| getting to work. I didn't need to bike home in the rain because Sam was nice and came to rescue me. We hit two birds by going shopping at the store right across from my lab, and while we were hanging out in the produce aisle ran into Torah Olafsen. This is not the first time I've seen her while shopping there. She says she lives like a block away, but I think that she's somehow following me. Oh, and if Erin reads this, Torah thinks that red bridesmaid dresses are too hard to find, and I agree with her. |
| West Point, day 2.
so I went out a lot slower, knowing that saturday's race wasn't something I wanted to repeat. The first cluster of controls was actually much trickier than I expect, and I came very close to making a fool of myself, I did hit the first four cleanly though, just a little more hesitant than necessary. Also, 2 may have been hung a bit off, so my exit bearing did not lead me exactly where I expected to be, so I slowed down getting to 3 too, in order to reaffirm that things were okay. The float bridge was super cool, so mad props there. 5 was just up and over, six was a clean bearing as well, keeping to the west of the green. I headed south out of the control on my way to 7, looping around the swamp and attacking up the hill. Didn't quite get far enough back across the hill and ended up finding the Red control before dropping over into the re-entrant. 8 I knew I needed to be carefulm, since it was sidehilling, and somehow I blew it anyways. I came across slowly, staying with the map, saw the big wide re-entrant in front of the control and then managed to drop down too low, forcing me to climb back up once I realized my mistake. took it straight and easy to 9, where I saw Patrick Shannon. he dropped low to contour straight across, but I headed out on a bearing trusting the mess of rock features behind the bag to act as a catching feature. This worked well because I hit it right on, though Will was still faster than me on the leg. Up and over the hill after 10, and then scrambling down the other side and coasting along to 11. the nicest woods to run in all weekend, I thought. John went out to the road to 12, but I stayed to the right of the line, thinking the road was too much added distance. I hugged the north end of the swamps and came over the saddle which made for an excellent attack point, considering that the control was fairly hidden. going to 13 I had a bad bearing, and hit the rocky knoll to the south first, and needed to adjust to get the control. 14 I took the climb early, then staying along the shelf for a little bit, but then decided the footing wasn't worth avoiding the climb, and went over the top. 15 I went straight along the line, and was really proud of how well I executed the route, checking off just enough and simplifying the rest. to 16 I arced to the east, around the clearing, and then hit the stream junction and came up the hillside from there, which made the control super easy. 17 I was careless and ran through the wrong saddle, and had to hop over the hillside to get the cliff. 18 and 19 were short and sweet. for 20 I decided to stay high, which made attacking the control easy, but I wasn't as quick as Vadim who took the road. 21 I was too excited and tried to go too fast, and ended up hitting the stream to the west of the control, but then it was just running hard to get 22 and the finish.
I was happier with my race, I still made little bobbles, but I was in great control mostly. I also think I paced well, since I was running less hard but had almost as good a time on the 10 k as on the 7.5 k.
Also, I thought that with a clean run I had a chance of overtaking Vadim for 2nd place.... and i did. I clearly need to run cleaner races still ( should spike them all) but progress was made. |
