Larden Green 2012
This was such a fun tournament. I think everyone knows what an absolute Olympics fangirl I am, and I was gutted not to get tickets for our home games this year. Instead I’m glued to the television 24/7 watching all the coverage, so I was panicking going into this weekend knowing I would be missing some of the events. Cue DAB Radio purchase … thank goodness for that impulse buy, as it got us all through the weekend! The whole team was huddled around the radio between divisions – and even between races, at times! – and it was a little bit special to have us all crammed into a caravan, cheering for our athletes on Saturday night as they brought home all those gold medals. Immensely proud of being British at the moment.
The dogs also ran well this weekend. Kim was in Starters with Diva and Mylo, and we borrowed a Chilli Pepper dog in Scoot. A four dog Starter team, and they won all their races! It was a four team Starter division so we raced everyone twice (same format as a 7-team div) so very proud of all of them.
Dylan’s team had a bit of a shake up as we have some dogs returning to the team, so he was running over 9″. We tried to reduce any changes for him, so he continued running second, into Chip (or on the front when Chip was out). The dog running in third was different, but is the small height dog and one he’s comfortable with. He is massively overjumping over 9″ and his box has deteriorated, as expected … he takes a long time to adjust, especially as he’s been running over 14″ all season. However, we were able to get splits this weekend and he was running fairly consistent 4.7s (including my changeovers!) and I’m happy with that. If he stays at 9″, he should improve on those times and if he transitions to the new box ok I’d expect him to be running 4.5-4.6s. Which would be awesome! We came 2nd with a fastest time of 20.12 (OLYMPIC TIME!), so very happy.
Mollie finally got to compete again, with the new dogs we had the few extra we needed for three teams. She’s not as fast as she was when she was pulled at the start of the season, probably running about 6s now, but she’s consistent and having a blast, as ever. The team came 4th, not too shabby!
No idea what we’re doing for the Champs now as we’d only entered two teams, and unfortunately now have more than enough dogs for three! In some ways I want our “normal” team to go, as we have run together all season, but the dogs and the team are not consistent at all. But reshuffling the orders at this stage is a little late. We’ll see …