Friday Task 4

Today we were ready to fly and were rewarded with a very nice 74k race to goal. We've been forced to use a lower launch which is much more challenging for the competition. It can be quite difficult to get 135 pilots into the air in time for the start cylinder. Fortunately, my ranking was high enough that I was able to get an earlier launch window than many other pilots. This allowed me to have enough time to work my way up to cloud base, but I still ended up 3 kilometers from the start cylinder at the 1:40 pm start time. Pilots were so fast today that I was never able to catch up and finished in 34th position. It was a very fun race with turn points along the front range of the mountains and also out in the valley near the city of Denizli. I really enjoy it when I can stay high for the entire race and that's just how the day was today... Got some great video of the start gaggles and the fisrt part of the race...

I've been hanging out with the British contingent quite a bit this week, and they are doing very well in the standings... with one man, currently in first place over all, which is a great accomplishment. He is a very consistent full time test pilot for Ozone paragliders and flies many competitions each year....

Final day is tomorrow. Weather forecast says we are going to have a bit more wind to deal with so don't know if we'll get a task off or not... either way it's been a very successful comp with 4 excellent days of racing.... I've learned a ton this week about what it takes to compete at the highest level in this sport... I've always thought it mostly mental in the past but this week has really highlighted the physical requirement as well... My legs definitely aren't in shape enough to accelerate my glider as much as I need to stay with the strongest pilots here - something I need to work on!