Training Log Archive: GM

Event: Sprint the Bay 2013
 

Sprint the Bay event 1 at Woodford on the edge of Havelock North (whatever happend to Havelock South?). I was running in the M50 class so had some new faces to compete against: StK66, Jemery from Tas, Henrik from Denmark, Geoff from Hawkes Bay, plus some old faces: Ted van G and David P in particular.

The Woodford map was described as "it consists of very technical building detail, school grounds and farm type terrain. Parts of the map are very steep making it very physically demanding and also allowing for difficult route choice legs". So not the usual sprint area, but that was the nature of the entire STB competition and what a blast it all was :)

Started steady and passed StK66 on the way to 3 - only found out later that he hadn't been to 2 but got confused and ran with me to 3 and wasn't until after 4 that he realised and had to go back, but got lost finding 2 :( I was in first place by control 3 and stayed in the lead until control 14. Then came the bloody tennis courts. Like many I didn't see the tiny sliver of crossable fence at the control, and there wasn't anyone scaling it when I got there, so I ran around. Then made two poor route choices on the next two legs going left each time instead of right. On those three controls I lost nearly 2 minutes and the race. Didn't finish as well as I would have liked so need to keep focus right to the end. Finished in 6th place 1:24 down on Jemery.

Most notable effort of the day was Andrew Lumsden who went past the spectator control without punching. He was nearly finished when he realised he had missed it so he went and punched it and then completed the rest of the course a second time but this time through missed out control 16 which he had been to the first time so was DNF. At least he could laugh about it and had a great story to tell.

We had one of the few showers of rain in our 3 week trip while watching the elites but it didn't last long.

STB event 2 at Splash Planet in Hastings. After the first event all the start times are in a reverse order with the leading person starting last.

The details of the area are "The Splash Planet map encompasses New Zealand’s largest water theme park as well as a local high school and Splash Planet Event Centre recreational park. Terrain varies from tradetional school building detail, fast park land with many established trees and complex man-made details including impassable water and vegetation features. There are some areas of shallow water (< 0.5m in depth)".

The first part of the course was in the school and I was equal with Jemery at control 4 in 1st place. I then made a poor choice on the long leg into Splash Planet and should have taken the left hand route. I lost a minute on Jemery and dropped to 4th. Three good legs had me back in 2nd place and only 30 secs down. Then I completly lost it coming out of the pirate ship and took a wrong turn and blundered around and ended up loosing 2 mins. I took the train line to control 10 had won the leg by 11 secs which was pleasing. A few good legs sprinkled through the next bit then after punching the control in the middle of the large circular wading pool I came out and was completely disoriented which is a novel experience for me. By the time I settled down I had coughed up another 30 secs. The last few controls were good and I finsihed in 2nd place but 3.5 mins behind Jemery.

I think this is probably the most fun place I have done a sprint race :)

Nice long easy jog to the start but got there too early so just jogged up and down the street for a while.