Orienteering race 33:00 [4] 5.2 km (6:21 / km)
shoes: 07 VJ Integrator
US Relay Champs - 4 point teams - leg 1
Well, no other Falcons to run with us, and the rest of the Canadians had decided to enter club teams rather than make a real go of the Canada/USA Challenge Cup, so what to do? Katarina and I ran the 4-leg relay together, with myself on the first and 4th legs, and Katarina running back-to-back legs in the middle. Great opportunity for training, at the very least. Although we were worth 8 points, we decided to race in the 4-point division to run against the fastest teams.
After yesterday, I knew it would be tough to run two legs in the relay, so pacing would be important. At the same time, our goal was to stay among the leaders as long as we could. We anticipated being with the leaders after 2 legs, and then falling behind as other teams put out faster runners with fresh legs.
The terrain for this race featured relatively detailed topography (kettle/moraine), with good visibility in the forest as there were no leaves out yet. Will Hawkins set quite interesting courses that used the best forested bits, and in a bid to make the event spectator friendly, a good portion of the course was on grassy lawns on the hilly field surrounding the start/finish areas, with multiple controls in clear view of the spectators.
The race started out relatively well. I was tired from the beginning, and even by the 3rd control we faced the first real uphill, which began to tire my legs. I managed to keep up a decent pace, and was pretty clean through the first portion. After the 4th control I was in the lead, with Laszlo on my shoulder. I made a mistake on the (forked) 9th control, losing about 45 seconds. Luckily, Laszlo missed his fork as well, and I was able to get out to a lead of almost a minute for a couple of legs. Unfortunately, I missed #12 by nearly a minute, and when I punched in, Laszlo had re-appeared. From that point, we were together through the spectator areas, until the next forkings. The last section of the race had two forkings, and on both of them I had the longer fork, adding about 200 m and some extra climb to my leg - that was enough for him to get away and finish about a minute clear of me.
Impressive times by relative newcomer Michael Lucente (2 minutes behind me), and Emily Kemp (3:35 behind me).
Orienteering warm up/down 25:00 [2]
shoes: 07 VJ Integrator
Warm-up and cool down for leg 1, mainly on the model map. Nice area, and model areas are always appreciated by me. However, the model controls I visited were not placed on the correct features, which I suppose may have thrown off some of the less experienced runners.
Orienteering race 39:00 [5] 6.4 km (6:06 / km)
shoes: 07 VJ Integrator
US Relay Champs - 4 point teams - leg 4
Compared to yesterday, we made a number of improvements to our preparation to prevent the physical collapse that happened in the sprint from repeating itself: 1) babysitting for Mia, 2) strictly limited fluid and gel intake, 3) avoid excess heat/sunlight, 4) allergy medications. These all made a big difference, and I felt way better preparing to run the 4th leg. Still, I knew the other guys had fresh legs, and it would be tough just to hang in there with the faster guys.
Katarina ran two excellent legs in the interim. As expected, she had built a clear lead after the 2nd leg, and then bravely went out on the third leg trying to defend her hard-won lead against some fast guys, including Brian Graham and Greg Balter, both of whom were hot on her heels at the end of the third leg, and both of whom were running for good teams with solid anchor leg runners.
In the end, she even sent me out in the lead, which was far better than any of our own expectations. I went out just a few seconds ahead of Sergei Zhyk, and maybe 1.5 minutes ahead of Jon Torrance. It was a real battle right from the beginning, and Sergei was actually the first to leave the spectator area. We took different routes to the 4th control, but arrived simultaneously. From there, were were shoulder-to-shoulder until #13, when he went down the wrong spur and ended up losing 2 minutes. I never saw him after that, but knew that Jon was storming along quite close behind.
I entered the open area with a small lead, but knew that Jon's faster legs would probably eat up the lead very quickly over the grassy, hilly lawns. There was still a tiny lead when we entered the forest for the last time, though Jon had the same fork as I did and managed to whittle even more time from the margin. I think I had somewhere around 100-150m lead coming into the final 1.2 km, which featured 8 controls, all on open lawns. Knowing it would be tight, I pressed it as hard as I could from the beginning of the field section, knowing that if he caught up to me, the game was done. I just tried to hold off the inevitable as long as I could, and amazingly enough, as I turned the corner towards the last control - no Jon in sight! So "victory" was ours, a nice ending for a hard day of racing.
Felt quite good to be able to lay down a leg like that after finishing a race less than an hour before. It's always tough to defend a lead in a relay when other teams are in visual contact, but we were fortunate that Sergei missed the 13th control and that Jon didn't press quite hard enough over the final controls. Jon's leg time was about a minute faster than mine. Nick was only 30 seconds slower then I was, and Ross Smith, Zhyk, Velichko, and Hallick were all within 3 minutes behind me.
All in all, a much better physical race than yesterday, and it leaves me feeling that my legs are finally starting to come back. There will still be plenty of improvement over the remaining 4 weeks before Team Trials too - looking forward to being able to really "race" again.
Orienteering warm up/down 10:00 [2]
shoes: 07 VJ Integrator
For the above.