WMOC Report – World Masters Long Races

A couple of days after the city-based sprint races, the World Masters moved into the forest and the “upside-down” terrain of dolinas. These are big depressions, and that means very big – up to 5 complete ring contours – that’s 25m down in any direction. See the route gadget file. Added to that the temperature had been rising as the week went on and touched 35 degrees on finals day, which led to many of the better qualifiers who got the later starts, blowing up in a big way. At least the local fire brigade had been called out and their “emergency” task was to hose down runners when they finished, something that was appreciated by all.

Best SLOW result came from David May with 18th place on M65 – his best ever position in a World Masters. Diane Leakey was unable to follow up her brilliant sprint result; after a big error on the second control, the heat got to her and she finished 38th on W55. The surprise qualifier for the A finals was Andy Robinson. Nursing an injury he jogged the qualifiers, but was error-free to just scrape into the final, where with an early start and the same relaxed approach he made 54th of the 80 qualifiers. Alan Leakey was also on M55 and had qualified much higher, but that meant a later start time. He was well ahead of Andy at halfway, but then two large errors led to his run tailing away to finish 64th.

David May had the best result, but the best performance of the day came in a B final. Chris Robinson was surprised not to make the A final and put it down to being in a tough heat. Determined to prove she should have qualified and despite a late start time she stormed round in an error-free run for a clear victory in W55B. Chairman Don was another who dropped to the B final where he came 30th. Maggie and David Roach were both very happy with the runs and high positions in C finals – 5th on W50 and 23rd on M55 respectively.

Report by Andy Robinson.