Training Log Archive: Psuba

Event: SLOW Night-O 2016-17 #2: Wimbledon Common
 

Wimbledon Common Night-O, long course.

5th/44

Fun little run, if a little short for a proper training.
Nevertheless, fairly happy with most of my run, one large mistake and three smaller ones (one I only noticed upon looking at my track). But mostly navigated well and selected speed fairly well - could have pushed more, but this isn't really an O-shoe and the mud and standing water out there especially on the tracks meant I was slip-sliding all over the place, and wasn't wearing gaiters which mattered in some areas of undergrowth (admittedly only a few places) so wasn't comfortable with full speed.

5 - this was a 3 minute mistake, basically ran past the path junction that was my planned attack point. I felt that I was in the area so got into the vicinity of the control by using the ground features around, but they were a little vague and that's fatal in Night-O. Ended up going back out to the track, locate the junction and found the control on proper bearing.
2 - This was one I did not notice while running, 90deg mistake out of 1, really stupid in hindsight and could have been a much bigger mistake have I not corrected gradually using compasswork. The positive of this is that I seem to start ingraining some basic O-techniques into my subconscious and this saved me here from a much bigger time loss.
3 - Lost about 25-30sec as again did not see the path junction, however I should have instead followed the stream when it deviated from the path. I corrected fairly fast again, but in order to move ahead I need to move beyond just not making big mistakes (khm, control 5...) and reduce these smaller ones too
12 - decided to go around but fallen on the mud and then lost concentration so looked for the control too early in the ditch. I finally believed it would be a bit further on, wen around the vegetation and there it was - but took me about 45s more than it should have.

So about 4,5m timeloss on mistakes.

Long - Splits

Event: TVOC Regional Event & SCOL3
 

Shotover Country Park, Brown course.

Got there in time this time, just as the rain stopped but still cold and muddy out there. Managed to not do a proper warmup (especially mentally) as chatted to JP before the start about the map yesterday. That did not disturb him too much clearly as he set a blistering pace and jaw-dropping time relative to the whole field (including me). I joked that he'll run past me quickly regardless if I start in front and it took him the whole of leg 1 to catch up the 2 minutes - if I wasn't making a big mistake it would have been halfway through to control 2 that he would have taken over, probably on the climb.

Nevertheless, enjoyed the course and the race hugely, quite a good course, with lots of route choice, some detailed terrain and challenging both navigationally and physically. I imagine people who knew the area benefited quite a bit on route choices, it was the first time for me here. It was especially good fun as Jan caught me up at 12 and we had a ding-dong until 18 with each taking the lead for bits as the other had slightly better micro route choices from time to time. We took a completely different route to 19 with him staying up and me going straight (down/up/down/up) that ended with me losing about 40 seconds to him and I didn't see him from that point until the last control (he made a mistake on that one). It was enjoyable since we seem to have similar running speed now. Unfortunately I seems that my orienteering itself is more shaky, especially at the beginning of the course which is why he caught me up in the first place.

So - like I was writing, I enjoyed this hugely and would have been happy to run more. As a plus, this is the first time I can remember for a while where in a proper terrain O-race with climb I managed to run all the hills without breaking down to walking - even if it wasn't always a very fast run. I did however have issues in the areas of undergrowth where I need more strength to keep pushing/running through.

As a negative though, and especially in hindsight, many of my (micro)route choices were questionable or downright bad, so my orienteering technique is still quite shaky in what is a properly detailed terrain, and where it was solid it took me too much slowing down to get it right. I wonder if some of it has to do with my eyesight now? Given I did not see some alleys yesterday on the map, and today there were 3 controls that were within visible range but I stopped, hesitated before spotting the control thereby losing time when it was right in front, it is slightly worrying. Or maybe I simply need to be more agressive. Quick count: 5x stopped too early to check, 0x ran past and had to double back. So probably yeah, need to be more agressive especially where there are catching features.

Event: Oxford City Race
 

Oxford City Race, Mens Vets (course 2).

10th/64 Mens Vet, 11th/90 on the course http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ouoc/cityrace/2016/results/...

Had a bad night of sleep so overslept, and late for my start again! Lucky that I did not consider this a target race, and with the last two weeks erratic training it was always going to be a write-off from a speed perspective. I was hoping to be in a better place mentally though, rushing did not help at all there. Not a huge amount of chance in the courses for mistakes, most of it was fairly simple with the majority of opportunities for mistakes being route choice ones. Now - wherever there was a chance to make mistakes, about 50% of the time I did make them. Starting with one for #1 which I overran - then several sub-optimal routes in the tricky areas.

My lack of focus is best illustrated by the long leg that happened to mostly coincide with the route I had to take from where I parked to the assembly - I did see many fellow runners going down there incl. Richard so I knew I was going to have to go there. And so when I ran the leg, I have no idea how I ran past that street and ended up taking a longer route around... Looking at the splits and thinking through the routes about 3m timeloss, of which about 35s is a navigational mistake to 1, the rest is route choice, is about right. Many of those route choices consisted of safe/easy route choices which were as a result of oversimplifying the route so that I can concentrate on running - clearly it does not pay off in this environment. Without those mistakes, but not accounting for hesitations etc. and with current speed then, 4th place would have been a realistic aim. The 3 guys at the front of the field have speed that is just not within my current capabilities (which I knew anyway).

At least there were sections where my speed was OK, so I can take away some positives in that respect - this race would in fact be the starting point of making a comeback into reliable running to kick off the winter training (well not fully, that will come after next weekend). There.

MV - Splits

HR control (145) jog to try and loosen the legs a little and start to get used to continuous run again...

Hotel gym start treadmill hill progression run.
1km - 5m/km 0% elevation
1km - 5m/km 3% elevation
1km - 5m/km 6% elevation
500m - 5m/km 0% elevation
500m - 3:30m/km 0% elevation
+ little cool down.

Felt a lot more difficult than last time and not surprising given the hectic training (or rather lack of) in the last 2 weeks.

circuits

HR control (145BPM) cool down jog to get takeaway.

Trip to the airport after work, was printing off a map of a past event near Luton and planned to re-run that as a night training after, but it got so late that I decided it would not be worth it (would have made it near midnight to the hotel with work the next day). So a long stretch now without proper training...