Back from Europe where I ran some races including Jukola, WMOC, and EOC/WC. Highlight was final day of EOC (B classic final), where, even tho it wasn't quite my best WRE day ever, was still certainly my best international race ever. Spiked all but one control, and the boom was in the 10 seconds range. Did lose time on route choice. This was in difficult Danish terrain, and I was absolutely physically shot from all the racing (I've taken two days off from training, which is a first for me in a long time).

I was very happy with all my EOC forest races (as opposed to the sprints). I had visions of being in last by about 10 minutes. The sprints prove I'm slow (or was physically shot, as I have had one decent sprint, at least based on WRE points), as I would have been substantially in last even with perfect runs (and also add some circumstantial evidence to my hypothesis that sprints are more physical and less technique dependent). I still think they are fun races tho, but have continuing concerns about 3 hours of logistics for 12 minutes of race.

It was clear that I was by far the slowest person in the forest, even amongst the people I was beating. Technique can only go so far. In the post-mortem meeting, I made the observation that "speed trumps technique", based on my observations. The others disagreed, and I wasn't happy with the comment as written, but know what I was trying to say, I just need to try to articulate it better. A better phrasing that comes to mind is "speed rules globally, technique locally", and I even made the comment that technique trumps speed in the US. Also, in the US, technique can trump much faster runners because 10 minute errors (or even 4 minute errors) can be common. At this level, 10 second errors are bad, and a 2 minute error a downright disaster, so this is all so much more complicated and I will need to think it thru better. Back to my speed, it is definitely down, I think due to the strenuous schedule and minor wear injuries, which doesn't bode well for Laramie. (But I will have my metal and punk CDs, and a big heart).

Other highlights include my run at Jukola, which I was very pleased with, and a couple of runs I was happy with in Austria. The definite low point was WMOC, where in my mind I qualified for the A final but was relegated to the B final anyway because people in the other qualification heat mispunched. It was a joke, I thought I'd never get over it, but realised that how the data was interpreted by morons does not change the actual data. Good ol' semiotics. I was over it in 2 days.

Hopefully some stories and maps from these races on these pages soon, including some pics from the EOC relay champs. But the team trials are coming up, and I am going thru the motions of mental prep to make sure I have the best races possible, so there may not be alot of time for these updates.