Training Log: Thompass

Gorgeous one with Spenny, Wozzle, and José. They're still our there, but I didn't feel I had space in the mileage for the week.

Nice wee session, legs a bit meh on last few.

Difficult to get the timing right with all that's going on today but good run. Ticks a box.

Moving fairly comfortably first two sets based on feeling, then tried to press on a bit to 3:22-25s but fell a little short. No worries.

Couldn't get the header in the table to be sticky, but now as long as you are capable of counting by 5s, you can figure out which column belongs to which control.

British Relay Champs - 3rd

Bronze medal for the EUOC Wetty Bettys with Jim and Euan, no idea how that's happened. Absolutely chaos out there. Bit of impostor syndrome, bimbled around a bit but focused on being stable above anything else and did alright. Would've loved to be a few mistakes less to fight for the silver that the other two deserved, control 4 especially poor and between one and two minutes lost, but realistically I'll take this.

Have noticed that the mistake today and two of the three bigger mistakes yesterday are very short legs where I could be losing focus and not forming real plans beyond the compass.

Upcoming focuses:
- Focus and plans on very short legs.
Continuing focuses:
- Compass has been better but sometimes still a little loose.
- Physically pushing, particularly in middles.
- Safe and controlled starts to get into map.

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1: Wanted to use the path towards the control, but it was very difficult to see. Counted the two ditches and the large reentrant, was very hesitant but spotted the control to my right. 20 seconds is likely my hesitation plus first leggers going quickly.

2: I ran straight past it without seeing it. Didn't see the feature or the flag. Saw the shape of the reentrant ahead of me and turned around, didn't change my line because I felt I should have seen it. Correct guess. Another 50 seconds, not the best start, but I think I've realistically lost about 30-40 seconds here and the remaining is still the mass start boost. Depending on how outliers were calculated, this could also make the rest of my race look a bit better than my average when I'm navving alright and people have calmed down a bit.

3: Another 23ish seconds, that tracks. Quite annoying, I read the rough open and the stream perfectly well, but could not spot the control. Went past it hitting the path and turned around to try again, and there it was. It was just tucked right into the rootstock, didn't see it at all from the other end. Hesitating quite hard, but felt during the race that if I could stay stable in this early section, where I suspected where most people had made their big mistakes, I would be doing okay. Perhaps a bit too cautious.

4: This one is more regrettable than the rest. When I hit the path, I saw the field ahead of me much closer than I expected, and I thought things looked mildly marshy to my left, so I thought I had come to the left of my line and hit the path behind the control. Went for the attack accordingly and found myself by the road. Took a few seconds of head spinning, but got back on track. I am noticing here that my mistakes are taking a lot more time to correct than it looks like on the map. Lack of confident movement? Likely if I had hit it I'd still be a bit down, but safety was the strategy so can I complain? Should have aimed to hit the ditch high up and follow it down. Didn't occur, just went for compass down the hill. Not enough plan.

5: Good leg from me. Got help from the path to get me out to the obvious path, then attack after passing the crap on my right.

6: Actually a bit surprised I crossed that marsh, I thought I remember crossing two wee streams. But I saw it just about hidden in some bushery.

7: Not great on the compass coming up the hill, hit the ditch lower down. Was helped by the presence of other people coming in and out of the control.

8: Very good leg. Good line through the green on the compass, and helped by seeing people leave the flag.

9: Alright leg? Not sure, straight over the rough open might have been a bit better, but it looked terrible. Going around was decently quick, although it is a bit lucky that the ride was quite runnable. Hit and miss over the past weekend. Attack was cautious and met Nathan struggling with the control, he led me in.

10: Not surprised I've lost some time. Better options include coming up to the felled bit much earlier because it was actually quite runnable, or to go right of the line and climb up the fell that way, certainly shorter distance. Just got a bit stuck.

11: Time lost here results from poor compass through the fenced stuff. Very dense and unpleasant, got pushed around. Getting out to path, tried to stay on compass line while trying to work out where I've come out, and think coming through that green was a fair bit slower than the people who'd managed a straighter line through the white. Once I was close to path, plan was to hit it and come back in, felt more secure. Could seen the green patch by the path.

12: Firstly likely lost some time being on the compass rather than coming around the green blob through the white, people were saying that it was really nice. Attack from the yellow patch was also not so good. I hit a knoll without a control, and reasoned from the attack that I had to be to the right. Was heathery in there. Honestly hard to see a clear and obvious mistake here, it was a tough control, attack could've been better on the compass.

13: This was the easiest control of the course, that green patch stuck out like a sore thumb. No wonder I ran as expected.

14: Get to the path asap and back to the arena we go.

Already talked about my takeaways. I am still pro-safe start, I've been too unstable at the beginnings of races, which means the best thing I could do for that is to improve my confidence in my safe start. Hesitation is having too much of a bearing.

C • Quickroute analysis 5