Race Evaluation
Blue Hills Traverse:
cmorse
| 1. | Trail Runner Tom Skrocki shadowing me on his 2nd orienteering outing. So his splits equal mine until 27 where, losing steam I told him to try to catch the guy in front of us at the line. Anyway, Peter's going right, but mob rules and I go with the flow to the left. Get into control a little behind Peter. About the same either way. | ||||||
| 2. | Still going with the flow, reading the map a little, but not really making much use of the info. | ||||||
| 3. | Pass by a perfectly good boulder with the crowd which seems to be about the right distance/time but not paying enough attention to detail to know if its misplaced? | ||||||
| 4. | Crowd beginning to thin a bit, reading the map more, cut right of the swamp, found a knee deep hole of muck in here. | ||||||
| 5. | SW to trail, then trail between swamps, Alar cruises by, I think Peter is visible in the distance. Tom is hanging in well. Jump off trail and cross swamp - crowd (w/ Peter) going below first knoll, but the going looks rocky so I opt for over - much better footing up there. | ||||||
| 6. | Off to right, bounce of stone wall corner over knoll and straight in. Many folks got off to left. I think Peter & J-J in the mix at this time, not paying as much attention to others, beginning to navigate on my own, albeit in a crowd. | ||||||
| 7. | Decide to head left on trail, pop out and note most folks going straight, but Peter is off in the distance, so I guess it was not a bad idea. Cross road about 40m back of Peter, Ross Smith just in front of us. Peter opts left up the hill, we go straight up to corner of fence and navigate straight through. No sign of Peter , though so he must have had the smarter route. | ||||||
| 8. | +01:00 | Got one contour low, saw distinct knoll further down and ran past the knoll near our boulder. Had to backtrack | |||||
| 9. | Easy, no recollection of who is in front of us, but there were 3 or 4 folks. | ||||||
| 10. | Out to trail junction, opt to take trail south and around the green. Partway there the woods don't look so bad so we cut the corner and slide up the hill through zero visibility pine and pop out right at control. Alar just leaving ahead of us. | ||||||
| 11. | Alar gets away faster, take to the trail and cut off on major corner, Alar well up the hill already. Get into control with little problem, most everyone got ahead of us here. | ||||||
| 12. | Overtake Ross past control and head straight for wall. As we get closer to control I see Alar coming down from above a little ahead of us. He and a few others just in front. | ||||||
| 13. | Open it up downhill figuring its going to be a group sprint around the spectator loop. Not much spectating though except those in our own group of about 5. Alar leading the way. | ||||||
| 14. | Following the leader.... | ||||||
| 15. | Wherever he may go.... | ||||||
| 16. | Grabbed some newtons for the road, felt a little slow going in, but pretty easy none the less. Perhaps I was just concentrating on choking my newtons down.. | ||||||
| 17. | Minor crowd getting off left, Alar behind I think... We nail it straight on. | ||||||
| 18. | Trail around until the green clears out, run out to top of slope, look both ways - see control just back to my left. Sprint over to have Alar drop down from above apparently amused at having beat me to the control... | ||||||
| 19. | Beating a hasty with Alar & Co. we hit the trails and catch sight of Peter and Tim Parsons just heading out of sight. Gain ground on them on the road and a little more when they seem to drift left and we pretty much head straight in to control. | ||||||
| 20. | +02:00 | Come to the realization that if I can see Peter, Tim and Alar in front of me, then we are doing better than expected. Push it here to try and stay with this pack for as long as it lasts - which isn't much as the climb to 20 sucks the life out of me, I pause too long for 4-5 glasses (damn tiny ones) of water and a slow slog up to the top of the hill - everyone is gone... damn, damn, damn... | |||||
| 21. | Get into our own groove, downhill trail run, cross stream and climb above cliffs and smoothly into control. | ||||||
| 22. | +01:30 | Downhill to trail, figure on cutting when the wall peters out, but its really vague and we cut too soon, hit bigger trail north of where we want to be and correct back into control. Not out of contact but wasted time with extra effort | |||||
| 23. | South of big swamp, cut the corner through indistinct, pop out on trail to see the Peter, Tim & Alar caravan headed to 24. They are at least 2-3 minutes ahead now, likely out of reach. | ||||||
| 24. | +00:45 | Back to trail and cut in over knoll, we go south around knoll, if we had cut sooner, we would have saved 30-45 seconds | |||||
| 25. | +00:15 | I knew this cliff, but since it was thicker near the top, we slipped south a bit around the thicker veg and into the clear woods. | |||||
| 26. | Tom starts to follow a younger guy (don't know name, came in 8th) down reentrant, I call him back to opt for following the spur down which is more direct. We try to quietly slide in and get ahead of him, but he catches us exiting... | ||||||
| 27. | Last weekends ultra (53km) catching up with me. Legs go completely dead on the downhill. As we hit the paved road just before 27, I tell Tom to go for it and try to outsprint the young guy in front of us home. I got nothing left here.. | ||||||
| 28. | +00:30 | I get right of the line and have to come back in through some brambles. Damn... | |||||
| F. | Slow run in with everything I got left, but I don't think there is anyone very close behind me, so why worry. Will I finally make it into the top 10? YES, just barely... |
Total Time Lost - 00:06:00