Training Log Archive: jennycas

So, we're in Scotland now. Signs are in English, distances & speed limits are in miles. And it's necessary to drive on the left (around each roundabout). Or straight down the middle of a winding lane for 7 miles towards the event, in a chain of cars, with no chance of remembering the way you got there, which makes for some complications upon leaving (hey, it was a scenic drive, and with a little navigational assistance from Simon Rouse to whom I'd offered a lift, I still made it to Forres in time to watch the WOC sprint final).

First part of the course was nice open birch forest with little knolls and gullies and not too difficult to read although inevitably I expected the control to be further down the knoll than it was and so approached from the bottom, losing small amounts of time each time. The event info said to avoid the marshes where possible but there were a couple of legs straight across. I found myself thinking "huh, these aren't wet compared to Swedish marshes" and then saw the person who was up to his thighs in the black bog, trying to extricate both legs at once and with nowhere to put his hands for leverage. I tiptoed very carefully around that patch!

Next section was rather greener with gorse bushes and creeks and a compulsory road crossing which I overshot, and archery butts hidden among a network of tiny paths, then a longer leg out into the moorland hillside section. I intended to go around by larger tracks but ended up doing a mishmash of routes (where a track crosses a waterhole, there is in fact no bridge) and although I left the track at the correct point by my chosen gorse thicket, I managed to go NW instead of north and was too far uphill and lost a couple of minutes there. Getting really tired by now and tripping over everything underfoot though only actually stacked it twice in the heather. Final section of the course was through low pine plantation with deep ruts between the rows and the small rides were almost impossible to find. Reminded me a bit of the bluegum plantation section on Diddleum (Tas) - and actually the moorland section seemed familiar too.

About 60 W40s entered although I don't think all of them ran, and I ended up 21st. Also ended up getting back to the house, completely exhausted and desperate for a shower (had been a while since the open-air shower at WMOC), about 12 hours after I'd left it but that was better going than Blair who was still in an IOF meeting until after 11pm.

S6D - Day 1 Achagour - C30 - Splits

A final starts were a bit later and it seemed too good to be true when the Aussies who'd had earlier/closer starts and were on shorter courses came back with completely dry shoes. The more distant start was 2.4km away and an easy jog on paved forest paths. Was still feeling a bit feverish and sorry for myself but then saw a lady riding a modified tricycle which was basically a bicycle at the back and a wheelchair in front and she was taking her severely-disabled daughter for a ride (which she probably does every day) and she stopped and took photos of the orienteering start and explained them to the daughter, then had to hop back on the trike and ride uphill with all these orienteers getting in her way, yet she was so cheerful. All I had to do was go for a run in the forest, of my own volition and with complete ability to do so.

Dithered a little at the start; whether to run down the track or straight into the forest, but looked at the end of the leg and decided the control was best reached by following a clear-ish granite spur line and then going up hill with a pair of cliffs as my attack. Slow, but certain, was my motto for this race. Which is why I was really annoyed, on the leg to 2, to overrun a tiny track junction by about 100m because I simply didn't see a footpad turning off. But in the control circles I was generally pretty good. And on the complex legs through the complicated knolls I took the high ground as much as possible (lesson from the last rogaine: use the ridgelines) and while this was slow and meant a degree of extra climb, it gave the same sense of achievement as putting a jigsaw puzzle together!

I was pretty buggered though, and really struggled on hills and was also pretty slow getting down cliffs but at least I was consistently going in the right direction (Winsplits claims that I made no mistakes, but I know otherwise; however, the leg which it says was my proportionately-slowest happened to have a high percentage of uphillness). Slightly too far left on 7 and here a woman in red & green caught me, but I still can't work out who she was and where she was in either the starting or finishing order. Anyway, I upped the pace a bit and was around her for the next few controls but then veered too far left again on the approach to 12 and she got past me. From 13 I possibly should have dropped to the track below instead of climbing to the one above, but it doesn't really matter. The rest of the course was straightforward and I finished semi-strongly.

15th on the day, which was nice (and Clare was 7th). Obviously a couple of people who ran the sprints are missing from the forest races, but also there were numerous small-to large blowouts today, whereas I feel that I lost at most 5 min overall by either route choice or control circle inefficiencies. And that time difference might have got me up 2-3 more places but not into the top 10. Which I'm definitely not fast enough for, anyway...but I am fitter than I was a couple of weeks ago.

Charter flight Gothenburg-Aberdeen was at 6pm and full of orienteers. (I know now why it was so expensive - the Swedish crew had turned around and were taxiing to fly back to Gothenburg before we'd even collected our hire cars.) Drive from there to Inverness was about the same distance as Adelaide-Burra and we got to the accommodation at 11pm (stopped for takeaway burgers, but they were pretty horrible). A long day given that our WMOC household was up at 6am cleaning everything in order to avoid a 2500SEK cleaning fee.

C • great result! 2

Event: WOC 2015 & Scottish 6 days
 

Know now why I was so exhausted last night - sore throat has turned into minor cold and the thought of running a final tomorrow seems all a bit much, and the idea of 6 more days of racing in Scotland overwhelming. Achievement for today was washing Gothenburg marsh mud out of O-gear. Some pairs of socks needed rinsing no less than 6 times and the water was still Coke-coloured. Also Blair & I went for a drive up the coast to the next big island, Tjorn, which is reached by a big bridge (Tjornbron) and at the far end of which are more little villages nestled among the rocks and ferries to further islands (the baby one is called Tjornkalv - I guess it's the 'calf' of the big island). Despite the black cloud which dumped on us as we were driving home, the washing on the line was actually dry :)

C • :-( 1

Same assembly area as yesterday, not as much sogginess, although the first few controls were in the tiny-knolls-between-tiny-marshes section. Picked up the map and could hardly read the detail on the short leg to 1; in hindsight I'd have done better to deliberately aim for the track just beyond, which I bounced off anyway. Not sure what I should have done to 2, which was very junky and I dithered between cliffline and marsh when I should have focused on reading/following the knolls, because the Russian who started 2 minutes after me caught me here and the winner, having started 4 min after, ran through me on the way to 3. After this I saw no one who appeared to be on my course!

4-5 involved taking some steps down the cliffline (5 was obviously a transport control, for that reason) then to 6 was across a hillside which had previously been burned and so the rock patches were bare, the visibility good, and I dropped into the small gully I wanted at the end with no problems. Now into bigger pines; 7-8 was a transport leg across a bridge at the end of the lake but not totally easy - I didn't quite climb the cliff at the right point afterwards. Still wonder if I should have gone across the marsh 8-9 instead of around the end, but this gave me a good attack to 9. Next few controls were straightforward then on the 1km leg to 13 I decided to take the track and approach from the north, then climb the cliffs at the end. I still think this was a good route, and I went up from the correct boulder, but climbed a little too high and was above the cliff line I wanted, dropped to it but didn't go far enough south, panicked a little because I'd only identified 2 lines of cliffs when there were 3 on the map, and bailed back to above the boulder. This time I went far enough south and found the control, then got out of there as fast as I could with some respectable splits on the next couple of controls.

18th on the day, 6 min faster than yesterday despite that 3-4 min mistake (but the terrain was faster, although the winner was a couple min slower - maybe she decided not to try so hard) and with the times added together that makes me 20th in W40 and the top 30ish will run the A final. Clare was 7th today, 8th overall in qualifying. Pity Tash Key isn't here too but she's already back in Australia. And Jo Allison's 4th in W35. She has a *slightly* stronger field to compete against than Susanne did in 2011...

Everyone in our household seems a little shattered this evening after 2 tough days in the forest. Good thing there's a day off tomorrow. Backing up from Sat's final with 6 races in Scotland could be a bit much for some of us!

Oh boy, I hope I never have to do a rogaine in weather as wet as it was for the 3 hours before I ran today! Actually it had just stopped raining by the time I started but everything was awash - the tracks, the marshes, the tiny streams chanelling water from one marsh to the next. So it was good & sloshy, and there was tracking everywhere. I managed to get completely confused fairly early on the long north-easterly first leg - entirely my fault, but I crossed a marsh at a narrow point 90 degrees to where I'd intended to cross, climbed some cliffs without really reading what the contours beyond would do, and then when I found a random boulder panicked and thought I''d overshot the second north-running track when in fact I hadn't even reached it yet. So I turned back to the west, and sure enough I found a track, but there was a medium-sized lake below it! I'd come back to the first track...which would have been an ok route if I'd deliberately taken it from the beginning.

Probably didn't lose as much time on this leg as I'd first thought, because the person who started 2 minutes after me only caught me here (and only gained another 2 min on me for the rest of the couse, despite trying to hang on to Yvonne Gunell for all of leg 3-4). Tracks only got you halfway towards the control anyhow, and then I was oh-so-careful in picking off every little feature - mainly small knolls - on the way to the control. And I employed this approach on all of the other legs, with only a few small wobbles in control circles when I couldn't spot the boulder because it was hidden by greenery. Towards the end of the course some of the small knolls were marked as clearings, having granite underneath, and these were good to read if I kept a close eye on my compass. I couldn't really run through the famous Gothenburg marsh grass anyway, but at least I don't mind having my feet wet. Which is a good thing because in some parts of the finish chute I was up to my knees in mud, mud, glorious mud...

22nd, which is all right, but I'd like to creep inside the top 20. Good race by Clare Hawthorne to come 8th which I think she can improve upon with a cleaner run! I was surprised how hammered my legs (particularly knees) were afterwards and need to find a way of running more efficiently tomorrow and navigating proactively rather than reactively. Vanessa talked about channelling her inner gazelle; perhaps I could find my inner guanaco?

The sun came out in the afternoon so we detoured via the botanic gardens on the way home. Very nicely laid out, extending up a valley between (what else?) two granite ridges. So of course there is a rock garden section, with an artificial waterfall. Pity the rhododendrons have already bloomed, though.

C • inner guanaco 6

The morning was comparatively fine so we drove out to Marstrand, half of a village to the west of our accommodation, at the end of a chain of islands joined by bridges and then you need a ferry to get across 300m to the other half of the village which is overlooked by a 17th-century castle (positively modern, in these parts). All the islands are granite and it's surprising where a tiny red-and white house can be tucked away among bare rock (something like how I think Greenland must look).

This left the afternoon for getting rained on at the model event, around which Blair & I jogged together (an elderly gentleman we met thought one of us was coaching the other!) finding out that a cliff taller than a person can be not mapped at all, as can a decent-sized slab of slippery bare rock. So it's all in the reading of the contours...was nice terrain, with juniper, blueberries and small conifers on the ridgelines and taller greener forest in the not-always marshy valleys. Apparently the topography here is that all the hills run in parallel ridges, with lines of cliffs on their west side and sloping down more gently to the east. Should be fun tomorrow although my hill-fitness is sadly lacking.

C • Surrounds 2

Similar area to yesterday although some more actual route choice on legs, and a couple of big granite hills. The resident meteorologist told us that today was going to remain dry; therefore the heavy shower an hour or so before I ran must have been a figment of everyone's imagination even if it did make surfaces a wee bit slippery and my running extra-cautious. Also it turns out I ran a bit too fast yesterday, and therefore my legs were pretty tired today. The Swiss lady who started a minute after me looked as though she had something to prove and I wasn't surprised to see her coming up after me as I ran through the school, but she didn't actually get past me until after the first hill (somehow I managed 8th fastest split on the cross-country leg - because I actually took the track!) and then seemed not to be taking quite as efficient routes as me after the train line. I was lucky to be able to tail her, and a Belarussian woman, through the next hill section without really having to think, and although they had a better route than me for the next leg an got away from me on the longer leg around the harbour I think I was more efficient at the end and they didn't gain much.

Ended up 14th, to my great surprise. Looking at the splits, I'm still surprised, because I was often in the 20s on each leg, and on pure running speed I should have been 29th as evidenced by my finish split on both days. Surely I lost some time on some routes but maybe it didn't add up to any more than the 40 sec which 13th place was ahead of me. I asked Blair if my result was good enough for me to get some lollies and he said yes so we raided the excellent sweet shop next to the results stand before boarding the ferry with about 200 other orienteers. As with yesterday, I don't quite understand how we were away from our accommodation for about 9 hours in order to spend less than 20 minutes running a race!

C • Lollies 11