Orienteering race 1:23:20 [4] ***
shoes: New VJ Spikes
DVOA Myrick Relays.
Team j-man.
So, it was Randy, Vadim, and I who were doing the solo relay, with Greg A, and Joby H thrown into the mix on the first leg(s) to spice things up.
Leg order: white, yellow, advanced.
My strategy going into this was to run the first two legs at a moderate pace, and then, somehow to push the speed on the thicker, harder legs on the advanced to try to shake Vadim. I knew running head to head with Speedy would be a challenging proposition.
Anyway, the first legs started briskly. I had trouble reading the complexities of the (white!) course, and Vadim, Greg, and I made a costly error getting on the wrong side of some green. I plowed through, but they wisely went around eventually. At that point, it was Randy, Greg and Vadim, and me, with decent sized gaps between the three groups.
Somehow, I managed to pull back Greg and Vadim going up the hill through the high crappy field, and then somehow caught up Randy on an uphill grass trail. But, that was a lot of work, as Randy was acting the goat and pushing the pace hard.
Anyway, finished in first, and on to yellow.
I then made one of my classic geometry-based mistakes (tangent vs. orthoganal off a curve) and led people off on a 90 degree error.
Then ran most of remainder of yellow with Vadim. It started to get tougher.
I led into the advanced course, and for better or worse, had a small gap over Vadim. From that point on, I did my own race. It was a slog! First, I was anticipating a winning time of 60 minutes. No dice. It was also quite warm, and the vegetation quite crappy.
Anyway, it was a fun time.