates me.
Nevertheless, I will continue to plug on, as I've said, in my opinion my biggest strength improvements will be from being a better runner, and I can still work towards that, assuming I can fix my foot. If anyone has any ideas on how to practice on maps I've been on many, many, many times, I'm all ears. I have most of the maps so I'll send them out if you want to get creative.
Here's the context of my performance rage:
DOMA
Update!
Okay, so, I haven't read any comments or anything, but I should clarify that I most definitely overreact on bad performances, but I think I've made it pretty clear that I have ludicrously high expectations for myself and I'm a terrible loser. And the thought of future losing infuriates me more. My coach would try to give me the standard post-race hug after most ski races, and I'd tell him to screw off. Just thought I'd make that clear.
Now, to book flights to San Fran!