Training Log Archive: Ricka

Tough course - lots of light green, downfall, low visibility. Hard to maintain pace, but only 4 1-minute bobbles. Very pleased, only 2 minutes out of 3rd. Stayed in good contact wih map. Planned and used checkoff features and attack points very well.

Day 1 Green X - Splits

Event: US Champs
 

Well-designed challenging sprint: Trails first; then 3 medium legs with road vs. straight route choice; then 'run around the yellow'. Looks simple, but lots of errors made overall. My second best A-meet sprint.

Good execution and route choice overall - bit more pace possible early. 6-7: not able to look at route ahead; chose good route, executed to spur/knoll; did not turn, raced down spur to stream - very confused. -2 minutes. Lesson: On fast downhill, be sure to stop at check-off feature. 7-8-9: Very good comparative splits, even though I walked ridge on 7-8 and walked a bit on road on 8-9. Looking ahead on 8-9 made 9-Fvery efficient.

S-1: followed my compass, not reading map or terrain well, drop off field, saw black X, then down to control. Felt slow: 3rd best on M55

Sprint model event. Lots of thick vegetation, ragged but good map reading - sprint event was MUCH more open.

After Sprint, drove to Classic Model. Bad sign: I got Eric (driver) quite lost on the way - could not read correlate park map with ground :).

45-minute map-walk was very helpful. Lessons: white is quite well-mapped and definitely preferable to green slash or light green - use it if you can; the cairns are really small - too small to rely on as check-off features.

Sprint Green - Splits

Short last tune-up run in Forest Park. Included two hills and 45-second sprint. Felt great! 60F and sunny.

C • Did I count correctly? 5th... 1

I did it! Got up for 'early' morning run. It felt good to be out on 40F morning and the 2nd half of the easy pace felt good.