We are what, less than 4 weeks from the 2024 Solo National Championships? I decided I better get back to an event and get some practice in. And boy am I glad I did, I sucked, I need to get some more reps!
This weekend was the Grissom National Tour, held just outside of Grissom Air Reserve Base in Bunker Hill, Indiana, where I lived and went to high school for my sophemore year back in the day. I headed up from St. Louis on Friday morning, taking a few work calls along the way and while I was on site.
I got there just in time to take a couple of practice runs. The practice course was a good example of what the Saturday course would be. No offense to the course designer, but that course sucked. Such tight turn arounds that left you with very little variation and no flow what so ever.
I ended up sitting in 4th on Saturday after the first day of runs, way off the pace of the leaders in CAM-C, including Dave the car owner. I was pretty miserable at the experience. The only bright side of Saturday, okay there were two bright sides: I got to announce for the first time in quite some time, that felt good and I got complements on the effort from a variety of folks. The other bright side was the weather, couldn’t have asked for a better weekend of weather in Mid-August!
Here are both Dave and my best runs from Saturday:
Chris Hammond Run 3 53.922 +1
Dave Whitworth Run 3 53.278
Sunday was a little better, though Dave wasn’t as close to the leader in CAM-C as he was on Saturday, I was happy to be closer to Dave and further up on the Index for the day (somwhere around 35 vs 76 the day before, 51 with both days combined). The course was actually ran in the same direction as Saturday, with a few of the turns modified to not be quite so restrictive, knocking off 5-6 seconds off the times.
Here is Dave’s best run from Sunday, GoPro Hero12 mounted on the front of the hood of the Mustang:
Dave Whitworth Run 3 47.585
I ended up in third for the weekend in the CAM-C class, Dave ended up in second.
On to Nationals in Lincoln Nebraska in 3 weeks!