Training Log Archive: markg

Jim Sawkins Classic at Wild Deer Sands. Fun course that made good use of the mining areas in a long middle distance style. It had some longer legs but there wasn't much route choice. The course started with butterfly loops with the 1st control as pivot. I managed to stay on Marty's tail to here and he was on Craney's. Marty and I had the same forking and we did the butterflies at a pretty hectic pace with Marty in the lead the whole way. He was looking pretty solid through here, reckon I would have been a fair bit slower and more hesitant by myself. As we came into the pivot the final time we could see Craney only 10s ahead and Marty seemed to go up a gear and I started dropping off the back. Last saw the two of them leaving #9 and did the rest of the course on my own, except for a couple of controls in the mining which coincided with shorter courses. I had a good run for most of it, had quite a few hesitations and was slow on the hills but reasonably solid, even managed to avoid the parallel error on #19 and get a cracking split win :) By #28 I'd dropped 6 min behind the lead group but I completely screwed #29, first losing confidence and contact down the gully, then not paying enough attention to map and descriptions to get the control the first two times I was in the circle. Lost 5:30-6 here. Funnily enough this was the same control that Craney pulled a sneaky trick on Marty and got away. Ran hard and aggressively from here to the finish; took 1:20 off Marty now that he was running by himself. Not the overall run I wanted but some good signs including fitness which is obviously improving as I'm now down to 1 min/km behind Craney :D