Training Log Archive: Anvil

Was running late to the start due to missing my train. Had more of a hangover then I bargained for (don't mix grain and grape kiddies), so much so that my hands were shaking when I pinned my number on, however, I was determined to still prove my worth in the SLOW A team.
Paul c had a storming run through coming in first doing about 30 mins on a 6k course and obviously psyched out Barrable and made him drop his estick ;)
Of course, I stuff up the first control. I can lay some blame on the map, as I took an unmarked track. The problem was, I realised before I entered the forest there were unmarked tracks and should have been more careful to pick the right one. 2 mins laters, brain reattached, I punch and see Nick was about 100m in front of me (doing all 3 legs!). Spiked the next couple, but hesitated on the way to 5 after losing contact, then faff in the circle when I don't see the control behind some greenery and NB reappears having stuffed up 3!
Do the control pick well and think I've pulled away, then get stick in some thicket and we're back together at 10. It's all cake after this, an uphill slog and a few controls in yesterdays Uni and come back in keeping the lead.
We won, so I guess that's all that matters - I would have liked to be cleaner though.

Includes:
Bolt from station to start
Few meagre strides
Bolt from finish to station
Realise left one shoe at start, jog back to assembly. Decide to stay for presentation.
Bolt from prize giving to station. Jump ontol train as door close (these trains were important as the one I wanted only went once an hour)

Almost a flawless race. Quite a decently complex university campus, so I kept concentration up the whole way - only real mistake was at #12, which was an easier leg around the edge of the campus on forest tracks, just some hesitation when the map didn't quite fit what I expected.
I also slowed down a bit after #8, it was going so well and I was worried I'd screw it up, shouldn't have let those megative thoughts get in the way, cause that's when I gave away 3rd place. Other than that, pushed hard the whole way and pretty happy with the result.

Same map, but went into the northen section which had all the campus housing. Almost as good, almost...
Was going so well, the first three controls were the ones we predicted and navigated well through the tight cluster 7-9. Then it got a bit hazy, think oxygen debt took over, started to feel less in tune with the map, but still got 10 and 11 OK, then did a 180 out of 11 and took 1:45 on a 25 second leg. Doh!
Forced myself to run hard for the rest of it and not get negative, didn;t get caught on the trick fence at #17 and finished well enough to only drop one place overall, with a big bunch behind me.
None the less, I think I'm improving at sprints - I'm looking forward to doing some back home and finally getting a benchmark on my improvement this year. I really wanna crack 5 min/ks for a sprint!
Also, check out that max HR - that is a new record for me!

2x warm up and wam downs, I was very dedicated. By golly it was toasty warm.

Just to get the legs moving for the weekend, tired out a 'workout' of 1 minute in HR zone 4 then 2 mins at zone 3 x 10. Quite good once I got warmed up, the graph is a pretty nice saw tooth curve and it forced me to recoover at a faster pace than I'm used to.
Did the 2 bridges loop with District Line bridge extension, nice.
Looking forward to the weekend, 2 sprint races and a relay down near Brighton, should be a bit of fun.

Barnes/Riverside loop - probably for the last time...
Felt quite sleepy at the start, but had quite a good pace - although my slackness of the past week has more to do with that than anything. First time I've done that loop under 40! Heart rate was unsuprisingly higher as well, though I didn't consciously notice it.
Many, many people in oversized white cancer T-Shirts on the towpath. Only here would you see people on fundraising walks stopping in pubs and carrying beers!

Final time trial of the year. Fairly disappointed with the time, trying to work out why I was 30 secs slower than last time - either 4 previous nights of festival/tent broken sleep averaging 5 hours or no real speed work since France or no one to pace me vs doing the last race 2 days after Tough Guy.
Was OK for the first 2ks with splits to put me in the low 17s and then just blew up. Heart rate was very high, which leads me to suspect lack of sleep is the culprit for tonights slow time.
Realised I'm getting a bit bored with shorter distances, so I'm setting my eyes on longer races - this one will look good and quite close to where I'll be in Wales: http://www.endurancelife.co.uk/event.asp?series=1&...
and if I like that I might consider 6 foot track early in the NY when I'm back Down Under.

C • Gday 5

Usual warm up with strides, stretches and what not

To and from the start. Realised my rear brakes weren't aligned properly and were rubbing on the wheel, don't know for how long but now I've fixed them it's waaay better.
I have no idea with bikes.

Off to the Leeds Festival for the weekend so no chance of running - although a lot of jumping up and down may be in order.
Just so you don't miss me too much ;), here's a personal favourite photo from Tough Guy

Just headed out with no real plan, been in a bit of a daze today, just went out to Hammersmith Bridge and back along the other side of the river.
Was out in Cardiff all day for an interview, not really sure about it. Good office and good proximity to mountains and stuff, just not so sure about the work - not really what I want to do, but it would be for only four months...

C • job 3

Headed out to the track to do the interval session I was going to miss out on as I was heading to an Oz v South Africa soccer match this evening.
400,800,1200,800,400 with 200 recoveries. About 80 secs for the 400s and 3 mins for the 800s. Not sure about the 1.2km as I hit the stop button instead of the lap button. GPS was saying the track is a little long - I concur, I'm always slower there than the one in Wimbledon.
Felt terrible - dodgy in the guts just before I started, but felt OK once I returned.

To and from the track, and a few stridey laps round. Recoveries too.

Putney Heath - Wimbledon Common - Richmond Park - Barnes Common. Still able to get lost and ended up running through Barnes, you'd think after ten months that wouldn't happen - just goes to show how useless I am without landmarks!
Did the second half faster than the first half, felt pretty good the whole way through - a weekend off can do wonders.
The instantaneous pace reading on the 405 seems to be a random number generator. Might try playing with the settings cause it always seemed pretty good on the 305.
Just looked at the photos from last weeks trail challenge. Everyone looks fast and fit due to the downhill finish. I look like a serial killer with 8 chins mated with pac-man.

Fartlek session with the Windmilers. Spent most of the day in bed snoozing so wasn't feeling very alert for it, also the stitch from Tuesday night kicked in so wasn't really in good form.
Started to come good towards the end on some of the hill efforts, but was glad to see the end of it.
Sent in my resignation today, already got an interview lined up in Cardiff. Not likely I'll move there but I'll go, even if just for a day trip!

Looks like I'll be tendering my resignation very soon. Spoke to my recruitment agent and looks like I'll have to move out of London to find work since I've only got 5 months left on my Visa, however I have my choice of cities - Exeter, Leeds, Manchester and Stirling were mentioned. Is it too dorky to chose my city based on where the best terrain is?

Last of SLOWs trail challenges for the year, only a month or so till the dreaded daylight savings changes over and was getting a bit dark towards the end.
Felt very hyper at the beginning, unfortunately it only lasted a couple of ks and the stitch kicked in. Have decided to begin proper core training, will start at twice a week and see if that improves anything, at the very least I expect the rock hard abs that all the movie stars have....
Back to the race, I have to say, I think I picked the correct routes for all the legs. Definately the first 2, as I was punching at the same time as the faster runners. Slowed down the last half, but managed to keep my placing over the final couple of legs. Good fun, especially the downhill leg right at the end.

Out and back along the track that formed part of the first leg both times. The race is going to be featured in Runners World and I spoke to one of the photographers on the way out during the warm up and told him where to stand to get the pack when they first began to split, knowing I'd be one of the few who would split early I thought it would maximise my chances of some much needed media exposure.
Warm down with Ollie and Michael. Ollie complained most of the way that he wasn't tired enough. That's what happens when you take the wrong way out of #4 ;)

Rode out and back to the Wagon and something near Clapham Common for 2 for 1 burgers. As there was an odd number of us we had an extra burger to go round. I somehow ended up having 2/3rd of it. The fries were amazing, the chicken burger very good, but the beef burger was disappointingly overcooked and dry.
2 pints seems to be my limit when riding nowadays - must be getting old.

Thought I would all unmotivated after some fairly poor results in France, but my new Forerunner has finally come (very cool) and have entered the Dublin City Chase with Seb and a few tough cross country races (Turbo X Trail and the Grim 8) and the Venice race should keep me honest till the end of the year!
Am not really surprised at how poorly I fared last week, after almost a year of balls to the wall, just get into the circle as fast as possible, follow the red line and dodge the green orienteering it was always gonna be tough to do real map reading. I did make a conscious decision after JK that living in South England wasn't gonna do anything for my technique so just concentrate on fitness - so if you look at it like that I'm doing OK.

C • 405 4

Although the results list may say otherwise, I was orienteering the best of the week today. Generally was reading the map well in the fine detail, picking good routes and spiking the controls. Unfortunately the 80/20 rule also applied today, in that 20% of the legs account for 80% of my overall time. Average of 10 mins lost on 2, 8, 20 and 27 simply by losing concentration in the circle - on all of them I was within 20m of the control and just doing something stupid. Also got stuck and disoriented in the green amongst some pretty massive cliffs - wasn't checking my compass enough on the longer legs and dodging the obvious slow areas.
Not really a fan of the 1:5000 scale maps. Each individual shrub was mapped as a thicket, any slightly out of place tree as a green circle and not a boulder group in sight - don't think it was necessary for courses of this length, it was tough to see the big picture on the longer legs.

1:5000 scale + 10km course = 2m of red line to follow!
A race of thirds. Apart from bollocksing up the first control was OK in the first third - really ejoyed this part, lots of parallell high cliffs to run between in the darkness.
The next third I just totally lost concentration, after catching a pack at 11 and dropping them at 13 I think I lost 2-3 mins on every control until 18. Just stopped reading the map properly and had no plan. Admittedly was struggling with the really low scale and negative contour features - was searching 20m away from a boulder on a spur at 14 whn it was simply in the gully below.
Was caught by another pack at 18 and decided to stay with them as long as I could stay in contact with the map. These guys were moving - although I was able to read the map and pick features off there was no way I could plan and navigate correctly in such complex terrain at that speed at the moment. Very educational though.

C • Map 3

Rest Day. Kayaking down the gorge just outside of Millau. Much splashing to be had and I found a good rock to jump off right at the end. It was brought up why we are spending all out days running in the plateau in the heat when there are opprotunities like these at our doorstep.

Wow again. Mass start race. At first I was a little suspect of this - felt like a bit of a waste of this terrain to have a mass start race which was just going to be a cross country race - no gaffling or butterflies .
But I loved it. Men and women elites started with a km run to the start through the assembly area with Iron Maiden blaring on the speakers (which was actually awesome) and a lot of puching and shoving through the vegetation until we got to the top of the hill and the start).
We had a long first leg, about 3km. No stranger to this with all those years of Sledge, but when Tierry G. is leading the pack I was even gonna bother looking at the map (and very few other were by the look of it). I loved this first leg, we eventually formed a long line through the terrain and the downhill sections looked really good from the middle with the line snaking through the rocks and vegetation and the sun rising behind us (start was at 7:15am). Didn't really have any chance to change your position here so I just sat back and enjoyed the ride!
Was enjoying the first leg so much I was surprised when I saw the control! The next 5 were more of the same, I was picking a few people off through here until 7, where apparantly the front runner made a mistake (and I'm told everyone just waited for him to relocate!), so the entire line followed suit. The line finally broke here and I was in a pack of about 6 that formed here until 9 where we went slightly south of the line. Luckily I was reading the map at this point and relocated and found myself alone for the first time, though through a few shortish legs I'd caught up to 2 lads in yellow and black and one other.
Broke away from them at #17, only to fudge #18 and have them catch up and Ed C. appeared out of nowhere as well. The pack of 5 of us headed through the spectator leg and headed up to the final loop. Somehow our pack doubled in size along here somewhere and I'm not sure if they caught us or vice versa. I was feeling pretty good and pushed up the hill out of and three of us broke away and we collected the pack in front at #25. We overran #27 on a downhill and as I was one of the front runners I was at the back of the pack on the 2nd last leg. I caught back 2 of the runners on the 2nd last control by taking a sneaky short cut but was unable to reel anyone in on the run in.
Was pretty happy with the time given the previous days form, but it raises more questions - this race felt so easy, I wasn't even tired at the end compared to the other days where I've struggled on the walk to the car. Am I that poor with my routes that I run a lot further than I should? Also kind of annoyed I was so conservative at the start - if I'd positioned myself better I could have ended up in a faster pack and possibly qualified for the Ultrasprint (I was only 3 mins off). Still, at least a better experience than the previous day!

My first Ultrasprint. Interesting, kind of felt like a training run than an actual event. I like the idea in theory and plan on organising one when I get back to Oz, but I think the ones in parkland would be more enjoyable. Had 4 penalites, one more and I would have been DQ!

Wow. Will start with the negatives. Was having a similar run to the day before which was OK considering the complexity of the terrain and the fact I had to run straight through the pre start to pick up my map as the clock chimed go (spiked the first control as well!). Then with less than 1k to go I had the biggest brain fade I've ever experienced. Got #25, spiked #26 then instead of going over the hill to #27 I decided I was at #25 and made a route along the contour like I was going to #26. Made it fit for a while, and when I eventually realised where I was I thought I must have missed #25 and gone from from #24 to #26 so made my way to #25. As I run into the circle at #25 it all seems too familiar and realisation fits as I punch and see the code, 99 - kind of an easy one to remember. Decide to go back to #26 to make sure I don't screw up the punching order (I've got no idea what's going on by this point) and slowly finish off the course.
The question I ask is, why am I suddenly making these huge mistakes this week. Can't say it's unfamiliar terrain, been doing that for a year now. Can't blame the heat as I started before 9am. Maybe it is the competition, but I'm under no preconceptions as to my ability compared to some of the blokes I'm running against. I dunno, it's a little frustrating to say the least.
Having said all that, the terrain today was epic - one of the best I've ever run on. Very similar to the pagodos, the first 2/3rd of the course was like a rock village with a massive jumble of rock mazed and a lot of negative features due to the limestone. They were flying a helicopter over the terrain as I was running through early in the course - hopefully they were filming it cause a video of all the orienteers running amongst the rock will be awesome.

Much better day, managed to avoid any of the big mistakes that plagued be the day before but still had seven 2-3min plus mistakes which adds up.
Enjoyed the terrain a lot more today, a lot less green and gentler contours. Did start an hour later than the day before and although I consciously didn't notice it, I think the heat got to me as I was exhausted at the end - I shouldn't be feeling that tired at the end of a 10k race considering the hours I've put in recently.

Oh dear, this is gonna be a tough week. For the Aussies, imagine Broken Hill, Ngaralta Country or even a good old Launnie Paddock map covered in the Pagados!
Had 2 massive mistakes 18 mins on 12 and 10 mins on 20. Surprised I wasn't well at the bottom of the results. If I don't have massive mistakes like that for the rest of the week I imagine I should pull myself up the results table.
Made quite a few smaler mistakes on a lot of the controls, but that doesn't worry me as much. Very sloppy on the final control picking loop, although I didn't consciously notice the heat I think I was fairly dehydrated by this point. Have decided to not take any risks and have picked up a camelback for the rest of the week.

Event: 6 Days of Aveyron, France
 

Loooong day to Millau. 9:26 train from St. Pancras - should arrive at accom about 12 hours later.
Loaded up the laptop with acres of Arrested Development.

Hip less sore but still sore