Training Log Archive: Anvil

Transylvania Open Day 3.
'Middle' Race, chasing start
The chase didn't really happen, I was the last within the chasing start cut off, so had a big wad of runners starting at 1min intervals behind me. Made sloppy mistakes on 2 and 3 and was caught by my number 1 and 2, but lost them on the long leg 4 - I was sloppy towards the circle so not sure if they got in front of me or not, but never saw anyone again for the rest of the course.
Wasn't that enthused with the course - 4 to 9 was amongst the yellow and green crap of yesterday and I never got any good flow here, then instead of finishing with a good control pick through the subtle contour detail and eroded stuff, we run ran straight through it and had a few controls on the hillside next to tracks.
Lost concentration again to 13 and ended up a long way down a spur that I needed to be, forced myself to get my act together for the last few and enjoyed the super fast and open forest and a nice cruisy downhill couple of legs to finish it off.
Expected to be well off the leaders after a very sloppy run, but wasn't much off the pace - sort of frustrating, I could have possibly gained a few places if I'd been a bit more aggressive.

C • last one 1

Transylvania Open Day 2
I'm starting to think I have a jinx on World Ranking Events....
Started off slowly, wasn't sure what to expect with the climb and didn't want to die in the arse. Overshot #1, why we were running on a 7500 scale map I'll never know when yesterday was 1:10000. Was OK through the early controls, most of the course was on open farmland with lots of shitty green on the slopes (of which there were many), real shitty green, spiky, overgrown, viney, muddy etc. Started to feel a bit tired on the long uphill section from 6 to 12, but I think I caught my 3 minute man at 10.
Had lots of water at the drink stop, but it wasn't enough, suddenly hit the wall at 16 - just over an hour in. It all went to shit there, missing controls in the circle and taking stupid routes, walking any slope, you know - general softness.
Not much more to report, the route choice leg towards the end was bollocks - going straight had the least climb and was almost all track running. Totally knackered now.
I will never go out without gels on a long course again.

C • slightly less nerdism 3

Just saw the results for the past 2 days and have come 13th both days! One pretty good one and one shocker! One bloke took 4 hours today - that's dedication!

Transylvania Open, Day 1 (also Romania Middle Dist Champs)
Pretty decent race - not a hard area, steep spur gully in beech forest with some erosion detail in the gullies (in some cases very deep/steep edges, respect the earthbanks).
Very minor hesitiation/slightly off line in the circle on 4, 8 and 15 - would be less than a minute total. Very annoyed with 7, it was sneaky leg over a spur but was actually net downhill, but I managed to add 25m of climb to it - I imagine it was a sub 2min leg and I took 3:15.
Also went out waaay too hard and paid for it on the steep/long climbs in the middle part of the course - can blame this on the forest being so amazingly open and fast, there was nothing underfoot in the white.
Happy I spiked the 2 controls in the light green.
Good fun, 12km tomorrow will be tough if it's as hot as today. 13th/29, and a frustrating 10.5 minutes behind the leader. (Though he is a local and did come 9th in the middle in a little event a week ago, so I'll cut myself some slack)

C • nerd time 3

This was meant to be a day of nothing, but I was feeling fairly perky at 6 and knew I wouldn't get any sleep if I didn't hit the pavement, so headed west. Gout out of the main city and into the concrete apartment block jungle, then headed north till I hit the river and then came back through Central Park.
Nice enough, but lots of exhaust - looking at the map I got quite close to the edge of town, if I'd gone a bit further it would have got a but rural which would have been interesting.

Event: Romanina Orienteering Championships
 

Romania Sprint Champs - Baia Mare.
On the map it looked like there was a tiny medieval centre, a tiny university and a big chunk of open parkland - add to that a 13 control sprint course and I wasn't expecting much.
Turns out the map was in none of that part of the town (bar the Uni) and instead in a large apartment complex - the main streets were a normal grid system, but within that was a jumble of apartment blocks and interconnecting walkways flanked by hedges.
Pretty decent run, no mistakes larger than 10s - I'm still unsure which route to #2 was best, probably 10s going into 6, got caught by some hedges which I thought were mapped as impassable but now I see were not, 2 slight hesitations on the way to 11 - one losing contact along a road and not being sure when to turn off, the other expecting a canopy and getting a shed - didn't affect my route just caused me to stop momentarily to check the map.
Started off running quite quickly, did sub 4 min/ks for the first 2km, but dropped to 4:20 for the final 2.5km. Not sure if this is bad pacing or if the heat got to me - it was above 30.
The course was good, but could have been better - it was primarily a route choice exercise, though there were a number of micro routes within each leg that required constant concentration. I'd have preferred to stay out of the area around 8 and 9 and stayed in the complex stuff. There were some areas that could have had some short technical legs, but I suspect it was a small club organising the event, and as it seemed each control needed someone watching it, they were trying to keep controls at a minimum.
But probably the worst thing about the area, being that it was all residential and it was a hot, hot day, were big, big rubbish bins all over the place. In a sprint you don't have the option of holding your breath - I don't know what was going in some of those bins, but I reckon it'd be the first place you'd look if there'd been a murder in Baia Mare.

C • map 3

Just warm up, warm down was the walk to the bus station.
Witnesses the biggest tanty and the start and afterwards at the finish from the same guy. His problem at the start and half the results were a minute out and his issues stemmed from this (I was told afterwards). I dunno what he was saying, but I've never seen such constant aggressive abuse of the organisers at an orienteering event before (though I didn't see the punch up in the finish chute in the UK last year).

C • punch up? 2

Turning the legs over after a longish travel day. Was full of chocolate, chocolate milk, chocolate donuts and those sugary doughy tube things, but didn't feel sluggish.
Went out to the bus station to check the timetable when the information on the internet conflicted with Lonely Planet, then back on some other streets and got very lost. Luckily the communist need to build massive buildings provided some good landmarks.
Why is it in Europe, it's pretty easy to decipher timetables and platforms, but bus stations on a whole are a mess of companies, numbered parking spots and conflicting timetable schedules. A little frustrating - hopefully I'll make tomorrows race and it'll be worth the 6 hr return journey.

Had a douchbag with Sleep Apnoea on the bunk below me last night that ear plugs wouldn't block. Not feeling it today, though was almost motivated after drooling over the cobbled, twisting covered alleys and stairways of Sighisoara.
This country has sprint areas up the whim-wham.
Also saw a tourist wearing 3/4 Trimtex pants in the old town, so it must be a sign.

Still in Brasov...
Did the reverse loop to the one I did 2 days ago, so climbed up the massive set of switchbacks - 24 turns in all and a half hour of solid climbing.
Got lost coming back down and ended up on a hillside south of where I wanted to be, but ended up on a trail marked with a Finnish flag, so I followed it into a nice stretch of pine forest that headed up a gully and ended at the towns water supply reservoir. Headed back into the town from here, got cheered on by a few old ladies carrying shopping bags up a big hill and got a bit scared by all the stray dogs wandering round. Twisted round a few little alley ways till I found my hostel... I'll say it again, sprint-tastic area.

C • ASHES 2

There's this old school Greek Olympic/gladiator pit running track in town, so I just had to go out and bust up some reps. Did the Mona fartlek again, pushing a bit harder on the 'hard' reps.
Felt pretty good, rest days are still doing me good!
Kept waiting for a random gate to open and a bunch of lions run out, or Russell Crowe, but nothing that exciting happened cept for a few kids doing some pretty cool Parcour tricks on the fences/ledges around the track.

To and from the track. Explored the street maze south of my hostel afterwards to run down the clock - eminently sprintable.

Finally did my GPS tracks from Swiss O Week. Here are the highlights:



Utilising the 'run in the rough direction and hope' method on Day 3. Worked as well as it usually does in technical terrain.



Running round the new lake on Day 3 - note how on line I was before hand!



That stupid 9 minute mistake on Day 4 - note where I finally punch the control, and the track shows me going right through the middle of controls 20 and 22 so the track was well calibrated!

Hadn't planned on it, got 3 hours sleep on the overnight train to Bucharest, for some reason we were at the border for almost 1.5 hours.
But, after watching the WOC Sprint online, was pumped up by Kathryns race and so went and ran up the mountain that has the Hollywood style Brasov sign.
http://img7.travelblog.org/Photos/92928/413432/f/3...
A few different tracks, but luckily I picked the right one which had almost no switchbacks and went straight up. Killer view and got there before the sun set, which had conveniently gone a nice sickly blood red colour - perfect since I'm in Transylvania! Took a different track down under the cable car line which had heaps of switchbacks, 24 in total, but that was OK going downhill and the track was really nice.
Felt really good the whole way, all those days off were good to me - it was waaaay to hot in Veliko Tarnavo to do anything but lounge and drink beer.

C • aus champs... 8

Veliko Tarnavo, Bulgaria.
Apparently logging walking is poor form, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
But I was planning on doing this walk to a monastery as a recce for a run later in the day (10km roughly), but my directions weren't good and I just followed a red/white blazed trail for about 2 hours and never found anything, ran out of water and had no food and it was around 35 degrees, which is too hot for a Tasmanian. So I piked and went back, but went back a different way and ended up in some very scary backblocks of town, lot's of stray dogs that had all kinds of rabies dangling from their mouths. Got bacl and ate some pizza, chocolate, coke, icecream and fanta and felt a little better - cost me about $4 for all of it.

Had one of those, not really sure what I want to do today feelings, so when I noticed its only 6 weeks till the Aus Champs, it was time to build some speed work into my subtly complex training plan.
Had a scroll through what sort of sessions were stored in the Garmin and discovered I'd put a Mona Fartlek session in. Can't remember doing one before, so not sure why it was in there. Also wasn't positive on the effort/recovery speed - knew you have to do the recoveries harder than an easy jog (or walk as it ends up with me). Decided on trying to do 4min/ks for the efforts and 4:30 for the 'floats'.
Headed back to the same area as yesterday, Borisova Gradina Park, did my thing and came back a slightly different way. Wasn't that tired at the end, now I've read I should have been doing the efforts harder - 10/5K pace, but the floats were about right. Still a good session, it's over quickly and doesn't have that foreboding feeling as the clock counts down to the next effort ;)
I think I like Sofia - it has a sort of eclectic charm.. and I had an awesome coffee and choc muffin from Coffee Heaven. Probably one of the best coffees I've had since I've been away actually, though the competition hasn't been stiff.

Sofia, Bulgaria.

Just a short jaunt to shake off the train/wait/plane/wait/bus/walk cobwebs. Wasn't gonna go too hard cause of the heat and air quality which was a good idea, cause when I got back it felt like I'd been in a smoky pub for a couple of hours.
Went from the city centre to a park to the south east, ran round a bit and came back. A nicer park than I expected, even found a bit of single trail through forest - though after 2 months of pretty pristine forests, this was a dump by comparison. Still, Sofia is nicer than I expected.

Zurich, Switzerland.
Had heavy legs today after a fair bit of walking round the old town (bumped into Ilka as soon as I stepped out of my hostel who was wandering round killing time before her flight!).
Headed for the hills again, was still high 20s at 7:30pm so got a bit of a sweat going as it was pretty steep to get up into the forest. Nice but not exciting again, though found a nice linear track on the way back down that followed a small creek, then finishing off though the small alleys of old town brought back some Venice memories.
Off to Bulgaria tomorrow!

Neuhausen, Switzerland.
Thought I should get off my arse and do something after sitting round all day eating chocolate.
Still a bit sore from various Swiss O Week injuries, almost broken finger, blistered feet and bruises on my butt and back after loosening some rocks going down a steep slope on Day 5 and having them fall on me.
Headed up into some forest near the city and did a loop of the plateau. Stopped at a viewpoint and watched the sun set and went back. Nice, if fairly uninspiring after the scenery of the past week/month.

I kinda feel like I've done everything I want to on this trip and have been toying with the idea of heading home early. Then I realised it was nowhere near summer back home, so I sent an entry off for the events in Romania at the end of the month. That should keep me interested until I fly back into the UK.

Month of orienteering is over! A couple of rest days are in order, the soles of my feet resemble a map and I'm still pulling out splinters.
Regular travel is going to be tough for a while....

Swiss O Week, Day 6.
Bit of a disappointing end to the week. The area we were meant to run on had been cut off by landslides from the rain earlier in the week and was deemed not safe to run on as rain was forecast later in the day (which did happen, almost on cue at 2pm). So ad-hoc courses were put together on the day 5 map using controls from the event (full credit to the organisers for pulling it together in about 12 hours!).
But, my heart wasn't in it - never worked at it and let the terrain push me round, went well off line many times. Clouds descended half way through and it was so dark under the canopy it was really hard to read the map. Surprised I ended up 30th, but I think a lot of the Swiss just went home and didn't bother.
Then to make it worse we saw the map we would have run on - similar terrain to day 4 (my favourite), with a massive 280m climb in the 2nd leg!
Still, loved the week and the terrain, especially the high mountain stages. Now thinking about Flims in 2011, which is meant to be the best in Swissland....

Swiss O Week, Day 5
Can't say I enjoyed that much. Billed as 'The Rough Day', it was a thickly forested limestone plateau. Not insane limestone detail, but so rough that it was impossible to get any rhythm going for longer than 30m or so. I like the running part of this sport these days, so it wasn't really my thing.
One corker of a mistake, a leg where you just had to go up a spur to a knoll and into a depression on the side. I didn't notice another knoll that was half way up the spur and proceeded to search below that one, which conveniently had enough detail where I expected the control to confuse me for 5 minutes or so. Nothing else apart from that, except for being a pussy on the long route choice leg and not pushing hard enough in the terrain.

Swiss O Week, Day 4.
Awesome area, frustrating run.
We were driven up to 2000m and the course descended 800m throgh a valley surrounded by epic mountains to the finish - after a little loop at the top to get the climb in. Was totally open, super fast runnable grass with lots of glaciated detail, depressions and little gullies all over the place.
Was having the best run of this trip, spiking like a mad man, bar a minute on #10 from following some tracking that wasn't mine through a marsh and going offline. After 20 we dropped out of the detail, 21 was on an obvious vegetation boundary just off a road - I look ahead to 22, a tricky diagonal downhill leg through the first forest of the course. Spot the line of trees that 21 should be on, drop off the road and follow them along to the corner.... no control. Hmmm. Look around, no tracking - I was the 3rd last starter and had gotten used to the tracks out of the controls. Look around, on a line of trees, on the edge of yellow, just like the map. Hmmm. Where am I? Climb 25m back up to the road, there's the bend where it should be. I know where I am, where is the control? 9 minutes later I'm directed to it by the last starter on the course, on a lone tree. People seemed to think the map was dodgy there, but spotted the control easily - I guess I was looking at the map for the next leg when I should have been looking at the forest.
Anyway, finish off the course a little grumpy. Was 6th overall until the mistake, finished 17th.

Swiss O Week, Day 3.

The day that involved an 800m climb walk to the start.
Pretty cool area, not quite as exciting as the organisers let on though. Pushed pretty hard in the open alpine meadow legs, controls were visible from 3-400m away a lot of the time. Spiked the first 2 controls in the limestone, got cocky/lazy/overconfident and made 12 minutes of mistakes on the next 3. Good for the rest.

Went back out in the terrain and took some good photos. Pretty specky stuff.


Spot Ilka!



Hows the serenity

C • And when you spot Ilka next 3

Swiss O Week, Day 2.
Steep area and cause of the rain the day before, very muddy area.
Started raining again just as I started, little error on the 1st cause I spent too long folding the map and ran further along the start track that I thought. All OK except for a poor route choice to 4 trying to follow a track through a very rough limestone pavement.
Went slow on the limestone section later cause it was almost impossible to run (and a little scary, big jagged rock chunks and big drops between the chunks) but still went off line and ended up stuck half way down a cliff. Had trouble interpreting how they map the limestone here.
Utilised the arse sliding method on the downhill drop to the finish, all courses descended the hill at the same point (the only part of the map where it was safe to), which had become a slope of mud by the time I'd started.
Fun day, would have liked to be a little higher in the results, but OK for my first proper attempt at Swiss terrain.

C • No 4 2

Event: Swiss O Week!
 

Swiss O Week, Day 1.
Sprint in Schwyz centre. Tricky area, heaps of out of bounds and impassable walls. 2 mins 20 secs total mistakes, worst being 70 seconds when I ended up in an out of bounds area (someones backyard), though there was no clear distinction of the boundary.
Felt slow for a sprint, either the previous days hiking or months of no speedwork hasn't been good to me. Good fun but, even if it was in a thunderstorm!

Balmers Beer Bong Commando World Champion.
Won 50Sfr bar tab for my efforts.
Competition was a bunch of weak Yanks and Sebba, how could I lose?

C • Clarification 2