13th World Championships. Fri 19th July. Task 4

What can I say?
This is an enormous learning curve for me.
I never thought that pilots could get any better until I came here. The speed at which they fly, the light of which they make the conditions, able to fly in such weak flatland lift and leeside thermals is incredulous.

Today, without having flown further than some 30km in a task, I question my ability to fly at all!!  Frustration is starting to set in and after having just been retrieved and returned to HQ in the minibus to download, my startling 17km flight today was far from fun.

I tried every tactic today to stay with the gaggles. I executed persistence when struggling with shattered leeside lift on the hillside to get altitude, I hummed a tune and told myself to forget the race and just concentrate on make it out of the difficult spot I was in, I repeated my mantras, I searched, I scratched, I fought hard...all the things I had been taught to do, and still could not grasp that golden thermal to get me further down the course line, the others now out of sight aside from a couple of other gliders struggling as much as I was....

What to do? I am bewildered. Each day, I have been trying to understand how to fly here. I have been staying with the gaggles which eventually leave me for dust after flying faster, climbing efficiently, faster, higher....the hills don't work here, the flats are weak and unforgiving. I am a mountain pilot.

Not my best day. I am at a loss, and my moral is starting to slip into a black hole of oblivion where everything I have learned so far is utterly useless, whatever I try..

I am not enjoying this, I am not having fun.