14 July 2008

Very disappointing WOC sprint



WOC sprint final, 22nd place. Very disappointing performance and result. I didn't feel great warming up - legs felt a bit heavy from the morning and felt a bit tired and lethargic. Warmed up well and tried to get myself worked up. Guess I was slightly worried about the will there be a thunderstorm / won't there. I decided there wouldn't be and put on my racing flats. The thunderstorm hit me at number 2 and continued nicely for the majority of my race, including all 8 'technical' controls in the gardens. Picked the correct route to the first control. but I was obviously off the pace immediately, losing 14 seconds to the best. Started well in the gardens though, and when the heavens opened I was doing ok. Got a bit stressed coming out of number 4 and made a rushed panicy decision to go up and over which was a big mistake. Started to get a bit flustered but managed to calm myself down. Ran ok through to number 10, but I picked the wrong (longest but simplest) route choice to 11. 12 - 14 was simple, but I lost a few seconds on 14 on running speed. 15 I had planned, but then coming out af 14 I started to rush a bit, and bananad big style. Corrected myself, but that combined with the less good route choice anyway cost me at least 10 seconds and probable around 7-8 places. Dammit.

I let the storm over - affect me. The lack of grip was a problem, but it seems like my running speed in the technical part was ok - lost a little time running on the longer legs.

Need to think about recovery and refueling between two races in a day a bit more, especially before Thursday.

Summary- I was definitely one of the worst hit by the weather, but I should have dealt with it better. Very frustrating performance and result, but on the plus side, it is really positive that I consider 22nd a disastrous days work at the World Championships. The qualification was basically perfect, and I had the potential to take a place on the podium or even the bronze on the day with a good performance.


Splits here

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

glad you learned from it - as you say you have the potential to win given the right approach - and objectively 22nd in the world is not bad, hey ?