Training Log Archive: cporter

Event: QOC: Rosaryville
 

DVOA's French Creek East - so I think running the Stumble yesterday was doable, but pushing it... today, however, was not a good idea. Again, the climb killed me today, and I tired out pretty quickly so I walked a lot of the course. I also had several controls that were quite a disaster with at least 15min of error for the course. Right off the bat I completely blew by my number one. I was high, but hit another control that I thought was only about 100m away, but I wound up hitting a trail that was probably 300-400m from my control. Luckily I relocated almost instantly and found the control from there without any trouble, but it still cost me 6-7 min. My second control was even worse, it was hung on a depression amidst some rocky ground and next to a charcoal terrace. The only safe way to navigate the leg was to jump from either charcoal terraces or boulders along the hillside which I did fine, but of course I ran off my bearing from my attack point and then stopped short and had literally no idea how I was going to relocate, there was nothing out in the forest at that point. After a few minutes running around randomly, I finally made the decision to keep going on my bearing and scanning the terrain for anything that looked like a terrace and if I missed it then I'd just have to relocate from a trail that wasn't terribly close, but was the only sure place to relocate from. Luckily, I hit a terrace pretty quickly and figured I was probably on the one that higher up the hillside amd not far past mine and I turned out to be right. Again though, damage already done. I didn't have too much trouble navigating after that and spiked most of them, but again, I was reallllly slow. I hit some spots of pretty bad vegitation that was much worse than mapped, that slowed me, also many spots where I tried to contour were too steep to really run much. At any rate, any time I ran it wasn't usally for a very sustained period of time until the end of the course. Starting with #7 the woods began to open up a bit and we were generally moving in a downward direction so I was able to run more, I actually picked up enough speed that I blew right past #9, I hit a trail right after I passed it and relocated quickly and found it fine so it was a minor error in comparison to #'s 1 &2.

Still quite disappointed with how today went. This weekend wasn't that great for me in general orienteering wise :( I guess I should keep taking it easy, although I had hoped to pick it back up again this week...

C • Overdoing it. 3

Event: SVO Susquehanna Stumble XI
 

Susquehanna Stumble (Long) at King's Gap - so I made it through the Stumble, but it wasn't pretty. I think I was recovered enough to "run" the long Stumble, but I hadn't anticipated the amount of climb that we'd have. Also, the blueberry bushes were everywhere! Picking up my knees became quite difficult and was somehting my legs were not ready for, especially over such a prolonged period of time. So needless to say I was very slow.

My navigation wasn't the cleanest either and I think I made a series of bad route choices in the windows where you could visit controls in any order you liked (I generally made route choices based on avoiding climb as much as possible.) I didn't do too badly on the first loop with no mistakes trying to find the controls, but just slow route choices, also my calves cramped up really early in the race which slowed me down. I had three pretty big mistakes on the second loop that added up to at least 12 min of error, but probably more. All of them were bingo controls with charcoal terraces on the sides of other wise completely bland hill sides that were easy to miss. Still it was frustrating, and relocating was a night mare. About 3-4km from the end of the race I was so tired that I couldn't do more than walk anyway.

So running the long Stumble was doable, but probablynot the best decision after running a marathon less than a week before, but there was no way I was going to miss it! Despite it all I had a great time!

Kickboxing - lots of agility training today with the cardio and worked with the punching bag today rather than sparring. I prefer to spar, but at least with the bag you can hit as hard as you want without worrying about hurting someone...so I worked my frustrations out pretty good.

So my co-worker and girlfriend, Joey randomly decided a couple of weeks ago that she wants to run a 10K for...the heck of it. She's not a runner, but she said she's been able to make it through 5K's in the past without training for them, but wants to get into shape and decided that to do so she needed to have a goal to work toward. She asked me if I was planning to run or knew of any road races coming up and I suggested she run the Jingle All the Way 10K that I will be running in December as a team with some other QOC members (Jon T, Andy B, and Kenny W I believe.) Its an ambitious goal for her, but she was pretty psyched about it so I'm "coaching" her in prep for the race. I have her mostly running on her own because our schedules don't match up well, but we do have our Wed. lunch free so we had our first run together today. We jogged three 1km loops around the walking path around our building and then power walked one more. She did good I think for just starting and it worked well for me since it acted as a recovery run for me (although I may run a bit more after work), but we have a long way to go to get her ready to at least be able to finish the 10K.

Walked one more km after jogging.

Just a little more cardio in addition to my lunch time jog with Joey, bu without the impact.

Nice long stretch after the eliptical.

Kickboxing

Core Workout Class - standard core class with mostly crunches, planks, etc. Primary focus was on abs today which I was thankful for. Only really had trouble with the reverse crunches we did right at the end of class because we were supposed to keep a medicine ball between our knees, lay on our back and pull our legs into our chest with our lower abs. My lower abs are definitely not as strong as my upper abs to begin with and the combination of that and trying to squeeze a 6 lb medicine ball while my inner thighs are still sore from the marathon (but thankfully the only muscle that really is sore) was a bit too much to handle.

Ended with Susan's nice long stretching session too which was much appreciated.

Arrived a little early for my core class so I jumped on the eliptical machine for a nice easy warm-up (about 10 min) then jumped back on after class to just give my muscles an easy, impact-free working for another 30 min. My pace was pretty easy, had a couple twinges of knee pain when I sped up a bit too much, but otherwise I felt fine.

So people will probably hate me, but I woke up this morning virtually pain-free from the marathon. I was a little nervous last night because as the hours after the marathon progressed my knees were getting more and more stiff and sensitive to moving in any direction other than straight back (i.e trying to roll out of bed was painful whereas sitting up and then standing up was only difficult because of tightness) so I wasn't sure how today would go. But morning came and I rolled out of bed, stood up and walked right down stairs before it hit me that doing so shouldn't have been so easy. We'll see if 48 hour rule applys tomorrow, but for now I'm feeling good - as is evidenced by the fact that I went to the gym today without a problem.

Oh and one more thing while I'm thinking of it...during the marathon I had someone (a male) call out my name while I was running through Georgetown. I never saw who it was so I have no idea who it could have been. None of my non-orienteering friends were planning to spectate (that I know of) also, it could have been a co-worker (I took today off, so I haven't spoken to anyone at work yet), but thought I would throw the question out there in case it was an orienteer (maybe someone from QOC that didn't go to the NEOC A-meet?)