WUOC 2010 – Long distance

James talking to Al and Adam at the finish with Angela in the background

I was the first starter of the Kiwis today. I headed out to the start with Al on the 2nd bus. I chose the early middle start block and was away at 10.26. I had a good warm up, didn’t feel too bad through the warm up map. The bus drop off was at the bottom of a big slope on the edge of the map. The warm up area and pre start took us up to almost the top of the slope.

My race started well. I nailed 1 and 2 although I was perhaps overcareful heading to 2. 2 to 3 was a long leg, just over 2km long. I went a little right and picked one of the few tracks and linked swamps. I spiked the control at the end too. By this stage I was starting to realise that perhaps I haven’t quite recovered from the flight yet. I felt like I couldn’t quite find race pace and I was trapped at a fast training pace. I was continued like this through to 11 where I dropped about 4minutes. I had caught Evan Barr from Australia and we made the mistake together. Neither of us was confident enough into the circle and paid for it. The last part of the course I really felt the heaviness of my legs. A small error on 15 didn’t help. At the end I finished up in 69th place with a time just over 97mins. Matt had a sweet run to finish in 61st. Some errors but on the whole a bit more accurate than James and I. While James finished in 63rd. James made an error right near the finish which moved him down a few places. Kate was 75th with a frustrating run, while Angela finished up in 69th too.

Long distance map

I’m feeling pretty smashed now. Had a huge dinner of salmon and pasta back at the hotel to refuel the body. I had my Orca compression tights on pretty soon after I finished to try and get recovered for tomorrow. On the way from 8 to 9 I somehow managed to stand on a wasp nest. I must have been stung at least 10 times all around my left ankle which is now looking very fat. I tried to jump into a marsh to get them off while I was still running. This didn’t work very well so I had to flick them off. I was running with evan at the time and he didn’t get too far away while I sorted out the wasps.

Al has been to the team leaders meeting and given us start times and info for tomorrow. We are quarantined in the hotel and an area out near the start tomorrow. Apparently there is supposed to be some afternoon rain so might have some slippery streets in the sprint.