orienteer race 1:16:49 [4] *** 5.9 km (13:01 / km)
10c
a clean run
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Now that we're home (by 6:30 pm, yeah! I have to work tomorrow :( ), I can add more details.
Goals today:
1. no mistakes
2. ignore Clare
We had to change our start times (earlier) and I was starting two minutes ahead of Clare. It was hard for me to ignore that. Didn't help that I missed my call-up and had to run to the start line. Bad start. Took me a while to settle down; I almost walked right past 1; chose a bad route choice to 2. After that, I said to myself: assume that Clare has already passed you. For some reason that calmed my mind.
Of course, I saw Clare as she was approaching 3 and I was leaving. Fortunately for me, I never saw her again.
Still, I had a a very hard time concentrating today, mostly because I was tired. I resorted to my old trick of talking out loud. Every time my mind wandered, I would say "stop! look at your compass!". Anyone around me must have thought I was nuts :)
I saw Mike again today on the way to 5, and told myself to ignore him. But that was a mistake. Because I suddenly heard another runner asking Mike if he was OK. So I immediately turned around and walked up to Mike to discover that he had just turned his ankle. Of course I was concerned, and offered to help him in. But he told me to go on. I did, but it was hard to stop thinking about him.
I was very tired towards the end, but I kept saying out loud "no mistakes". I managed pretty well. Minor (30 second) bobbles at 5 and 9, but that's it. So I'm very pleased with today's race; I give myself an A-.
Waited for Clare at the finish; turns out that I beat her by a few minutes today, and just a few minutes overall. Great competition. This could be a fun year. Don't know the other results yet, since we had to dash off to the airport.
consistency 9.5, time lost 0