Training Log Archive: ebone

Warm-up for U.S. Long Course Champs. My legs felt pretty good and apparently not significantly tired from the last two days of orienteering. I guess taking it easy on Saturday worked.

I had a good run at the U.S. Long Course Champs, setting a strong but controlled pace early, concentrating pretty well on the map reading, and managing to mostly avoid getting caught in brairs or other time-loss mistakes. My strategy was not to "go quickly" but to "avoid going slowly". The times I got caught in the briars and thereby went slowly--on legs 7, 13 (especially), and 18--corresponded to my poorest leg times. On control 21, however, where my biggest miss occured when I overran and came back to the control, my split time is still not so bad. I had the feeling for most of the race that I ought to be running 15-30 seconds per km faster, but I knew that it was based on memories of being more fit in previous years, and I resisted the temptation to push the envelope. I waited until about the last 4 km to start pushing, and when I discovered on the final couple legs that I had no kick, I knew I had run a well-paced race. I took first place by a couple of minutes.

Blue Long - Splits