Training Log Archive: Canadian

Event: 2010 US Team Trials for WOC
 

run out to the start of the middle at the team trials

My hip was bothering me on this one and I almost decided to not run it but Ross convinced me that it was a great course and that I should at least try jogging it. I'm not sure it was really the best plan but I finished the course at an ok pace all considered.

almost non-existent warm up

Blue Middle - Splits

Blue Sprint - Splits

rough estimate of the time it took to climb to the start and come back down after this morning's session.

Did two loops of a series of loops on Surebridge from one of the CSU training camps. it was pretty thick in a lot of it and my lower legs were pretty tight so I took it really slow and focused on my precision orienteering. For the most part that went well. A brief blog post of our training this week is now available at:http://teamcanadaorienteering.blogspot.com/

11:55 - loop 1
2:40
5:55 - loop 2
1:45
7:50 - loop 3
45
4:35 - loop 4
33
10:52 - loop 5
1:10
6:59 - loop 6

The times in between loops includes the time jogging from the end of the last loop to the next start but not the time waiting to start.
Some of this exercise went quite well while in other parts I lost it a little bit, notably at the very end when I was frozen in the rainy drizzle. It took me until about the first control of the second loop to really click into the orienteering today. After that I started to feel that it was really coming together though so that's a good sign for this weekend :)

most of the others decided to go out and orienteer again this afternoon but I decided it was best if I skipped out.

Eric and I did a couple of relocation exercises on our way up to the start of our main exercise - a 'star loop' where we started in the middle and each hung two controls then ran the rest of the loop. The relocation was a little tricky and we spent some time getting used to the map. The star loop exercise was good but I lost it on a few of the controls. Note: we used toilet paper as our flags.

I ran this exercise with Emily and discovered just how badly I need to force myself to slow down when the woods are really fast and runnable. I had a terrible habit of just taking off full speed down the hills only to have to climb again later because I let me speed get too fast. Again focus, focus, focus!

We went back to the Ansonia map from Saturday to give Emily a chance to run the middle race. I ran the first and end sections of a race Boris had maps for really focusing on compass bearing and then completely figuring out the control circle. It went well but super slow.

Eric, Emily, Carol, and I went up to Paugussett (sp?) to run some 1km, 5 control loops, that Boris gave us. The terrain was the most technical I've run in and it was tricky without flags.

I started with loop C and it went decently but quite slow - to be expected given the terrain though I guess

Loop A: This loop was a little bit faster but I ended up running this loop with Carol and Eric so that helped the speed and made some of the orienteering within the control circle a little smoother. Still slow of course.

Loop B:
This last loop was really nice and there were some sections where one could actually open up and put on some decent speed. It became very important to really really slow down in the control circle and precision orienteer.

Really good really fun training. Thanks Boris!

C • Welcome 1

This was really quite fast down the hill where we could let ourselves go.

stretching after the excercise

Short warm-up consisting mostly of dynamic stretching

Finally a decent race.

I'm sitting in a library right now between trainings so will add details later. I seriously plan on doing a detailed analysis of this race.

Here's a start:

I didn't do a huge warm up because I knew it was going to be a long race and that I didn't want to go out to fast. (I find I go out faster after a better warm up) I got confused as to which trail I was on at the start so cut off north east on a compass bearing, ended up fairly far off track, and took a non-optimal route choice to the first control. I think I lost a little over 2 minutes on that route choice but I executed it quite well and had absolutely no problems finding the control.

I went out on a compass bearing checking off features (mostly rock walls) on my way to the second control. I got dragged off course somewhere though and relocated at the top of the hill by the corner of a rock wall. Blasted straight to 3 then was able to take the first half of the leg to 4 nice and fast, slowing down and orienteering carefully (and well :)) on the last bit of the leg. 5 and 6 were good controls, orienteered well and maintained decent speed.

Then I got it into my head that there was a big hill after a swamp that I should go somewhat south of and take the trails that wind 'around' the hill. I don't know what I was thinking because the trails end up going pretty much completely over the hill as well and I were super confusing to follow. anyway, I orienteered super slowly on this leg once I got to the trails so as not to get completely lost and lost several minutes on that leg.
8 was a fairly easy matter of following a ridge to a large marsh and then finding the right cliff. 9 should have been very straight forward. There was an obvious stream that lead right past the control but I didn't see it. All I noticed when I looked at that leg at 8 was a huge cliff about 60 m before the control which I used as an attackpoint. The problem was that the cliff was actually 2 cliffs and I went between them thinking I was going around. I lost 3 1/2 minutes or so there when I couldn't reorient very well.

Controls 10 and a 11 were fairly straight forward as long as you were really careful in the green around the control.

Leg 12 was long and I think I had quite a good route choice on that. I'm very pleased with how I ran it.

Blue2 Day 2: Long - Splits

M-21+ Day 2: Long: Blue combined - Splits