Training Log Archive: fletch

Event: WA Sprint Orienteering Championships (NavDash 6)
 

Proper warm up, that included first a slow walk and later a jog with a map. That felt a bit weird. Run throughs etc as per normal. Token cool down after race as well.

A bit hesitant on the first for no reason other than seeing people run away out of it in the wrong direction, 2 came up really early and that jolted me back into 1:5000 scale. Felt rusty and very stop start, but knew that I was moving OK between the controls. Slightly poor route to 5, felt much smoother from about 7 through to 12, but having that one moved slightly led to a changed route as I stepped back out onto the path and I struggled through the short direction changing legs to 15, where I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and had a little think before running the last 5 metres to the control.
Like many I was a bit thrown by the SI box gone from 17, not finding reserve boxes on the map, then trying not to spike my fingers as I impaled a corner of the map on what was left on the punch. Took a while to find myself on the map again as I wandered across the bridge towards 18. Pretty clean through to the third last, where I took a few steps down the path, decided I couldn't get through that way, backtracked and went around, when I could have just continued on :(

I had felt like I wasn't pushing hard enough, but was getting pretty knackered by the end, and I couldn't have pushed harder and stayed in control of the navigation. It all went a fair bit better than I had been expecting given my complete lack of navigation for 11 months, and was good enough for the win.

Not a super complex area, but interesting, and fun to run a sprint with some bush and park and less buildings. Thanks for the new map Juffy and the twisty course setting Graham. Not sure I will repeat a 900km round trip to run for that long again, but glad I did it this time.

Distance is a guess. I thought about using the GPS, but didn't want to think about starting a watch or having a distraction if things went really wrong.

C • Scale 6

Course 1 - Splits

Yet another week of training not even resembling the plan.

Last day for a proper speed session before the weekend's frivolity. Wasn't feeling terribly motivated, so opted for 400s with long recoveries (400 jog) to make sure I was more likely to complete the session.

That seemed highly unlikely after I felt like dying during the first rep. Things improved slightly, but was still contemplating pulling the pin at half way.

Happily, it seems it was more a symptom of having not run intervals in who knows how long, and not doing quite enough warm-up, as the switch seemed to flick in rep 6 and I almost enjoyed the second half.

78.8, 81.6, 79.7, 78.7, 80.3, 78.3, 79.1, 78.5, 78.1, 77.2
Recoveries 1:55-2:00

2km-ish WU, 1km ish CD.

After pulling up a bit leg sore after yesterday's effort (haven't been stretching and starting to pay the price), I decided to have a crack at some hills in the Hokas this evening. They feel pretty weird. I'm not a massive fan of the pillowy feel in general, but they were quite once coming back down the hill.

8 reps up Barrett Drive for something slightly different. Starting from where the estate wall finishes and finishing at the second road on the left. Probably used to finish at the driveway before the road (used to be a friend's house) Was going to be 2 sets of 4, second set faster, but after the 4th rep I figured that if I stopped at the bottom for a couple of minutes then I wasn't going to start again. Used the 5th rep as a bit of bludge instead but didn't really get going much faster at any point.

Effort for each rep was pretty inconsistent, along with my motivation levels. Not helped by the fact that the finish point was very dark, so I never saw any splits. Was going pretty hard up the last rep till I choked on my own phlegm 2/3 of the way up, which slowed things down a little.