Terrain: urban park, snowy or icy trails, some hills and ravines, residential streets
Weather: Sunny, around zero
This was a super-sprint on a brand new map. Not sure why they picked this part of the park and not Earl Bales to the south, which is much bigger and has a lot more hills to climb. The winning time was about 20mins, and about 30mins for me, so it was quite short.
To make people run a bit more than usual across this tiny park, the Thomass box included two barbell controls, which are linked so that if you do one of them, you must do the other before proceeding to the next one you want. The two barbells spanned the width of the park, so the course had us criss-crossing more than we would have without them, so at least there was that.
Once again, I ran the first few point-to-point controls just behind the crowd of elite men, which really strokes my ego! I strategized fairly well on the barbells, choosing to do a bottom control, then two hilltop ones, then back down. I did forget to take a particular trail, duh, so added a bit of time, oops. Towards the end, I chose what looked like a shorter street route, but I had to go down to a creek, so I got caught up by several runners from my club getting there another way, which cost me a top-10 finish. At the very end, I got confused by some guys yelling at the finish control, and I thought I was on the wrong side of a river, stopped, and got passed by a teammate. Couldn't catch her at the finish! :)
Preliminary result puts me in 13th place, which at least gets me a fair amount of points back in my overall standings. All-in-all a pretty day in the park, but I'm glad I didn't have to drive more than 20mins to get there for this sprint.
--Distance: 4.6K
--Duration: 32:14
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