1248 - Day 2 of Swiss O-Week. This was the first Alpine area. Lots of grass meadows, I don't think we even ran through forest for more than 50m in total. There was also one section of limestone pavement (technically wicked) with 4 controls that was absolutely bizarre. Very slow running, even slower than Hedianga with high grass. Had a lot of grass and undergrowth growing through the pot holes and hiding lots of smaller ankle-breakers. The weather however was dismal (It's still following me around Europe!), with constant rain throughout making for some very muddy conditions, particularly towards the end.
I had a good start, although not spot on for #1 and #2. Caught my 3-min man at #2 however and dropped him by #4. Then took a wrong route choice, never saw a small track through some pavement area and ran round instead. Lost about 1.5 mins. Chris Forne (+3 mins) caught me towards the end of the leg and promptly ran away to finish 3rd overall. Next loop went well, although I purposefully walked on the steepest hills to spare myself. Then into the pavement, then a massive 'straight-up' leg (course planning was iffy) where Francois Gonon came RUNNING past (58 mins for me till then, 43 for him, he got 2nd). I was still going okay, having caught and passed a few other HE competitors in the technical pavements. Then a final loop on top of a hill before the steep drop. From 17 to 18 we dropped 150m in 400m. I only landed on my a** about 10 times on the descent. From here it was a very technically unchallenging downhill back to the finish in a straight line. Very boring, and I ran out of glycogen at this point. :-(
I expect I lost about 5 mins of speed towards the end. Otherwise about 5 mins of technical mistakes, mostly errors in the circle apart from the one RC error.
Results
I finished quite high up, probably as a result of the physicality of the terrain. 33rd out of 71, with 138% of the winner, Benno Schuler. Beat all the Belgians, and came within 1.5 mins of beating Nick Barrable (sooo close!). Still not a great run though, so I know I can do better.
Map with OCAD tracking course. The tracking device says my total distance was 11.309km with 619m of climb! Ouch. So much for the official climb.