Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

In Nuremburg for the night en route from Bad Harzburg to points further south - this involved catching up with James Allston (who lives here) the previous evening.

After a bit of early stiffness this turned out to be probably my best (or perhaps least-worst) run of the trip, although the degree of difficulty was not particularly high - a flat out-and-back along the north side of the river to the east of town (a bike route which involves almost no road crossings, a definitely plus at weekday peak hour). Moving reasonably well and saved all my spluttering for the end of the run.

I'm tempted to put my walk at Innsbruck to pick up the hire car as a separate session - it turns out the company has a somewhat idiosyncratic definition of "Innsbruck downtown", plus there doesn't appear to be any way to get out of the east side of Innsbruck station. It took me 45 minutes to walk there (with gear). Did end up getting there eventually, and set off for three days of Alpine exploration (which today included a couple of genuine Alpine thunderstorms and a mountain pass which is a one-lane road that's only open between 00 and 15 minutes past the hour).

C • Innsbruck Car Hire 2

A turning-the-legs-over session around Bad Harzburg which felt reasonable at the start but became a bit of a drag later on. Nice to get onto some of the smaller tracks around the place. Saw the Hoggs on their way down to the station (before getting the next train out myself and encountering various others in the process). Could have done without the news that I might be coming back to a court case.

Still feeling a bit tired, and slept a fair bit on the train. Now in Nurnberg for the night.

C • court case? 4

WMOC long final, which became a bit of a salvage operation once it became clear that a difficult couple of weeks wasn't going to finish in time to be 100% for this race. Was spluttering most of the way through the warm-up and not at all confident about the race, especially with more climb in store than in the earlier races (on the positive side, the early starters were coming back with good things to say about the forest).

Got through the first two cautiously but OK, before a long leg across into the first of the rock. Was caught two minutes going into 3 but that didn't worry me too much, and got smoothly through a technical section as far as 9 apart from one slightly iffy line on 5. Through this section I was bracing myself for the steepest part of the course through 10 and 11. Decided to go over the top on the fearsome-looking 11, reasoning that it was mostly on tracks and didn't involve a lot of extra climb beyond what was already unavoidable (bashing round a steep, rocky slope with yellow areas in a European summer was asking for trouble).

12 was my only mistake of any size, drifting a bit going downhill but picking it up in time to get out of it with 30 seconds or so lost. From there it was a case of plugging away through the remainder of the rocky section to 18. The back was starting to trouble me a bit by now and I was having trouble stretching out, although not as badly as on Thursday. Was unconvincing but steady on the long leg back to 19, and finished off as best I could.

There were no times faster than mine up when I got in but that state of affairs was never going to last for long. Ended up with 20th. I'd have taken that result at the start of the day, but from a longer-term perspective it was pretty disappointing. I'd have needed to be five minutes faster to match my 13th from last year, and that's probably a fair reflection of the difference between the two performances.

Recovery swim at the Bad Harzburg pool, slow and trying to stay out of the way of everyone else. Seemed to do me some good in loosening up but lower back is still tighter than I'd like going into a big race.

Rest day plans were changed a bit because the bus back from the pool was 10 minutes late which meant missing the train to Quedlinberg, so had a bit more of a look around Goslar instead, then headed back home to watch the Tour.

Another long day and didn't have the strength to come up twice in a row, struggling round in a pretty dismal physical effort - needed to be up for this and, without a lot to run for, wasn't.

The course distance (which implied a 5.2 min/km winning time) suggested very fast terrain but even the flat areas weren't super-quick (a bit uneven underfoot and quite a bit of undergrowth in places), and we got into some steeper and greener stuff out the back (as well of some of that much-loved feature of central European terrain in summer, yellow with green stripes) and tracks which were barely visible. Didn't really miss anything, just 15-seconders on 1 and 18, but was plodding throughout, and often worse than that - wasn't able to attack any of the hills, then my lower back muscles decided to go on strike just as the terrain started to open out after 13, leaving me to jog home. (I'm assuming this was fatigue in the soft ground).

Dropped two places which was better than I'd expected - have ended up qualifying 7th in one of three heats, which is a little better than 11th in one of two last year, with worse runs. This ought to give me some grounds for optimism that getting close to last year's 13th is doable if things go well on the day, but I'm not exactly confident about things going well on the day. I've now got 48 hours to get myself right.

WMOC, 1st long qualifier. A much tougher race than I was expecting - heaps of rock and large areas of low-visibility green, without a track network as extensive as one normally expects of central European forests. I wasn't totally caught off guard because the 35s ran early, and it was obvious from their times that we would be at least 10 minutes over.

I'm still coughing and spluttering a fair bit but am getting a little stronger each day. Felt reasonably good in the warm-up, but soft ground and climbing were still hard work - there wasn't a lot of the latter but was plenty of the former. Felt as if I was cruising rather than racing and also felt as if everyone else was going faster than I was (but the results suggest they were either on other courses or making more mistakes). Cautious through the technical sections from 3-7 and 12-15, which included some scary legs into small features in medium green, and also survived the steep slog through 10 and 11. Lost concentration a bit on the last control in the main green area, 16, and dropped a minute or so, also a slight wobble on 20. I'd tired a fair bit by 16, too, but got a bit of a second wind in the last 15 minutes.

Haven't seen full results yet but it looks like I'm 5th on the day, at least five places higher than I would have expected to be with this run. I suspect this is a fairly soft heat. It does give me the luxury of being able to back off a little tomorrow; the major objective is still to get myself into the best shape I can for Saturday, and see what place that gets me. Today suggests that a top-20 result is a reasonable aspiration, especially if I'm healthier by then.

This run did take quite a bit out of me - rather tired when I got back (and lost more fluid than I realised on a mild but humid day).

C • congratulations 2

WMOC long model, doubling as a continental terrain training session of sorts - ideally I would have preferred to do the second part of the operation on a different day but that's not the way things worked out. The main drawback of using a model day for training purposes is that the controls are usually rendered very visible by the crowds milling around them.

The terrain was pretty nice - the white is often very fast with not much on the ground, and even the green isn't too bad (although hard to hold a straight line in, as I discovered when experimenting with a risky route into a clearing). Rock also reasonably clear-cut, although as per usual, the most distinguishing feature of the charcoal burning grounds is the orange and white flag.

Not pushing it too much physically. Felt OK on the flat but not very strong up the big hill - but this hill was bigger than anything I am expecting to see during the competitions (except perhaps in the long final).

WMOC sprint final, 47th. Had a crack and was certainly further advanced and stronger than yesterday, but could only maintain full intensity for six or seven minutes when I needed to last twice that long; drifted out of it at the end, and ended up 20-odd seconds outside the top-half result I would have settled for at the start of the day.

The first control was such a giveaway that not a lot would have been lost by declaring it to be the start triangle, and the second wasn't much harder. It got a bit trickier after that but was nowhere near as technical as I had expected for a medieval town centre (the street pattern was relatively simple, and unlike a lot of German cities, I don't think we can blame His Majesty's Air Force for this).

Flowing smoothly through the first six. Lost 10-15 seconds through carelessly overrunning 7, at around the point where I was starting to flag a bit, and battling a bit from there. Also had an annoying 10-second shoelace stop on the way to 14 - first time for a long time this has happened to me in a big race (perhaps because it was a pair of shoes I don't normally race in).

I'd accepted before today that the sprint this year was not really going to be about the result - I probably needed another 48 hours recovery for that. The best I could hope for was to give myself a bit of a springboard for the rest of the week. Saturday is the main target now.

Good to see Tash and Hermann get medals (I hadn't realised that Goslar is Hermann's former home town).

Went into the town centre for dinner post-event, and saw two blatant OOB violations by open-race competitors....

C • 15-16 3

Event: WMOC 2012
 

This was a day for doing the necessary, which I did - just (although still waiting for official confirmation that I've scraped in - have had enough near-misses before not to take anything for granted).

Significantly improved on yesterday, probably at least in part through sleeping well last night - so well that I failed to notice the thunderstorms which went through at 2am (incidentally, these were predicted to the hour on yr.no 48 hours in advance). Certainly still a long way from being fully fit, something which was particularly noticeable on the only hill, but, after being 20% on Friday and 30% yesterday, I was perhaps 60% today. I won't be 100% tomorrow but hopefully won't be too far away from it.

As expected the course was a mix of town streets and school grounds/parks (some with an impressive control density - walking home I found one spot with eight controls within sight). Lost a bit of time on 2 through misreading some vegetation - maybe 20 seconds or so. Continued to plod on. Yuri Omelchenko caught me two minutes at 7 (and promptly made a small mistake but soon blew past me again). Clean for the rest, although one hairy moment with a head-on collision coming into 17 (no serious damage to either party).

I was a bit surprised it was such a close-run thing - the other heat also ran our course and did it before us, and their cut looks like being almost two minutes slower than ours. On the last results I've seen I'm 35th (37 make it) with four unaccounted for, but the printout time was late enough that I'm fairly certain none of those four can displace me (I expect all four will in fact be DNSs).

Tomorrow should be much more technical. Assuming I have made it through, I'll be almost first starter, but with a course that suits me better and an extra day of recovery I'll be hoping for something a fair bit better tomorrow, and perhaps posting a time for the big guns, of whom our field has a few, to chase. (That said, midfield in the A final would still be a decent result).

And perhaps I should be hoping that history repeats itself from 2009 - I also went into that week sick (although that time the cause was having eaten Australia's northernmost dodgy chook on a pre-event work trip to the Torres Strait Islands), narrowly got through sprint qualifying, and by the end of the week got close to a medal.

C • results 3

Looks like 35th (and a place in the final) is confirmed, ending (at least for now) visions of becoming the first person to narrowly miss a JWOC final, a WOC final and a WMOC final in the same country. (I suspect, but am not sure, that I may be the first person to contest a JWOC, a WOC and a WMOC in the same country - the only other possibility would be someone born in 1972 who did JWOC 1992, WOC 2001 and WMOC 2007 in Finland).

Over the last couple of days I've seen a bit of a WMOC official who is a Lizzie Ingham lookalike. Thought I'd seen her again this afternoon but this one was the real Lizzie (visiting for the day from her current Bremerhaven base). Speaking of lookalikes, is ALJ able to confirm that she wasn't off moonlighting at my climate conference in Edinburgh last week?

C • I wish!! 2

The good news was that I was able to get out to run today, for a limited definition of the term 'run'. (Actually, there was one other bit of good news - the knee was fine after the first few minutes). Jogged about 10 minutes from where I'm staying to the model event map and then plodded around (most of) the model controls.

That was about the limit of the good news, though - I'm struggling to remember a time when I've felt weaker on a run from the start (there have been some where I've felt worse after hitting the wall). My health does seem to be improving but very, very slowly, and I've just about accepted that making the final is the limit of my sprint ambitions now. One other worry is that it took a couple of hours for my body temperature to cool down post-run, although I don't expect to have anything as warm as today's 26 on any competition day. As an indicator of how I was feeling, I decided that trying to do the steady uphill run back home wouldn't achieve anything other than get me back 15 minutes earlier, and walked it instead.

As for the model, if it's any indication of what we'll face on the day, there will be some more OOB controversies - there were quite a few cases where private driveways which were outwardly identical to OOB ones were legal, so that controls could be put down them. Most oddly, one control was on someone's front doorstep, which had three apparently identical paths leading to it - only one of which was legal on the map. The model suggested that tomorrow's going to be, in essence, a running race involving a couple of parks and German suburbia, but the final includes Goslar's historic centre and should be challenging.