First Place!!!

We had an awesome weekend of racing at the Great Plains Qualifier on Saturday and the Groovin in Grove tournament on Sunday.  During the Qualifier, we took first place and won every match of the day against some pretty good competition!  Overall, we were 15-2 in the heats during five races that were the best three of five (once a team wins three heats, the race is over).  Our best time Saturday was a 17.3 second heat during the last match of the day against Sneak Attack.

Division 5 Results:

1.  Breakin' Out
2.  4 Dog Flight
3.  Full Speed Ahead

We took first place again on Sunday racing in S2, which included Sure Shots B, Sneak Attack, and Fetchin Frenzi.  We started out winning every head in the first round robin, going 12-0.  We got greedy after that when we had a virtual lock on first place and started pushing it to see if we could get an even faster time.  Needless to say, we raced very sloppy and went 2-7 during the second round robin, but held on for first place again.  We did manage several 17.3 races a few 17.2's with a new best time of 17.238.  We still have a lot of room on passing to improve, so I think we'll get a little faster yet when we all get a solid run.

Zio ran several times in the low 4.0's with tighter passing, but didn't quite hit 3.9 again.  His turn held up reasonably well for him, but I need to work on his striding (if it's possible at this point).  We'll go back to basics in practice now until we race in OKC next month at Burnin' Up Bricktown 2.  It will be nice to be able to stay at home for this one!

Qualifier Excitement!

We are three days away from leaving for Dogs Gone Wild U-Fli Great Plains Qualifier in Grove.  This will be Zio's third Qualifier and the most exciting!  The first one we raced in (with FSA in 2011) was in what is now Division 6.  We were the only D6 team entered that year, so it was really an automatic birth to the Championships.  Last year, we were racing in D5 (still with FSA) at the Qualifier, but Dogs Gone Wild was the only other team competing in that division, so we had an automatic birth into the Championships by running one race (top three advance).

That brings us to this year with Breakin' Out.  We are still in D5, but there are five teams competing for the three positions that will advance.  We are the top seed, followed by Sneak Attack, Dogs Gone Wild, FSA, and 4 Dog Flight.  Racing will mean something this year and I have a lot of confidence in our team.  We ran really good on Saturday in Bonham and I have no doubt that we'll be smooth and consistent in Grove this weekend.  Barring injury, we should make it to Purina Farms in August for the Championships.  We'll be happy to finish in the top three, but a first place ribbon would be sweeter.

That being said, we are really looking forward to Sunday too when we get to race and be competitive with Sure Shots B team, Sneak Attack, and the others in our grouping.  I think it's conceivable to hit the 16's if all four dogs have a great run and pass during the same race.

Geeky

As many can attest, I can get a little geeky analyzing videos.  After watching Zio run during the first races at the last tournament, I did a frame-by-frame analysis to determine he was running 3.9's wire-to wire.  I took that one step further and broke down the video into tenths of a second and compared it to his 3.953 second run in 2011.  Amazingly enough, he was very close to stride for stride, if not slightly ahead.  I've heard you can use the old Windows Movie Maker with some modification to do a split screen.  Now THAT would be cool to compare in slow motion!  I just don't think I want to spend the time to learn how to modify it to use the old WMM that way.