Orienteering race (Middle) 37:31 [5] **** 5.09 km (7:22 / km) +175m 6:17 / km
spiked:11/19c
US Short Championships.
For me, this was the major goal of the weekend. Middle distance is my speciality - it's where I consistently have my best results and I enjoy the type of orienteering skills required to succeed - maximum technical concentration combined with a high running intensity over a pretty manageable distance. Now that Micro-O is off the menu at WOC 2006, I'm very much hoping to run in the middle distance there (I had previously wanted to avoid the Micro-O and put Sprint instead - though that's not where I've done my best races).
Anyway, my goal was to run as high an intensity as possible and make no mistake over 20 seconds. From past experience, my best results come not when I make ZERO mistakes (usually that means I'm running a little bit too slowly), but when I make only minimal errors - a few 5-10 second mistakes here and there - usually that means I've been running fast enough to keep up a good pace but have not been quite able to make a perfect race. Not really sure if the "perfect" race exists....
The secondary goal was to at least be the top Canadian, and possibly win outright. With selection races coming up soon, and with them the discussion of who runs what at the WOC, I wanted to demonstrate that the middle distance is the one where I can truly do my best results.
The race itself went very much according to plan. I started out agressively yet clean, and easily maintained a high intensity all the way through the race. I made mini-mistakes (5-15 seconds) at a few controls but did not hesitate anywhere along the way and felt secure the whole time - was never in the situation of not knowing (within 20m) where I was. Missed: #1 (5 sec), #5 (10 sec), #7 (10 sec), #8 (10 sec), #9 (5 sec), #16 (5sec), #17 (15 sec), #18 (10 sec). I'll call these "not spiked", although basically I got them all pretty cleanly.
Results-wise, it was surprisingly excellent - I did manage the outright win. The more surprising element was the gap - there were only 2 of us under 41 minutes, and the next Canadian was a full 6 minutes back. Probably somewhat related to their recent training exploits (they ran intensity on Thursday while I did a 2-hour long hilly run on trails and terrain), but the gap was still surprisingly large. We'll see what happens next time around, but for the moment I will consider that this race was a complete success.
Running warm up/down 45:00 [3]
A solid warmup and cool down (part of the specific race plan today) for the above race.