Just finished up with John laying out the three sprint courses in OCAD for this weekend. I'm excited about it, because they looked like real sprint courses when they were printed out. Up 'til now I'd been setting with hand-drawn lines on black and white copies of the map, and there is something to be said about the look of the final map. While I wasn't pleased with everything about the courses, I was pleased with the way alot of things came out. I was more pleased than I expected to be, anyway. There were some legs I looked at and thought -- "that's cool". Of course, there were some where I thought "that's lame (but necessary)"; hopefully the competitors will think more of the former than the latter.

We got about 6in/15cm of snow today, but given today's melt rate and the forecast, I'm pretty optimistic about it being gone for the races. The ground, tho, will be much softer than when I did test runs, so I'm a little concerned about the WT. One area that was fine when I went out there will be messy. Given who is coming, I'm borderline optimistic about hitting on at least two, but I'm not sure which two. And hitting all three is a possibility. If I were setting for an IOF field, I'd be pretty confident, and since I think this is a valid thing to do, especially for training, I'm not too worried. In any case, what's done is done.

I think I'm excited about this because I think I'd have fun running these races. Hopefully the competitors will. It is an interesting area, and I think it has much more potential beyond these races. I hope I've found some of the more interesting legs, but I know I've left good stuff for others. I mean, I get lost in this place just driving around (without a map, tho). While the area is different from European urban sprints, some of the course setting tried to capture problems I've encountered in such races.