POM Day 3: WRE Middle Distance

Well today was the important WRE day. Same area was yesterday but starting on the other side of the road and so had a marked road crossing as part of the spectator section in the arena.
Wasn't feeling super fresh this morning, but was happy enough on my jog to the start and warming up. Thought I got myself calmed down and ready to go in the start blocks and was feeling confident and in control heading off.

Well that lasted for probably 2 minutes. Think I was about half way to the control and then Poof nothing was matching up! And the panic set in pretty quickly. I was having a hard time keeping my compass work steady and felt like every time I looked at it it changed direction on me. I honestly have not a notion of what was going on and was getting annoyed that I couldn't see what I thought should have been an obvious 6m high rock!! Ended up finding control 5 and 8 before finally making it to control 1. Well pressure off, there went my clean race, now just make the rest clean! Well I did that for the rest of the tricky controls in all the rocks. Some how things clicked back in and managed a flow through controls 2-10 with only a few small bobbles. Was pushed along with a few other girls that caught and then passed me as well. Then comes leg 10-12. Was with another girl at this point and saw her just ahead of me leaving the control off to the east. Didn't see a route to the right I liked. Looked at the left route which I really didn't like. So straight it was! And this is where I'm going to point out that it would have been VERY useful to have known that in Portugal the cultivated fields (yellow with black dots) are fair game! To me that is an out of bounds symbol and therefore was going wellish to the trees pockets just before the fields and then skirted the fields and battled my way through a TON of darkish green thorns to get to the control when had i run through the fields it would have been a dead easy entry into the control. Well we live and learn I suppose, but lost quite a bit of time there for that grrr. Not to bad through to 12 and 13. Was then a bit high for 14 which was silly! I saw people running away from that control when i was running to the start. Through the spectator control in the arena and straight down the hill into the rocks again. I was fairly clean through the last little loop apart from a few places getting stuck on top of rocks I didn't realise were actually that tall on the other side.

Overall came back and wasn't happy about this race. I knew I can run much better than this! But hey we all have bad days and all we can do is look at them and take them as a learning lesson. I was supposed to learn something from this, and I think I have. That one must be focused from the start and don't just go running off thinking "its a huge rock I'll find it!". Also that part of an international competition prep I should find out if there are things that are different than at home.

Spectator control for Elites

Go control - after a long hill!

Arena for the last three days

Rocks!

British Sprint and Middle Championships

March 24th and 25th brought the British Spring and Middle Championships in York. There was a bit of a panic over accommodation and transport to start with as EUOC was not going as a club. But that all got sorted...eventually.

After a long car ride down to york and a night sleeping in a tent, we woke up to it being quite foggy out as we made our way to the Bus for the sprint. The sprint was help at York University and consisted of heats in the morning and finals in the afternoon. I ran the Women's C heat in the morning. It was a course of 2.4km, 20m climb, 19 controls with 28 women racing, but only the top 6 would make it into the final.


I made such a muck up coming out of the start. I had not mentally gotten into the task at hand and just was worried about running fast and having a good run. Not the way you want to start your first British champs event! After punching the first control though I was able to sort of restart my thought process and really got into the map afterwards. Was feeling much better! Flow was back and a bit of speed and was planning pretty well. Over all I wanted to be happy about this race but knew I needed to change how i dealt with the start that afternoon. Here are the results W21-C, and as you can see there was a very strong field won by Linnea Gustafsson current World Champion.

Running into the GO control!

After some food and a pep talk from Colm it was time to race again. Racing in the B final took some pressure off me but was still nervous about the start. Got there in loads of time and just played through my head what i talked to Colm about. when I heard the long beep of my start I was ready to kick butt. I had a fairly clean race with only a few hesitations and it landed me in 12th in the final. Feeling thats not to bad considering I was sick all week. And it was my first WRE run!


The Sunday brought the Middle Championships at Strensall Common. It started off being a VERY foggy morning as we drove to the event, but just as we were turning into the park the sun came out and the fog burnt off giving us a lovely day! The warm up map to the start I think was key today! The map was flatter than I have ever seen, which was emphasized by the fact that the course climb was 0m, yes zero! never seen that before! However, the warm up map also showed that it was going to be tough underfoot with all the ground being fairly tuskety and full of pits. I was having a hard time putting things together on the warm up to the start. I tired my best to again run through my head what Colm had said yesterday and it worked for getting me to the first control, even if it was slow. I still wasn't feeling fully in the race though. I had hit the first two controls ok and my mind switched over to thinking about outcome and how I needed to race well today. What frustrated me the most was I knew when on the course I needed to switch my train of thought, that in order to do well I needed to have a clean process based run. I finally was able to switch over after control 7 and have a good run. I ended up placing 22nd in W21E



I think the thing I learned the most this weekend is that I have actually put in time to train and that I am actually at a higher standard than I first thought I was. I was a bit intimidated by running against the elite Brits. But that is gone and I'm looking forward to bringing my A game to the JK and being up there in the mix.