Training Log Archive: GM

Easter 3 Days - Day3. At the start they said the recent wind storms had blown down a lot of trees so the green near the start was slower than mapped. It didn't look too bad standing there so I thought I would go straight to 1 and just cope. Bad decision. It was really slow and just walking in parts was difficult. For 2 I decided to get out to the fence as fast as possible and run along the fence then come back in through the white. Not a bad choice but probably not any faster than going straight. I meant to go straight to 3 but drifted left and ended up coming through the huge boulders. I thought that I would be able to just pick my way between them but got stuck getting down between the last two huge boulders and had to chimney down between them which isn't the fastest way to get around an O course. This cost me a minute. Funniest sight of the weekend was coming over the rise towards 6 and working out which was the boulder that had the control and then seeing the flag and then seeing Michael Burt standing on top of the 4m boulder trying to work out where the control was. I was trying to work out how he manage to climb up on top of that boulder. The going was very slow through 7 and 8 and I drifted off to the left too far in going to 8 so lost about 30 seconds. On the longer route to 9 I chose to go right but left was the better option in the end. The worst part about the right hand route was getting out of the green - it was harder and longer than I thought it would be and seemed to take an age. Once out I ran past the start triangle and then out into the open paddock before cutting across onto the flat spur above the control. Great way to attack the control but based on other times going left would have been about a minute quicker. Although it is always interesting to see how they went on the next leg. I ran really well but lost about 10 seconds on 10 by overshooting the control - there was so much rock there it was very hard to work out what was mapped and what wasn't. Ok through to the end.

I finished the day in 2nd about 1.5 minutes behind Bernard, and 2nd overall, with Russ a bit back in 3rd, then a long way back to Alex in 4th.

This is the first time I have placed at Easter so I am pleased with that but with a couple of cleaner runs could have been a lot better. Something to work on, as always.