04 October 2006

Sprint at Chateau de Theix

Today we had a really enjoyable world cup sprint race around Chateau de Theix. With no qualication, it was a straight final with a really strong field. Most of the race was in some steep woodland with intricate rock detail, and the rest was in scrappy parkland with mixed vegetation and quite a few paths.
I had a fairly good race, and I am content with my placing (20th), but I was amazed by how far down I was on the leaders (almost 2 minutes). There were a couple of route choices that I was unsure about, and some of the mapping of the rock detail was either hard to read or a bit dubious. I lost some time on one control running through an area of large rocks mapped as rocky ground when the rocks were just as large as the one with the control on it. I also lost time on the hill running sections of the course, entirely down to my inability to run up hills. One 300m leg had 45 metres of climb on it and I really felt every centimetre.

Results up here, map to follow

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