O-Cup Chase

Terrain: forest, deep valleys
Weather: sunny and crisp, perfect
Format: 3min/6min delayed starts for 0-2, 770m marked prologue, plus one Thomass box of 7 controls

The second O-Cup race returned to the usual Dundas Valley, with a start at Canterbury Hills. The extremely deep valleys / grooves in the terrain make for some tough route choices if one wants to avoid climb. Not sure if it was the best choices, but I executed them very well. I found myself doing a lot of dog legs though, which isn't the most exciting, but at least you know where you're going.

I started my race with 6:00 already on the clock, and unfortunately my untrained legs no longer allow me to stay up front with the elite men like last year, so I got through the prologue gasping and panting at the back of the pack. Leg 2 was a long but fairly fast run on a big road. I saw a few people choose to take off right a bit earlier than I planned, but I changed my mind when I saw that I could stay on a contour and go around a large hill instead of going over it to get to Control 2. I nailed it.

Route Link

Then it was down into the valley for a long run along a river, past C, which I would get after entering the box from 3. Taking this route had the advantage of seeing the earlier runners coming down a cliff from 3 to get to C, so I knew where to start going up. Then dog leg number one back to C. D was further down the river and up a huge hill again. Then back down and a climb on the other side to get to the only legal entry point to the western part of the map.

Trying to minimize climb, I went after F at the top, which was a fairly flat run with easy attack points. Then I took a big trail for a bit until a long hill ended, so that I jumped over to a more southern trail to get to the far-flung G. I didn't want to climb at all, so I descended into the river to get it from there, which probably slowed me down a bit. But the contours on the side of the river are so prominent, that it was an easy find. Dog leg number 2 was a backtrack in the river to get to E. Some other people chose to go up top, which definitely would have been faster, as I got stuck between the river and a cliff a few times. But reading the contours was much easier from below. I nailed E and climbed back out to get back to the other side of the map and punch 3 again (which meant another dog leg past D!)

The next leg was just a long slog across to the easternmost part of the map, and I was exhausted. My legs wouldn't move. For dog leg number four, I re-ran the big road from leg 2, but I was almost 15% slower the second time around. Control 4 was hidden in a gully coming up from a river, but again, the contours are prominent and easy, so I nailed it no problem. Ran across the plateau and back down into the river and up the other side for 5, then a "quick" uphill for the final control and a real sprint even more up the hill to the finish.

I have to be very happy that I hit all the controls perfectly and moved efficiently between them. I had told myself that in my condition I can't afford to waste time and distance and energy. I mostly avoided the dreaded climbs on the course, so I'm thrilled. 

Unfortunately, this had to be the worst handicapped race for F21. First there was the staggered start with handicaps 0-2 held back 6mins, so the (3min) gap between F21 and F35 was immediately huge, added to the fact that we're the slowest of the 0-2 in the first place. Then 3 of the 7 box controls were on the other side of the map, so automatically I had to get at least one of them, while anyone on handicap 3+ could just stay on the near side the whole time.  In 36th place overall, I was the 1st F21 back, haha.

So not too many points this time, but at least I can be proud of a totally clean race, and how often can we say that?

--Distance: 8.36km
--Climb: 387m
--Duration: 1:18:21 [1:24:21 on the race clock]

--Place: 36th
--Points: 15

--Series Standings: 27th