Gypsy Glen Hill Race
It had been warm and sunny all day and I was expecting to overheat at the race, even in just a vest. But by the time the race started I was soaked and it was still bucketing down with rain. Thankfully it was still warm or I would have completely froze... The race started at a good pace, and I led the pack round and out of the field, towards the hill. For 2km we tempoed along at a comfortable pace until hitting the steep climb up for the next mile. I slipped back into 3rd, chasing down James W and Gavin B, but keeping ahead of Espie, who I've never managed to beat.
Ran the entirety of the climb and tried to make a move into 2nd on the top. However Gavin came straight past again and opened up a good gap. No worries, I decided to keep my ankle safe (had twisted it badly the day before) and focus on keeping ahead of Espie. Annoyingly had to pause to open 2 gates but I kept well ahead and even produced some pretty nice splits on the run back. Finished comfortably 3rd, with a decent session in the bag. All top 4 of us broke the record too so definitely not a slow race. Looking to do more of these in the preparation for the summer's races that will almost always involve some brutal climbs!
(too close to Gavin to get a stand alone picture)
Scottish Long and Relay Championships
I always planned to race this weekend but I also planned to train through it like any other small event. Therefore the dilemma arose where I wanted to run hard and orienteer well, but I would almost certainly feel knackered before I had even started. This was even more of a problem with the climb involved - 460m in 8.2km for the Long - this would be steep even for a hill race.
A good warm up and a positive state of mind was then pretty much all I could do without a taper in preparation for the Long. My goal was to be clean even if it meant taking things down a gear, but in the end though I lost at least 4mins and went and pretty much full capacity for the whole race. I took the win on M20 and was only beaten by 2mins to Harrison (M18), but I'm still very frustrated at my poor performance. I felt under pressure right from the start and took a poor bearing leading to a parallel error, losing 1 minute. I then regained focus though and had a really good middle section, only to catch up Will, red zone, and miss out on an obvious routechoice and mistake some white forest for LG... Really not good enough but at least it's pretty clear what I need to fix. Quite looking forward to doing so in the next few weeks when I'm back home in Deeside.
The relay on the following day went quite similarly. It was a brutal head to head race for the title with Nixon (FVO) on the last leg. I led the whole way but allowed a good 30s gap to escape half way round when I went too far into the red zone and didn't take a bearing properly. After this I could neither navigate nor stay on my feet very well. Legs were beginning to give in on any climb, but a final effort up to pre-warning at the end saved us the title and EUOC finished off the main relay season with a final win.
Some locally made cheese was a great prize, and some more time in Balmoral was always nice, but still not happy with my orienteering at all. Quite possibly a result of my orienteering neglect earlier in the year, which is now showing up as an absence of the essential skills that I seem to be missing whilst racing. However, at least there's still time to fix all this. No restraints from competitions for the next 4 weeks until Jukola means I can surely fix my technique in time for the summer.
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