SOL 2 - The Trossachs - Blue - 4.5k - 320m climb - 2nd by 27s
Incredible area, course and race. Woke up and the legs were still achy from my cold, but I was definitely up for this. Did quite a lot of geeking on past courses to set up for this mentally - didn't want to recreate the 20min mistake of 2010.
Started up the hill, shattered by 200m, but pushed it. Possibly started climbing a bit late as I found myself underneath it, possibly a better route though. Nice run back down to 2 almost followed the stream in the wrong direction thinking it was my marsh, but caught myself and pushed it back up the hill to 2, dipped in perfectly. Began to plan ahead early for 3, and there was an obvious route. Got it cleanly, however even walking up the slopes was awful, slow but steady. Checked out the exit strategy as I entered 3 and cleanly flowed through.
Nice "follow the stream" leg to 4, which was more like a gorge run. Decided before the last hill that I was too low but upon climbing the hill I was too high, not too bad. Chose a sneaky route to 5, avoiding a not needed climb, but almost fell to my doom off a cliff, saved myself in time. Ended up on the wrong side of the hill, and didn't see it, few seconds wasted. Chased Josh for the next control, as he had a similar leg. Good line and dipped in.
7 was my leg. I had it planned and took a nice line in. Bit slow contouring and climbing the final hill, but got it bang on. 8 onwards was a bit messy. On 8, I stuck too high, thinking I'd regret losing height, but ended up 5 contours too high in a boulder field, and wasted some time carefully descending. 9 was a blunder. Did some actual running leading up to it, terrain was nice and hill wasn't too steep. Got to the control circle fine but read the hill as being the next one over, covered by the "9". Should have realised the cliff was sourrounded by green but I spent to minutes goofing around before noticing and saving myself a big mistake.
Almost did a classic double mistake to 10 but spent about a minute relocating a few times at the bottom of the unnoticeable green re-entrant. Felt bad losing some much height only to climb it again and lose most of it, but I think going round would be too slow. Downhill legs to 11 and 12, both alright, although I was on top of the 3m crag at 11 and had to climb it down. Thought it was easy going from there but I was on the wrong hill at 13, probably cost me the win. Also chose an odd line to the finish, meeting some fallen trees.
Very happy with the run. Although Andrew Barr got me by 27 seconds, he claimed to have had a good run so happy to have done a time so close to his. Noticeably if all the scotjos second year 16s would have had a clean run, we'd all be getting 48, so there really isn't much splitting us apart from navigation. If I was a bit braver descending crags and slopes, and if I wasn't recovering, I think I could have knocked a couple of minutes off too. Navigation good but failed to keep my focus at 9 and 10, I think I should have realise only crags over 3m were really mapped, and I wouldn't of fooled around in the area of small crags at 9.
http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/default.a... - 2.5min down on 9 and 1min on 10, losing time towards the end - Matt's streak is incredible.
http://routegadget.fvo.org.uk/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi?a... - Put it as GPS