POM Day 1: Night Sprint

After the classic event Martin and I stopped at lidl to stock up on food to power us through a night sprint in the evening! The sprint was held in the town of Gouveia. The womens elite had 1.9km (with the best route being almost 3km!) and 22 controls.

This race was interesting as it was SUPER misty and pretty much pissing rain the whole time. Jogging up to the start with Emily Kemp was actually a bit miserable! But Emily being her bubbly happy self, well it was just infectious! I was excited about running once I got to the start. (miss Emily wish I got to see her more!) Got to the start and all ready to go and you could just tell it was going to be interesting when your head torch almost just gives a line of dispersed light in the mist not actually allowing you to see things. But who cared this was going to be a bit of fun!

Well oh boy was I glad I did this sprint! Not because I had the best run ever, not because I was clean and just flowed. No because this was probably one of the trickest areas I've done a sprint in for a while and then to have it at night and trying hard to work out what was crossable and what wasn't! The area around 1 and 9 got me both times I was in there! totally could not understand what i could cross and what I couldn't. Think I picked the right routes up until 6 where I actually think the faster route might be to go round the bigger road that 5 is on and up at the end and not pick your way through the smaller streets like I did. Then 8 was a great stumper! well done to the planner, or maybe the person who built the city. 8 was wall inside corner. Well got to the stairs and right away knew it wasn't going to be there but couldn't figure out where it was, then i stood on the first step looked down and there was the control about 1.5m below me in a TINY walled ditch thing. So next question: how does one get down there?! Well knew it had to be along the wall but hadn't actually seen how far along the wall yet on the map. Actually ran past the small steps down and had to come back at it. Crazy! Then 9 i just couldn't figure out how to get passed the walls and what i could cross and not it was a mess! 10, 11, 12 no bother. Almost ran past the stars up to the spectator control 13, ops! Straight to 14. Then carried on along the road from 14, and up the hill on the road to 15 nailing the stairs. Probably should have continued up the stairs to 16 but came back down. Then the last few controls in the garden was tricky figuring out which hedge it was on what side of.

A lot of fun! And came 18th out of 38. And it was won by Emily Kemp which was very exciting!