Training Log Archive: immy

Went to the gym at Singapore airport, because I could :) It was so good being able to have a total break from travelling! I went a lot harder on the bike than I was expecting to.

Went on the elliptical after the bike, again went quite hard. Sweated a lot!

Really nice having a shower after this too, and before the flight back to Auckland :)

Another bad race. Still feeling very average physically, probably not quite as bad as yesterday, but definitely not running fast. Found the rough terrain especially slow too. I don't think I have worked out yet the best routes to run through this stuff. Made quite a few mistakes as well, most of them hunting around/in the circle, where there was often a lot more detail than the map shows. Need more practice with 1:15,000 maps.

Right foot is still not good and was quite painful towards the end of the race. I think my body is giving up on me :( I need shoes other than inov8s, they felt way too thin for some parts of the terrain.

Still, learnt a lot from this race, again.

O-ringen stage 4. This was not my day. When I tried to do a warm up jog to the start I knew something was wrong because my body refused to co-operate. But I started the race anyway. Things were not good though, for some reason I felt like I could hardly run, my body was just so tired and refused to move. Other girls ran past me and they weren't even going that fast, but I still couldn't keep up. It was extremely depressing and frustrating. By the middle of the course I let this affect my navigation and so wandered around in the general area at 6 and 7 which ended up costing me quite a lot of time. Tried to pull myself together and at least get the navigation right after that. It wasn't actually a very hard course. But maybe that's because I was moving so slowly. I am not sure now whether I should have just pulled out and not finished the race, but I find it very hard to give up on a race, even one that is as unpleasant as today was.

I realized afterwards that I haven't taken any iron tablets for about 5 weeks and now I feel like such an idiot. Can't believe that I could be so stupid. This is probably at least partly the cause because I feel today's tiredness was like the pathological tiredness I have had before. Maybe all the races and travelli have been catching up with me too? I don't know. Not sure if I should run tomorrow or not, but I guess I will just try and see how I feel... have already taken some iron and then will take more tomorrow.

So so disappointed to have a day like this when I was really looking forward to this race and felt I could do quite well. Pretty angry with myself for letting this happen.

Warm up jog from the pre start to the start. Really hot today.

O-ringen sprint. It was very painful, because the navigation was easy, so you basically had to just run as hard as possible. Didn't make any mistakes apart from going the wrong way around one building on the way to 10 - there were a lot of crowds which kind of put me off. Other than that was just lacking the necessary speed for this type of course. The top girls were about 3 minutes in front, about as I expected. Did a bit better today than on the previous days with respect to the rest of the field :)

Also fun to run with so many random people cheering for New Zealand! (I was wearing my NZ shirt.)

Warm down, talking to Malin :) Right foot is weirdly sore - hopefully nothing to worry about? Hmm.

Day 2 of O-ringen in some nice coastal terrain. Reminded me a bit of home! Lost quite a bit of time today on hesitations and being unsure of my direction/compass skills. This is definitely something that needs work. Started early so didn't have much tracking. Anne M Hausken Nordberg started at a similar time and she took 40 min, so this is what I should be aiming for. Probably 6 or more minutes of mistakes now that I take a closer look - no really big ones, but I lost time on a lot of the controls if I am being truly critical. 30s on 1, 20s on 2, 90s on 3, 2 min on 4, 90s on 5, bad route on 6 (unsure how much time), 30s or more on 9 (waist deep in a muddy stream and also an inadvertent change in my route which slowed me down), 20s on 10, 1 min on 15. Then also the hesitations on some of the vaguer legs, especially 16... Probably another minute or so! I think I need to be this critical more often.

I initially thought this race was better than yesterday but now I'm not so sure... Well at least I didn't come last :)

Long wait for the buses, and then they were stuck in a traffic jam...I missed my start. It was very stressful.

Luckily I was not the only one this happened to so they did give me a new start time.

O-ringen day 1. I had very modest goals for this race: 1) have a clean race, 2) achieve #1 by stopping at every control to be sure of my exit direction, 3) not take more than 50 minutes. I achieved 2 and 3 , but I did make about 5 or 6 minutes of mistakes on some of the earlier controls. Mostly it was due to getting distracted by clearings which didn't fit with what I expected to see and consequently doubting myself. But for a first race in Sweden I can live with that. Didn't run very hard as navigation was more important today. A bit of a shock how slow some of the terrain is to run through (marshes were very wet and slow, and also a few mossy areas were quite tough).

I came last - a bit depressing, but that's what I signed up for so I can't really complain. Not so happy with my time after all when I realized that Tove took just under 28 minutes on the course - I was expecting a winning time around mid 30s.

I enjoyed the race though which is the main thing :)