Training Log Archive: Andrew

Orienteering Event, Mörtsjödubbeln. Orienteering is normally lots of fun... but this race was depressing. Not because I made a mess of the race - maybe I could have been a bit smoother and saved at most a couple of minutes. I actually had a pretty good race. But it just took one guy to spoil all that... this guy finished 3min 27 sec ahead of the second place runner. And it wasn't as if there was a bad field there... He was superman - almost - he won all splits but one. On a 5/5 setting in Winsplits, he actually had one mistake - even though he won that split, he didn't win it by a 'normal', large-enough margin. He did under 6min/km in detailed, broken-up, hilly, South-Stockholm terrain. He put every one of us to shame. If we are lucky, we will see him running against Thierry Gueorgiou in NOC 2011.

I finished 7min 34sec behind Gustav Bergman, in a 4.3km middle distance race.

http://www.ifklidingo.com/doma/map_images/145.jpg

How could I be so slow?
1: Didn't run hard enough? 28sec behind!
2: Should I have just ploughed on through the marsh, instead of pansying around it? Didn't run hard enough? (The latter sentence will apply to all controls from now on...) 54sec behind!! Must have been abducted by aliens who then removed any memories of the abduction...
3: Hesitated trying to make sense of a strange map.
4: Should have head straight south for the path coming out of 3.
5: Was easy, and I did this well - was 14sec behind GB. I can live with that...
6: Should have headed for the path to the east of 5, and not hesitated and run slightly up the wrong re-entrant just before 6.
7: Hesitated way too much.
8: 20sec behind - I was a little sloppy just catching myself heading off the wrong way.
9: Here I definitely lost time hesitating - about 30sec. Was 48sec behind.

Etc...

Messed up 13 and 14, losing maybe another 45sec.

OK... so it is possible for me to run a more perfect race and maybe do about 2-3min faster. But then there's still another 4min to find somewhere...

C • analYsis 1

Prepared for Ultraloppet this evening from 17:00 until 20:30. Will have to get a couple more helpers for next year... Tomorrow will be from 07:00 until around 19:00.

Putting out/moving around controls, Södra Djurgården.

Forest intervals. 8x1km, 1min rest. Loop around Grönstas highest natural point. Ran each in around 4:40.

Insufficient warm up...

Orienteering Race, Sprint DM, Handen. Bleughh... Was 1:50 behind Mattias Muller. Sprint races.... every second counts, right? Lost a few seconds on three spearate occasions while trying to twist my ankles, another few seconds getting my foot caught in a muddy marsh, some more seconds due to being caught behind slow runners... Maybe lost 20sec on mistakes (running around the wrong side of bushes and people and that sort of thing), and 30sec on not running hard enough. Then I lost at least 5min on not being fit enough.

Orienteering Training. Bogesundslandet. Middle distance Run 1 (with a re-run later).

I tried to run medium-hard to try to somewhat simulate race conditions, but didn't push race-hard.

This first time around I was quite satisfied with my run at first, but after the re-run I realise I made a lot more errors than I thought. Several errors were 10-30 sec. I lost around 1min at 9 (the map was really dodgy here, as I could confirm the second time I was there - angles just weren't matching up.). I lost over 2 min at 10 because I found some similar features as where the control lay just before, and got confused.

http://www.ifklidingo.com/doma/map_images/136.jpg

Jogging between first and second run.

Orienteering Training, Bogesundslandet, Run 2.

I was more tired this time (obviously), but managed to maintain a decent pace. Knowing where to go made life a lot easier...

This second time around it (obviously) went much better. Interesting was that I didn't need to plan attack points or "search surfaces" for taking a single control - I already could picture all the detail near the control perfectly. The difference that made was enormous - I could focus more on improved route-choice and micro route choice. I took a few new route choices, and avoided all the mistakes I had made previously. That is, except for 9, where the map was dodgy - but I knew where to go to find the marker. I did mess up one control though that I didn't mess up previously - 15. Took a different route choice, and ended up much further to the north than the previous time. For some reason I got a feeling of deja vu - I was certain I had been in the spot where I started looking for the control. Of course, I hadn't ever been there before...

Nice and easy jog with Beata, Norra Djurgården.