Orienteering race 1:00:00 [4]
shoes: Inov8 Roclite 285
A day for learning lessons.
The legs did not feel good on the warm up and I was starting the race with quite a negative attitude. The legs were confirmed on the first few controls (though somehow was equal quickest on 2nd leg). Third was scrappy contouring and sixth was a walk up the hill, I had seen muz and Simon, knowing I had already dropped time was getting cranky. Stuffed 7, couldn't make things fit.
The next few were ok and I joined Victor and Patrik for a few legs. Patrik disappeared and I was concentrating on holding Victor too much and ran with him to the 14th (thinking it was my 12th). Then a quick gel and out with him towards the 15th, stopped after 30 seconds, swore at my self and headed to the 13th (thinking it was my 12th) punched it headed on. First Simon then Muz went past the opposite way. The penny then dropped and I realised I had done things in the wrong order!
I started to go onto my actual 12th but my head was all over the shop and I had no idea where I was. Fumbled and fucked around finally getting there, by now I was having an argument in my head over quitting or keeping on going. I really didn't want to DNF/give up but could only think of my heavy legs and trying to salvage a good result for tomorrow. I thought if the Stingers relied on my result they would be stuffed anyway so it was a personal deciion. I kept bumbling through to 15 deciding to keep going on the way.
I got to 15 then looked at the leg and thought the 'smart' thing to do would be cut losses and go for fresher legs for tomorrow. Of course as the day wore I realised that had I kept going and finished the course in a reasonable fashion I'd still be maybe 20th - so a decent result. On the course all I could see was being of the tal end of the th field.
So the lessons learnt
- read your map, read the controls numbers
- don't focus on others, yes they can be used to your advantage but ALWAYS focus on your own races
- trust in myself that I am running well enough that even with a big error I can salvage something from races (especially long granite races where people can blow out)
- if in doubt, don't be and just keep going
- do not start races negatively. I should be concentrating on my good performances of the past two days , not thinking that those performances had fatigued my fitness
- harden the fuck up
Time to move on to tomorrow's race and the Canberra NOLs