Beechworth Day 9

Monday, 7 October 2019

The final day of our 'holiday' featured the Oceania Middle Distance championships.  With no more events left this was definitely my best chance to finally get a win and I was really keen to do so!   My plan was to use the fail-proof 3 step strategy.  Step 1. Start as fast as possible, Step 2. accellerate through the middle part of the race,  Step 3. Sprint to the finish.   And all without making any mistakes of course.    With tired legs and a sleepless night due to drunken wedding guests keeping everyone in my section of the hotel awake until 5am, what could go wrong?? 

As it turns out I did manage to start well - the splits tell me I  was fastest to the first control and I was ahead of Clare by a whopping 4 seconds at the 5th control.  For the next 7 controls I was just slightly behind as the lead changed hands between Clare and our other major competitor  - Martina (who won the Oceania sprint championships this year and pipped me for first by a few seconds in two races the easter carnival in WA).  

Clare's route is in red, mine is in blue. 

At the 12th control I regained the lead again - this time I was ahead of Clare by 36 seconds (due to a 1 minute mistake of hers), and just ahead of Martina by 7 seconds. Unfortunately that turned out to be the last time, as I lost 30 seconds at the very next control by misreading (ok, failing to read) the control descriptions.   Despite finishing as strongly as I could (including being fastest in the finish chute by 5 seconds), I ended up 3rd - 11 seconds behind Clare who was just too good all carnival and who won despite her one minute mistake,  and 3 seconds behind Martina.  On the one hand it was heartbreaking, but on the other it's actually really really fun to have such great competition!   By Australian standards we had a large field in our age group at this carnival - over 20 runners in our class - over half of them from NZ, and it turned out that with the exception of the Sprint there was at least 2 of the three of us on the podium in each race - proving that even though we are normally a small field when the NZers aren't here, we are a very strong one.  

This is Clare on the podium with her parole officer:

(actually part of the land we ran on was owned by the Correctional Department - so the presenter was the boss).   

Both Jett and Jon had good races today as well - Jett nabbed third place in a big field so it was great to see him up on the podium, and Jon was 2nd despite his injury from yesterday.  Zali's run was ok but not one of her best.

Our Australian team beat the NZ team overall in the ANZ Challenge which was nice (and made wearing our dorky yellow tops worthwhile) . Most of the team members were on their way home by the time we took this photo but it's nice to have a record of our efforts!

After the event we made our way to the airport, where I was finally reunited with Jon, Zali and Jett, and we had an uneventful flight home. Overall the carnival was really good fun. I had a lovely time staying with Clare and her parents, and it was great to catch up with friends from everywhere, including some new ones we made overseas this year.