Day 5 - Chasing starts

The final day of O-Ringen is a chasing start course. The start times are based on runners cumulative times from the previous 4 days. To be included in the chasing start, runners must be less than 2 hours behind the leader of their category.

This meant that Dylan and Alex qualified in the H20 Long category. Brad made it for H14, Salome made it for D14 and Zoe made it for the D17-20 category.

Unfortunately it rained heavily in the morning, creating the mud bath we were used to. Below is a picture of the mud on the finishing straight and Sarah (a bit to the left) running in. The number of people you get down the finish chute in 2 min is the number we have at a whole event in South Africa

Dylan started 4 min ahead of Alex. Alex had a runner 15 sec behind him. Dylan made a mistake early on and Alex was ahead at the 5th control. Dylan caught up and spiked the 6th control. Alex made a small mistake and saw Dylan leaving it. Alex then went on to make costly mistakes on the 7th and 8th controls. Dylan made a mistake on 10 but did enough finish well clear of Alex. He ended about 8 min ahead for the 5 days, and 4 min quicker on the course.

Brad had a really good race to finish in 77th in his incredibly competitive age group. His time was 30.55, only 7 min behind the winner. 77 competitors in 7 min!

Zoe finished in 43:38, only 11 min behind the winner. This got her 5th for the day which is her best result for the week.

Salome had a solid run. Her time was 54.23 which put her 131st in her huge age group.

The last thing you want to happen is lose your shoe on the finish sprint. The mud gets a bit sticky.

The rest of the South Africans started day 5 in a slightly different way. They didn't make the 2 hour cutoff so they started their course at 15 second intervals, still in a chasing order. This meant there were many people of similar ability on the course at once.

Craig had a good performance. He finished in 71 minutes, without any major mistakes.

Sarah and Jessica Hemer started the D15 course about 6 min apart. This time Sarah came out on top with a time of 48:43 and in 158th place. Jessica finished in 53:40 in 171st place.

Jessica Lund finished her D16 course in 47:32 to finish in 150th place.

Richard got around the H45 K course in 57:55. This put him in 173rd place for day 5.