The weekend started off with the Middle distance at York County Forest, north-east of Toronto on the Oak Ridges Moraine. My race was pretty sloppy as I wasn't focusing on the map well. The course wasn’t very difficult, yet I made several small mistakes of 30s to a minute. I attribute some of this due to the fact that I assumed the map scale was 1:10000 when it was in fact 1:5000. Needless to say I was over-running controls the whole course. Rookie mistake! I ended up in 4th place, approximately 5min behind the winner, Nick Duca. While I was fairly far back after just the first race, I was optimistic that my next races would go better and that I could still be in contention for the $100 prize. The map with my route and the results can be found below.
Middle/Sprint Terrain
Fast, open woods
On Saturday afternoon the sprint race was held on the same map. I was looking forward to improving on my morning performance and getting my technique sorted out. I had a clean race and was running fast throughout, and managed to get 1st place. I lost 20s on a routechoice mistake to control 10, but that was the extent of my time lost. Eric also had a good run, and ended up in 2nd place, 30s back. I managed to make up 3min on Nick Duca in the sprint, however I found out afterwards that the overall prize was based only on the middle and long, meaning the gap was still 5min going into Sunday.
Poison Ivy... :S
The long race was held at Eldred King Forest, in similar terrain to Saturday’s races. My aim was to run really hard the whole way and hope I could hold on technically. The first two thirds of my race was really good, I was moving really fast and smoothly and had lost very little time. Unfortunately things started to fall apart in the last part of the course, highlighted by a 2.5min mistake to 18. I came into the finish in 2nd place, 5s behind Eric! I was satisfied with the race but had no hope that I had made up any time on Nick. To my luck though, Nick made a large mistake on the second last control, in a vague area, and came in over 5min behind my time. I had won the $100! (Sorry Nick)
Overall it was a great weekend and it was really exciting to see Ottawa OC at the top of the results in both the sprint and long races. A very big thanks to TOC and UKR clubs for organizing the event, and for donating such generous prizes.
Posts
$100!! Cool! Fun post to read. Thanks for posting it.
ReplyDeleteFun to win loot. Way to go young guys. Sorry Nick ;-)
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you all like my idea to put some money for prices! Thanks guys for comming! Our next TOC event is November Training camp with a limit of 25 runners! There are 2 Sprint races included, I might put some good prices again! ;)
ReplyDelete