Training Log Archive: cporter

Ran-It-Granite, Long - I really liked today's course. It started off a bit easy, which I actually kind of like so that I definietly mentally into the race before we get to the tricky stuff. Although "easy" legs can be tricky in that you let your guard down, which is what I did on my way to #6. I had been having a pretty clean run so far and 5-6 was not a terribly long leg, going mostly down hill so I relaxed a bit and opened up my stride planning to just run on a bearing straight to it. Unfortunately, I relaxed a bit too much and wound up getting sucked farther down the side of the hill than I should have been and had that sudden stop, then, ummm, wait a minute something's not right here...oh maybe its just over here, no, ah maybe I haven't gone far enough, but...shit! Things proceeded like that for about the next 3 min too, because that "simple" control was located on a relatively bland hillside with little to relocate off of so I pretty much ran a full circle till I figured out what I did. So 3 min of error there. Ouch. From then on I definitely proceeded more cautiously, but made some pretty conservative (read slower) route choices that I probably didn't need to make. Also, the sun finally came out on my course, but it was just a tad too soon for me - I could literally feel the temp, not-so-gradually creep up to a rather uncomfortable level just as I was coming into #13, which was convienently the last control before the very technical section of the map before the finish. I didn't really blow any of the last 6 controls, but I bobbled several of them - exhaustion, coupled with the heat and the change in techincal difficulty made this bit of the course really tough. I didn't rock it, but I loved the challenge! I think I'm going to have to keep this map in mind for a future training - I've been meaning to replicate a training that I did with Tom Hollowell this summer, but I couldn't think of any terrain close-by that would work well for it. The training would be a one-man sprint relay set with with middle distance level of difficulty controls in technical terrain. Its a hike to get out the map, but maybe a potential summer short series?

C • Congratulations! 1

Red X Day 2 - Splits

Ran-It-Granite, Middle - although my result for today was actually not bad, i wouldn't consider this race a success. I blew the first control right out of the gate (again, I think I was still mentally back at the start worrying about whether everything was alright) and wound up running to two wrong controls before I finally got to mine. It cost me about a minute, but what is more disappointing is that this really should not have been a difficult leg. What I wound up doing was running up the wrong stream from a junction and hitting blue's #1 control, then realizing where I was I had to run up over a the spur to the next stream and keep going upstream quite aways. I even stopped at another control along the way that, if I had thought about it was clearly not mine, but my confidence was totally blown at that point that I couldn't resist the urge to "check." Grrrr. Most of the rest of the course went OK, with the exception of #5. En route to number #5 I stopped short on the wrong spur and started looking for the control when in actuality I had to go one more, again, if I had been really focusing and reading the terrain properly this would have been obvious.

I guess the only good to come out of blowing #1 is that it was costly enough of a mistake that I didn't think I could revcover from it (but when can you ever recover lost time?) so it took some of the pressure of and I could finally focus on running the rest of my course the best that I could.

Ran-It-Granite, Relay - ran it just for fun, which is a good thing since Heidi and I ran with a boy from FUMA and he wound up mispunching.

C • FUMA 3

Red X Day 1 - Splits

Event: Ran-it Granite
 

Ran-It-Granite, Sprint 1 - not a great race for me, I think I had too much on my mind about the start (I was the chief of starts for the event) so I was not terribly focused and was trying to run too hard. That led to a lot of navigational errors, the most notable being over-running on of my controls (I can't remember the control number cause I don't have my maps in front of me) with out realizing it and being really confused and panicing because I was having trouble making sense of the vegitation boundaries and the contours...so I think I had at least a min of error running around the woods till I made sense of what I did and then found the control. Also, I was pretty slow in general, the climb killed me.

Ran-It-Granite, Sprint 2 - thankfully this sprint went much better, but the course itself was a lot easier (the last few controls were really just a glorified trail run) and there was less climb. But, it was nice to have a nice easy sprint to just run out some of my frustration and boost my confidence for the rest of the weekend.