SS 1 Man Relay. Christchurch. Course: Relay 6.8 km
2nd BooYa
We need more of these, technical relay/mass start races. Think I showed some proper relay experience on the first loop picking the right people to get in behind and also picking the exact moments to not follow someone (namely Chris when he was making a mistake which I thought could have been a split)
Got in a nice pack early with Tane and Chris who was running at what seemed like a nice easy pace, although I was struggling early on to read the map. Did one piece of bad following when I went behind Toby to number 4 after Tane split off down the track, but controls were close together but put in a big effort to 5 to make sure I was on Chris and Tanes backs again. Tane had a split at 7, and I pulled Chris through 8 after he was wondering off, with him and Toby from 9 through to the track on the way to 13 when Chris headed into the dunes and Toby disappeared - me thinking it was a split when they were actually stuffing up, got 13 and had to wake it up which I didn't think was right, after this came through the map change thinking bloody hell no one around must be way behind, and was asking Ed how far down I was when I noticed all the maps were still there and he said I was in the lead, I asked if he was taking the piss turns out he wasn't.
Got to the triangle and still no one from the last control so had a bit of a lead, spent most of the 2nd loop not believing it and being quite cautious, lost a bit of time on 5, (this is the area that is apparently dodgy - but this was entirely my fault for not following what I was doing and then checking out the parrallel re-entrant before moving on to the next one) Lost a bit of time at 7 with a similar error, got in there and thought it could be a parallel error so stopped, then checked one (even though I was confident it wasn't it) before going to where it was. Started to struggle in the soft sand going from 10, still thinking something must be wrong or must have been passed by now until Toby came charging up behind me at 12, he took off without me seeing which way he went but I got 13 right in front of him and could sense he was putting the hammer down, tried staying with him to 14, but he was to fast and out of sight just after I punched it, tried pushing hard to the last control incase he made an error, which also caused me to get a branch up in my face that hit my mouth and cut my gum above my front teeth so had the taste of blood but couldn't put this metaphor to use and by the time I got to it he was at the bend to the finish, knew I wouldn't be able to catch him but then paniced about who might be behind, was absolutely dieing on the sandy track, but stoaked at the finish when I realised I was actually 2nd. 20 sec down on Toby and 2min and 3min up on Chris and Tane before the gulf sea back to the rest.
Felt similar to Nationals sprint, in that the run didn't feel like it deserved the result, but I never really made any major mistakes, orienteered like you should in a mass start and used a lot of speed control
Still felt like shit, but heel was no real problem today