Orienteering race 41:04 [4] 6.5 km (6:19 / km) +150m 5:40 / km
shoes: O' Black/Orange VJ Twisters
Race at Washington's Crossing. A little disappointing, because I got beat by Clem by 3 minutes, and I thought I had a pretty solid run. Certainly no major mistakes. A few things cost me 5-15 seconds each, but I suspect that only accounts for < 2 minutes. And it sounds like Clem was no more clean than that.
So either I was technically slow, physically not pushing it, or physically slow.
1) I wasn't technically as clean as I could have been. The 'flow' was a little choppy with several moderately confused stops to look at the map. But those were generally 5-sec. or so, and with a few minor map issues, were par for the course.
2) I don't think I was pushing physically as hard as I could - I really wasn't that tired when I was done, nor did my lungs ever really scream at me - like they do in a 5 or 10k - mostly I think I was just having a problem keeping myself at a true race pace. I think I need to run a road or trail race head to head to remind myself of what it feels like to actually push hard for a race length effort. And I'd also like to race something head-to-head with Clem in DVOA-ish terrain. E.g. re-run the Wash Xing course again, as intervals, starting each control at the same time, and see how he moves through briar and other stuff. I have found that actually watching someone move through terrain is quite useful because you can see right where you lose time, e.g. where you are hestitating to get through or around something that they just bash on through... ?
3) I also might be slower than Clem now. He has been training pretty consistently since ~April, and he's been faster than me in the past. Still, I'm going to pursue option 2 before deciding this is the case. (And meanwhile, I'll keep up all the normal training stuff to keep the raw-fitness category as high as possible.)