Saturday, March 17, 2012

Aeros Winter Race, task 2

Yesterday the conditions looked beautiful. When we arrived on launch at 10 AM, the birds were already thermaling and we had a breeze straight on the ridge. There was a thick haze, but that doesn't seem to mean that it's stable here.

We got a ridge racing task with one turnpoint out in the valley before goal. For the second day in a row, I managed to get myself in a less then optimal situation at the start gate. I was flying separated and when I hit a solid 3 m/s, I thought I was back in the game. Not so, because you almost didn't need to thermal today. 5 km before the first turnpoint, the leaders were already flying back. Ouch! I realized I had been way to conservative and started cruising the ridge as well. But the damage was done. I arrived 13 minutes after Christian Ciech in goal, who won the task with a 54 km/h average. For them it was 86 km of ridge racing. I realized it too late and there was no way you could make up any lost time.

Good to get some competition in before Bassano, seems I had to shake off a winter sleep...

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