Ha! Won my first paragliding race last Sunday at Marshall Peak in San Bernadino!
Tracklog on Leonardo
SoCalXCLeague Results
It was a small but at the same time big achievement. Small because there were only six competitors! It was the second day of our monthly SoCal XCLeague competition. Most of the pilots just flew Saturday due to the weather forecast not looking as good for Sunday. And it was a small race too, only 20km due to overcast conditions, and my winning was just 45 minutes.
It was a big achievement for me because paraglider racing is a complex sport, and getting all the right pieces together is not at all easy. To do well in a paragliding race at any level, you need to get a lot of things right.
Gear needs to be familiar and prepared, you need to be relaxed and calm at the start, the first climb needs to go well to set your mental attitude for the day. Then you need to get on speedbar without hesitation and fly fast and straight, find a new climb every time you need one, and keep pushing right through the race. All while keeping yourself safe and not pushing too hard.
It actually amazes me that here in Southern California, one of the few places in the world where you can fly all year round at fabulous sites from the breathtaking coastlines to epic desert landscapes, paragliding is not more popular, and there are so few pilots that want to improve their skills by racing each other and seeing how they do
A major realization from flying in the Rat Race was that the top pilots are so close to perfect in their flying, that over the course of a 80km and maybe 3 hours of flying, making just five or six extra turns while thermalling may cost them a place in the results. This quest for perfection, even if you are not aiming for the top levels of the sport, appeals to me a lot because by nature I love to do things where I have to continually optimise my performance to try making better decisions every time I fly.
The importance of decision making became evident to me on Day 3 of the Rat Race, when I was tired at the end of the race, and made a very conservative flying decision. Instead of getting in close to the terrain and flying around a hillside along the courseline, I turned back to find a thermal with some other pilots that were climbing. I missed the thermal, and so flew even further back along the course to find a safe place to land in a field with about eight other pilots who had all sunk out. I would easily beaten all of those eight pilots (ten percent of the whole field) had I simply continued on around the hillside and glided just two kilometers more along the course line. There were lots of landing options, and I had a safe amount of height to reach them. It's just I wasn't flying in a way that was optimal. In a race, as opposed to recreational XC flying, you push yourself just that little bit more to improve.
In the race that I won, I had a perfect start, climbing straight out from launch to a good height. I tagged the start and got straight onto bar for the glide to the first turnpoint. After that everything happened like in a textbook. Identify the next thermal trigger, fly to it and climb, glide on bar, find another thermal, tag a turnpoint, and do it all again. It was like all the learning I've been doing about cross country flying for years and flying competition tasks finally came together in quick succession.
Tracklog on Leonardo
SoCalXCLeague Results
It was a small but at the same time big achievement. Small because there were only six competitors! It was the second day of our monthly SoCal XCLeague competition. Most of the pilots just flew Saturday due to the weather forecast not looking as good for Sunday. And it was a small race too, only 20km due to overcast conditions, and my winning was just 45 minutes.
It was a big achievement for me because paraglider racing is a complex sport, and getting all the right pieces together is not at all easy. To do well in a paragliding race at any level, you need to get a lot of things right.
Gear needs to be familiar and prepared, you need to be relaxed and calm at the start, the first climb needs to go well to set your mental attitude for the day. Then you need to get on speedbar without hesitation and fly fast and straight, find a new climb every time you need one, and keep pushing right through the race. All while keeping yourself safe and not pushing too hard.
It actually amazes me that here in Southern California, one of the few places in the world where you can fly all year round at fabulous sites from the breathtaking coastlines to epic desert landscapes, paragliding is not more popular, and there are so few pilots that want to improve their skills by racing each other and seeing how they do
A major realization from flying in the Rat Race was that the top pilots are so close to perfect in their flying, that over the course of a 80km and maybe 3 hours of flying, making just five or six extra turns while thermalling may cost them a place in the results. This quest for perfection, even if you are not aiming for the top levels of the sport, appeals to me a lot because by nature I love to do things where I have to continually optimise my performance to try making better decisions every time I fly.
The importance of decision making became evident to me on Day 3 of the Rat Race, when I was tired at the end of the race, and made a very conservative flying decision. Instead of getting in close to the terrain and flying around a hillside along the courseline, I turned back to find a thermal with some other pilots that were climbing. I missed the thermal, and so flew even further back along the course to find a safe place to land in a field with about eight other pilots who had all sunk out. I would easily beaten all of those eight pilots (ten percent of the whole field) had I simply continued on around the hillside and glided just two kilometers more along the course line. There were lots of landing options, and I had a safe amount of height to reach them. It's just I wasn't flying in a way that was optimal. In a race, as opposed to recreational XC flying, you push yourself just that little bit more to improve.
In the race that I won, I had a perfect start, climbing straight out from launch to a good height. I tagged the start and got straight onto bar for the glide to the first turnpoint. After that everything happened like in a textbook. Identify the next thermal trigger, fly to it and climb, glide on bar, find another thermal, tag a turnpoint, and do it all again. It was like all the learning I've been doing about cross country flying for years and flying competition tasks finally came together in quick succession.