GOALLL!!!! Task 5, Roldanillo Paragliding Competition

Day 5 of the competition, we are still at it and looking at another stellar day.  I'm taking a break from hiking up to launch, but after a bumpy bus ride, I think I prefer my own feet!

The task is quite complicated today (unlike Day 2 where there was an 85 km gap between turn point and goal!).   This time there are 7 turn points to navigate, and it takes longer on launch to input everything correctly.  We head south from launch for 10 km, then back north again to Roldanillo.  From there we cross the valley and dive back into the mountains for 10km, come back out, go back in again, and then finally finish in Zarzal after 46 km.  A short task, but it felt confusing on launch as our GPS didn't really like the way we had to program the task, to go in an out of the same turn point 3 times.  But, it turned out it worked great, and we had a great day out there.

The first turn point meant crossing a big canyon, so the whole gaggle got really high and went at it.  It looked like the Spanish Armada...I really enjoy seeing so many people in the air with me.  Sometimes I think it's just absurd that we can fit an airworthy craft into a backpack and just unroll it and jump off the hill!

The out and back sections of the course meant that there were always wings in the air in every direction.  This I think helped everyone do better, and the number of people making it to goal reflected that.  I mashed full speed bar a lot the whole day, mostly stayed high, and never had any moments of thinking my sky ride was ending.   At goal it was even hard to get down to land!  Jim finished within 5 minutes of me and so we both really enjoyed the day.   As always, it was HOT on the ground after the refreshing cool of being thousands of feet in the air.

For those of you looking at live tracking, I don't think it's working at all, sorry about that...it's not very accurate anyway, so oh well.

Results are HERE.  I am now 9th in the Sport Class, and leading the Women in that class!  It's exciting but I know I still need to have two more strong days.

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Phil telling me a good story while waiting for a ride up.

Hanging out in the sky above goal, finally getting to relax a little!