Training Log Archive: markg

FWOC Long Distance champs on an area not usually suited to long distance orienteering, ie, almost dead flat, only 800m by 1km in area, and covered in tracks. Won, despite one huge mistake, a couple more decent ones, and some bobbles. Lost nearly 9min overall. Navigated pretty well, though just lost some concentration, tried to run a bit hard in places without having a good plan already, and failed to see the best in route on some legs. Pretty happy with the run though.

FWOC Middle Distance champs. 1st place ahead of Damian K. Had a good run, as you would expect at Nose Hill. Lost close to a minute, I guess, from small wobbles, and another 20s from a poor route choice. Kept good flow, head up, and navigating ahead. Slow up the hills compared to Damian.

Picking up controls.

2nd leg of the Barebones relay, a middle distance course. I consider this a good race, despite making about 4min of mistakes (2 decent mistakes and one which was luckily a bit smaller), I pushed really hard and achieved a slightly better result than usual.

I had the privilege of heading off in the lead but dropped stupidly to 2nd (I think as I never saw another runner) with a 2min error at #1. Pushed hard and nailed the next 3 but missed the tricky little #5 and hit #6 instead. That was a small mistake but I could hear someone behind me. Nailed #7 but didn't pick a sufficiently secure route to #8, missed it, and lost another 1.5min and dropped to 3rd place. The course was a little easier after this and I nailed everything and pushed hard. Finished about 100m behind 2nd.

5th and last leg of Barebones relay a sprint race. Cool little area around the YMCA with lots of little tracks, tiipiis, and small contour detail. An awesome race but with a fatal flaw. I could've won the relay ...

I set off in 3rd place behind Emily Kemp and Eric Bone. I guess Eric was about 30s ahead and Emily 1min. Didn't have an ideal route into #1 but running well and smoked the next 4. I could see Eric about 50m ahead as I ran into #4. Spiked #6 but in a spectacular brain explosion, I read the wrong control number and didn't punch it ... spent about 1:45 running around in circles before confirming it was the right control and checking the number again. Doh! Screamed off after this and ran really well, couldn't have lost more than 5s till #16 when I caught Emily and didn't read that leg properly dropping 20s. Still ran away from Emily and took 3rd place.