Another breezy day with weird clouds. We canned the flying pretty early on and worked and went to archery. Then back home to pack.<\/p>\n
I am off to Piedrahita tomorrow morning for the British Open. It’s my first big comp and I have to admit, I am pretty nervous. I entered the comp because I have been working on my flying generally, to try to improve my XC skills. It seemed to make sense to have a goal to work towards to help me to do this in a more structured way. So last November I decided to wait and see where the venues for the Opens were and if one of them appealed to me I would see if I could get an entry. I am not doing the full series, only the Spanish round.<\/p>\n
Spain is the obvious choice for a place to go and I have flown Piedrahita unsuccessfully in the past (it was April – the snow had only just cleared from take-off), so I thought it would be good to give it another go. I didn’t fancy the other rounds and for me this is just a way of dipping in my toes, to see if it’s for me.<\/p>\n
I am under no illusion as to how well I will do. If I come in the top 75% I will be thrilled. Basically, my ambition is not to come last. So what do I hope to get out of it?<\/p>\n
1) I want see if comps are for me. I went to the Chabre Open, but we only flew three tasks, each of which was cancelled after I was only part way round. I am an ambitious person, but not very competitive, so I’m not really sure if I will enjoy comps and if I have the killer instinct (probably not). However, I seemed to have a different attitude to flying at the comp last year and it will be interesting to see how I feel when in this one.<\/p>\n
2) I want to fly abroad in the summer and see how that goes. Before France last year, I had never flown a paraglider abroad in summer. It all seemed a lot safer on a hang glider. However, it wasn’t so bad last year. I’ve been working towards this comp by flying in the Pyrenees and pre-Pyrenees in spring time, which was pretty rock’n’roll at times. I also did the SIV course to get more confidence on the wing,\u00a0 so we’ll see how I cope in the rough stuff.<\/p>\n
3) I’d like to land each day and feel that I learnt something. I have a de-brief buddy lined up and I hope to talk though each flight with Dave to talk about how I did, where I made mistakes, etc.<\/p>\n
4) And most importantly, enjoy the food, friends and the sunshine!<\/p>\n
Wish me luck…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another breezy day with weird clouds. We canned the flying pretty early on and worked and went to archery. Then back home to pack. I am off to Piedrahita tomorrow morning for the British Open. It’s my first big comp and I have to admit, I am pretty nervous. I entered the comp because I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}