Billygoat, Ward Pound Ridge, 43rd place. My watch unfortunately seems to have forgotten about this run (and everything that preceded it, though the rest was already downloaded). Very clean run, but not very fast, so well down in a tough field. Clean in the sense that I pretty much always went where I intended to, although in a few cases where I intended to wasn't the best choice.
Just kind of with the crowd as far as #3. By the time I got to #4, I was with Marketa, Yevgheni and Yekaterina. On #5, I didn't like the looks of the green on the straight route (although in review it looks fine), so I took the trail route around to the left, came through the complicated stuff, and nailed it, arriving at the same time as Y&Y, so it didn't seem like too bad a route choice, though SA says I lost time. I still saw them off and on for the next two controls, and Marketa was pulling away. #8 was another time loss, because I didn't climb soon enough, and got caught up in some pretty dense laurel, but the going was great once I got to the marsh. Trail run to #9, and I decided to skip #10. This was a mistake in two regards. One was that #14 was a much better skip, to the tune of nearly eight minutes. The other was that I exited the way I came in, which did give me a view of some other people on their way to #9, but it would have been faster to go NNE through more woods. I passed Janet as I got close to #11, which was a little disconcerting since I had been seeing a lot of her (yes, she was on the Pygmy, but I was seeing her at consecutive controls of mine). Jeff was leaving the clusteras I came in, and I spotted a group containing Phil and Glen not far ahead of me, but I had already skipped and they were about to.
SA didn't show lost time going to #14, but it probably should have, because my right-hand route that came in the back door was surely worse than the left-hand one. #15 was basically a straight shot, and I did spot Marketa up ahead at one point, but she pulled away again. I spotted her and oxensd ahead of me on the Saeger loop after the water stop, and got just ahead of them at #21 because they appear to have gotten a smidge low and caught in the barberry. It was my turn on the way out, I should have stayed above the thorns instead of wandering through them to get to the trail. The three of us were together until shortly before #23, when Marketa dropped off the trail much too soon. I got there first and was out on my own until #24, when Marketa came in right behind me. She passed me when we hit the trail going to #25, but she stopped short and looked at a distinct tree in the picnic area before the road. I was charging ahead to the correct tree, and she had enough oomph to get there ahead of me, and I definitely wasn't able to stay with her on the run in.
My back was still a bit sore, and I suppose that slowed me down some, but mostly I was just slow. Nice weather for sure, fantastic woods and map, and a nice course, though it looks like the skip choices were pretty limited. A splendid time was had by all.
splits