Training Log Archive: Nadim

Event: Western States + Intercollegiate Championships
 

Western States Championships & Intercollegiate Championships in the Coronado National Forest near Sonoita, AZ. This was run on the Greaterville map, 1:10,000. The terrain was mostly open grasslands with scattered trees in the reentrants. Though it sounds easy to run in, the grasses hid many loose rocks. The start was at just above 5,000 ft. so I felt the altitude a little. I ran pretty well with probably less than 1:30 minutes in error. I was pleased with the run and just wasn't in shape to do much better. Maybe if I hadn't gotten sick earlier in the month it might have made a difference. I had started out the race cautiously; at one point on the way to #1, I came to a dead stop for 15 seconds to make sure I was following the right reentrant. Like the training in the preceding days, the terrain kept me slow enough to keep in contact with the map pretty well. I just had a slight error after getting to the bottom of the reentrant after #8--I had followed a bad bearing over a fence that I shouldn't have crossed and was tentative for a little way. My other error ocurred coming into #11 high from the road and the broad spur--I was reading the control to be the reentrant junction when it really was an earth bank just before it. I'd gone over the top of the earthbank not seeing the control in the bottom and had to turn back after reaching the reentrant junction. I did have a poor route choice at the end when I chose to go along the longer way along the wash to the finish but this couldn't have cost me much. I was concerned about making it in under an hour and did. For my efforts, I landed in 3rd place in M45+. I was 8 minutes behind Tom Hollowell and about a minute behind Ed Hicks. Greg Balter would have beat me too if he hadn't made a 11-12 minute error at #1. He finished 4 minutes behind me. If Eric Buckley or Mike Eglinski had run I'd likely have been further back; Eric didn't make it and Mike was sick.

Western States Championships & Intercollegiate Championships in the Coronado National Forest near Sonoita, AZ. For the afternoon, I did the sprint. I did poorly and had trouble reading the contours. They appeared to have just been blown up from 1:10,000 to 1:5,000 and missed some detail in areas--still, I could have just been trying to run too fast. The start was in a very open area and people went in many strange routes. Many had wondered a bunch about which way was best. Near the last moment, I chose to go the way JJ Cote did; around the first reentrant low (many had crossed this), then up. I spiked #1 and then did the same for #2. Things were going by so fast that perhaps I got over confident. I went around along the wash toward #3 but missed it by being too far right--I misread the contrours and went way past where I should have gone, incurring some extra climb too. I was clean to #4, and #5. I was pretty close on #6 but going to #7 I was just a bit high. Passing the control, I could have seen it if I'd just turned around. I convinced myself that I'd mis-counted the reentrants we were crossing and went too far north. Looping around low but rather confused, I saw #8 and figured it was the wrong control. Not matching up anything else, I went to #8 then turned back to go the #7. After that, I was fairly clean on the rest but I'd lost a lot of time and was tired. Lynn Walker had started behind me by a minute and had made some errors too but we were together at #8. The total error was probably over 5-6 minutes. This didn't help me much for tommorow.

Red 1 - Splits

Sprint - Splits