Discussion: strategy

When you wrote yesterday what the chase-start situation was, I almost mentioned a technique that has worked for me in the past: let your rival go, give him enough rope to hang himself. The best hope is that he'll make an error big enough for you to get by while he's baffled. (In wide open terrain, this may not work so well, as you noted.) His best strategy, on the other hand, would have been to catch you, stick to you like glue, and run like hell when he could see the finish. That probably would have given him the same result with less effort, and would have been really annoying to you.

Best bet might have been to stealth punch a control when he's not looking, then fake punch a bit further, out of sight of the flag, when he is looking. Takes practice to be good at deceiving, though. Last thing you wanted to do is get in a race, which is what happened.

Another thought is that you shouldn't be competing head-to-head with a 16 year old.