Training Log Archive: Anna

Event: CSU Lynn Woods event + training opportunity
 

Straight line was 6.3k.

I had a really awesome run today!!! I did everything right that I was trying to do! I even had 3 people pass me in the woods, and each time I saw someone, I focused on doing something technical instead of paying attention to them. For context, people distractions accounted for ~10 min of my errors at West Point.

Giovanni's courses were really good for me since I need to work on simplifying, so it was really good practice. I feel ready for Team Trials!

Corridor-O with Anne, Julian, and Madison. We did pretty well at the beginning and then lost contact, so we just jogged to a trail and came back. Fun!

Alexei's verdict on my course write-ups from the Billygoat and West Point:

"Good things:

1. When you are concentrated you deliberately and systematically read ahead to the next leg and check you exit direction. This is very important! Keep doing this like you did at WP races.

2. You can perform all technical actions (map reading, terrain reading, compass bearing) accurately.

Bad things:

1. You pay too much attention to other people while on the course. In your case it's a disaster! On the WP middle you lost time mostly (if not all) when you got distracted by others (#1, #3, #7). To heal the problem you should concentrate more on technical work while on course. Like as soon as you see somebody say to yourself "Stop! Look at the map! What should I see next." In other words, every time you see somebody in the woods you should do something technical (no matter what) and do it deliberately. Also you can try psychological training at home. (I can tell you some exercises you can do)

2. You are getting into the map too slow. I mean at the start it takes you awhile before you get to your normal orienteering flow. To deal with this I would recommend "technical warmup" before the start. You should try to a) read a warmup map (of the start area or similar) and b) try to look around and imagine how warmup area would look on the map.

3. You read just separate features but not the situation on the map (especially in the vicinity of the control). The exercises for this I told you last time I sent you armchair exercise map (BTW if you run out of the armchair exercise maps I can send you more).

4. This issue related to the #3 above. While you are running a leg you read point features on the map (boulders, cliffs, trail bends etc.) but more effective is to see lines connecting the dots. In future you should change the way of thinking: you should think in terms of lines not dots! Not suddenly but slowly we will work on it in future.

A separate issue is your physical shape. You are saying that you feel to be in a good physical shape. But your results tell me that you are still quite slow in the woods.

About the upcoming Team Trials. It will be a very tricky terrain. Everybody will be slow there and everybody will be making mistakes. The winner will be whoever makes fewer mistakes than the others.

So, first of all you should do exactly the same that you did at West Point middle. Don't try to run faster. If you need to stop - STOP and read-read-read map. Concentrate on the map reading! Not on how fast you are moving. If you see other competitors concentrate on the map reading."

My thoughts: I agree with everything he said about my technique, except I hadn't realized I was getting into the map too slowly. Luckily for my people problem, I did a reeeeally good job focusing on my map whenever I saw competitors at Lynn Woods, so now I have an example race to visualize between now and Team Trials!

Fitness: I'm actually not in that great of shape compared to where I've been in the past. I could probably run a 21- or 22-something 5k right now, and I ran a 19:40-something right before I got sick. I just feel good about my fitness because it's been coming back more quickly than expected:) The *good* news is that having this pointed out to me will make me rely more on my technique! And I'll be super focused!

Red - Splits

Event: NEOC: Mt. Misery
 

Distance is Garmin distance. Apparently I ran pretty far out of the way, because straight line was 4.3! I wish I could find my ANT stick so I could look at what happened.

Did a lot of things right, mostly reading ahead and exiting in the right direction. Did well ignoring people in the beginning, but then I got distracted. Need to get it together before team trials!

Warmup with Ian.

Trying to wake up my legs.

Green - Splits

Around the reservoir and back.

In other news, I'm almost at the end of my training plan! Better make a new one!!!

Event: CSU Park-O #3: Boston Common
 

I think this was 4.6k straight line.

Giacomo did a good job of hiding controls behind trees, and I really had to simplify to larger features to get to the right tree. Fun! I felt like I went out too hard, but my mile splits were 7:49, 7:51, 7:38. So that's good. I didn't have my HR monitor on, but this was definitely tempo effort. Yay!

My legs felt really really good before I started, but then my head felt funny when I actually started running. Maybe it could've been the champagne we had for the interns' last day at work?

Looking at ranking points today at work:

My 2 best ranking scores from the weekend were better than Spike's 2 best ranking scores. I think this is a better measure of who orienteered better than how many times we each beat the other one.

My best sprint score is almost 5 points higher than my best non-sprint score. Yikes! I don't think this is because of fitness, since I've done at least ten 25-30-min minute workouts already this season. I was less consistent for sure in the middles, mostly due to seeing people and getting distracted. Planning to work on that this weekend.

C • Reading between the lines.... 5

Consumed 30% of my recommended daily intake of iron in the form of chocolate:) It also happens to be high in vitamin C, which makes it get absorbed better!

5x0.9k loop, with 1:30 rest.

My garmin was dead and my other watch was full, so I just did it based on time.

The first 2 were about 6 minutes, and the last 3 ranged from 5:45 to 5:55. I didn't go too-too hard since this week is a recovery week.

Visualized Sunday's middle, backwards. Got through all 16 controls.

Note, just in case: my left foot's been hurting a little, towards the front. On my to-do list to order new O' shoes tonight.

Mayyyybe revising my schedule. This week was going to be a down week, but I may have run less than 35 miles last week since lots of the warmup was estimated, and my legs felt surprisingly fresh this morning. I'll see how I feel.

Found some yummy chocolate-blueberry candy that's relatively high in iron. This is fantastic!!!