Training Log Archive: fletch

Event: Hill Park Dale
 

Good preparation for the week to come. Nowhere near perfect, but technically the best I've run for a long time. Felt the lack of run-thrus in the warm-up on the first leg, which was quite physical. Clean but very cautious through the next 2. Cautious again down the slope to 4. Correctly identified the cliff lined gully that I thought the control was in, but no flag. Dropped out the bottom of it, then back up the next one across before finding it. Turns out I was right and the flag was in the wrong spot. Cautious again on the short leg to 5, but came down just wide of it and ran straight past the correct rock without identifying it. Thought I'd cut my losses and bombed out to the fence to relocate and found it on the way back, frustratingly close to where I'd just come from.
Stayed in control well through to the 2nd last control. Really annoying to have a brain fade on such a short leg. Careful with direction out of the control, then thought I had seen the feature so just went straight at it, but was wrong. Not very methodical in the relocation till I had already been fluffing around for a minute or 2. Bugger.
Was a really physically tough course compared to what I was expecting. If the Easter courses were all set before the storm came through and the trees all fell over, we could be in for some pretty long days out there. 14.5 seemed pretty short for how I remembered this stuff, but it was really hard to get moving anywhere there was tree cover today.
No thoughts of retirement today :)

Enough of a warm-up to get the achilles lose. Didn't feel any ill effects drom last night until I tried to run uphill to the start triangle :(. Ran a lap of the paddock, then picked up an old Umuna map from the car to get my eye into map reading before I started, but Craig joined me and gave me a lap full of good advice, so I only looked at about 4 legs. Still think I'm pretty likely to warm up with a map next weekend. Just helps get the right routines to the forefront of my easily-distracted brain.

Switched up shoes for this little sprint course. I reckon I'll do all but the long day in the x-talons - for some reason I seem to get better grip without the metal dobs.
Never really switched back on for this loop and made a complete hash of a couple of early legs, then rolled my ankle very slightly near 10 and decided to walk it straight home rather than risk doing anything serious.

H3 - Splits

After a week of lethargy I finally got out to loosen the legs this evening. Not quite the session I had planned for Thursday morning, but thought I'd be better off not toasting myself before tomorrow's solid hit out.
2 x 2km @ 10km pace around Carine OPen Space. 2 min jog recovery. First one felt comfortable, second one felt disturbingly hard and significantly slower.
6:58, 6:56. Hmmm. Seeing as I was aiming at 7:12's and running in the dark, which usually seems marginally slower, maybe there was a reason the scond wasn't comfortable.
Recovered pretty quickly, so can't have been too extreme.

Time to test whether the slightly funny feeling in my chest really does affect anything at higher intensity. Nope. Maybe Saturday was just me being crap after all.
Really focused on keeping the leg turnover fast, which for me seems to depend on a bit of heel lift and getting up on my toes a bit more. Started pretty hard, but with the confidence that I could be just about dead at the top of every little incline and recover on the downs whilst maintaining a good pace rather than having to back off. Nice to see the point of the intervals work of the last month or so :)
Was a little worried when the arms were burning at the BOTTOM of the Durston hill, but kept the pace under control and only faded a little near the top, then managed to get going chasing Juffy down the hill.
After so many runs in the low 17's it was fantastic timing to pull out the all time PB. (for the course and for any 5km I've done anywhere)
Suddenly feeling more confident about Easter again - can forget about the running part and just focus on the navigation.

C • nice work! 3

About 13 minutes warm-up on my own before the group warm up to make sure the achilles were loose, group warm up and run throughs, short cool down.

Tooms' Golf Course 5k TT - Splits

Didn't have anything to 'recover' from, but still feeling a bit tight in the chest. Felt fine jogging, but some of the run-thrus in the drills felt more draining than I expected. Hmmmm... Bugger
WU (13:09, 2.75km), Map run with M18 course from Evan's Crown 1995 (17:52, 3.25km ), Drills (11:40, 1.57km), Cooldown (3:16, 658m. Not surprised I butchered that course. Didn't really seem to be any plan to what I was doing on most legs, altrhough the offset printing was pretty terrible nad it was hard to identify the control feature at times.
Still walking lots to read detail... CAn I make myself do it in a race?? Bit surprising that I only slowed to 5:30 pace on the map reading bit considering the amount of walking...

C • M16, 1993? 21