QOC Beer Chase!
It was fun to have my work trip coincide with this event in particular. Great atmosphere, great crowd, and a starting field that rivals most NREs in the US. Lots of fun to see many friendly faces from my QOC days.
The race itself was super fun also. It definitely took me a while to get into the map and understand what was going on. After the opening beer, I was mostly running in a pack with Kenny, JTor, Will Hubsch, Josh Sanchez, and Sergei F. We were zig-zagging a lot and not really spiking a whole lot of controls.
On the second loop (Loop N), we split up on the way to the 2nd control. I took the trail around and lost some time to the pack going straight. I worked hard to close the gap and was already feeling pretty tired (and burpy from the beer). I got to #3 on this loop with JTor and Ryan S, while Kenny, who had been leading the pack, ran off in a strange direction. I was still with Jon and Ryan at #4, but then they also disappeared in a strange direction, and I was suddenly alone. I was pretty sure there wasn't any forking, so I decided I must be in 3rd place on Blue, well behind Joe and Jordan.
I basically stayed alone the rest of the way, taking safe route choices on the vague legs in the north part of the map and also towards the end, when the three beers were definitely starting to have an effect. Ended up 3rd on Blue, happy to not have to chug a beer head-to-head with anyone at the end.
Lots of fun! I need to work on both my running speed and my drinking speed.
RG:
http://routes.qocweb.org/cgi-bin/reitti.pl?act=map...