23rd September - JM5L race

This was the first proper race back in the season for me and as such i was slightly apprehensive. The event was at Ainsdale dunes over near Southport and it was on sand and thick and low vegetation, which is one of my least favourite terrain types. Also I hadn't been feeling well up till then and had spent Saturday in bed instead of helping run an event. Now that my excuses are out of the way...
The course I was on was JM5L and was 6.8km, climb unspecified.
The start of the race was a complete nightmare, I got my angle from the start wrong and ended up going to control 2 instead of control 1, however from here I knew where I was and could work my way back. Having already been to number 2 that was pretty easy but then number 3 proved to be another problem. This first section was over extremely complex and slow terrain and probably cost me about 10 minutes in total.
The next section of controls, number 4 to 16 was over quicker terrain in the southern area of the map and here I felt more at home with quick running between large attack points and then careful navigation nearer to the control being the main feature of the running, I felt confident over this section and was quickly able to settle into a nice and consistent runnign speed, something which i have been working on over the summer whilst training.
The last section of the course went back into the complex section at the north of the map and this time i faired much better and made only slight navigational errors with the last two controls being comparative flyers.
Overall posistion 4/5 in JM5L, time of 66 mins. The winner achieved 48 but 2nd place was 62. As a result I am overall happy with this race.

Liam