Race Evaluation
28th Annual Billygoat Run:
cmorse
| 1. | With the crowd up the hill, picked up Peter approaching the first trail on top and followed him into control. My split 3s faster than his even though I punched behind him - but I take my split before punching, he must take it exiting the control. Slow on rocky hillside, but thats to be expected. | ||||||
| 2. | With Peter, Kristen and others - my split again a little ahead of Peters even though he punched ahead of me. | ||||||
| 3. | Still with the Peter train, though sensing their pace probably too strong for me to stay with all day given my lack of conditioning... | ||||||
| 4. | Took the L fork - chatted w/ Peter on the way up the hill - he said he hadn't decided on which fork - but I think that was BS and he was just trying to figure out if I was jockstuffing or actually navigating - and in this case I had decided on this option independently even though I did hesitate momentarily leaving 3 when most everyone else seemed to be taking the R fork. | ||||||
| 5. | Peter & Kristen (and others rejoining from R fork) now starting to pull away. Hooked up with David Onkst who went R and never even saw that the leg was forked. Pretty much ran with David the entire rest of course - mostly due to feeling that it would rain soon, my vision would go to hell and I could at least follow his bright yellow shirt and that our paces were similar. | ||||||
| 6. | Peters line, but not with Peter anymore... | ||||||
| 7. | +01:00 | went to high on hillside to R, had to correct back downhill | |||||
| 8. | +01:15 | hit marsh in green, thought it was marsh beyond control, turned back, but quickly figured things out even though a number of other people were headed farther out that way | |||||
| 9. | +00:30 | missed seeing the trail out to road, must have parallelled it to the R - popped out near ruin and down to field. David pulled up early in the corner, I ran up the hill into the reentrant calling David up with me. | |||||
| 10. | +00:30 | Had originally thought 10 looked to be a good skip (or as good as any), but the field looked so runnable as to make that a moot point, so saved the skip for later. Got slightly L into the woods in the barberry and a clean line out of barberry took us slightly beyond the control and had to come back | |||||
| 11. | A couple faster, younger runners ahead of us but they ran past flag and we got ahead of them | ||||||
| 12. | pretty much on Peters line from here to 14 | ||||||
| 13. | |||||||
| 14. | depressed to find we were in like 32nd place or something. | ||||||
| 15. | +00:20 | got distracted by wall segment to L before correcting - David spotted it first | |||||
| 16. | +00:30 | R of Peter's line - a bunch of folks going higher - including David, but eventually went back L and got it fine - was hesitant to strike out on my own as running solo would certainly be slower, but wasted a little time staying in contact with the pack even though they were off line | |||||
| 17. | pretty clean downhill run on the line. | ||||||
| 18. | +00:30 | Peter's line to trail, but then we got above the rocky reentrant and had to cross down and across - but almost right into control - | |||||
| 19. | +01:00 | David and I discussed skipping 21 - didn't seem too good to me, but at this point, not too many others looked promising either. Trail sucked and slowed a bit reading terrain approaching the platform. Must be Billygoat Kharma that the control with my initials this year was a Kolbottnar... | |||||
| 20. | Slog up the hill, but it was over relatively quickly and the run across the top was nice - we went R of hill top rather than Peter's line. Headed down the other side David misread reentrant and yelled that we needed to go farther L but I knew we were good and got him back over my way and down cleanly | ||||||
| 21. | Straight down and nailed control - glad we didn't skip this one - decided to skip 23 instead... | ||||||
| 22. | +00:40 | trail run then in - I had my my compass on #23 though so good thing David was paying attention and corrected quickly when we overran to the boulder in the green above and beyond - quick correction | |||||
| 23. | wound up on top of spur above #23 - so close we might as well get it - which of course left #25 as the only viable skip left - though at the time it didn't seem that great. | ||||||
| 24. | +02:30 | contoured through steep rocky ground to trail - in retrospect we would have saved a lot of time/climb by going directly to trail, though when tired, running to trail higher up spur seemed like more work - just stupid thinking. Down trail to other end of knoll then spiked control | |||||
| 25. | skip | ||||||
| 26. | not much energy left, David pulling away - for some reason I was thinking there were 28 controls and leaving 26 couldn't find #27, but this run-in was similar to last years local course, so I quickly realized it was over - and ran as best I could. | ||||||
| F. | Spongy ground on the run-in prevented any kind of sprint, but I wouldn't have caught anyone anyhow. Finished in 28th place, 9 back of last year an nowhere near my beginning of year goal (15), but quite happy with the run - no major booms, and the minor ones often due to fogging glasses and misreading map/terrain - so I feel quite blessed that I didn't have bigger problems. And 90 seconds would have gained me 7 places to 21st, though there was a huge gap to 20th... Very fun run.... |
Total Time Lost - 00:08:45