Training Log Archive: AC

easy warm up for the Nationale. Right knee feeling distinctly dodgy, but should be okay.

Early start time for this first big race of the year. Glorious day in the offing, but a chilly start. After a good warm-up (although right knee quite sore), took a poor route choice out of the start gate. Choice was left or right with the former being down and around a hill with a climb to the control, and right being up a steep hill and along the plateau to drop in to the control from above. Chose to go right and found the going quite tough along the plateau. But got the control okay after a bit of a struggle through the rock and heather. Second control okay, then a long leg to #3. Took the right option this time and execution was okay. Not really fast, but safe enough and found the potentially dangerous control (rock on a steep and rocky hillside) okay. After that it was mostly fine - not fast but solid, with a couple of minutes binned on #7, which was a re-entrant between two huge boulders in a massive boulder field - until about 4km when started to run out of steam and really struggle with a lack of energy and started to slow down a lot, barely managing a slow jog. Very slow through the spectator controls and then plodded through the very technical finishing loop in low growth forest, which was probably just as well as several who ran quickly cam unstuck. Did manage a big sprint over the last two controls and to the finish as I had caught 5 minutes on last year's H55 champion, which made up for feeling crappy for the last half of the course. Course length was advertised as 5.9k and I ran 7.65k with all the route choice.

Finished second, 1 1/2 mins down on the winner. Pretty good result considering the time losses and the slowdown. There was a bit of a pack behind me with about 10 runners within 5 minutes. With a decent run, I could have easily done 53-54 minutes. Was a bit disappointed with the effort and with the lack of energy after 35-40 mins. Not sure what is going on there as it has been a feature of my races the last year. Obvious answer is that I am starting too fast, but I am pretty sure that is not the case. I suspect that I need to do more long intervals, rather than the 1-3 minute intervals that I have largely been focussing on.

[MONDAY UPDATE. Have had a look at the splits and not a pretty sight. Bleeding time on most legs and the cost of the poor route choices and minor errors was quite high. Overall, around 6 minutes binned, and that doesn't take into account the slowing down over the last part of the course. So clearly a lot of O technical work to be done to get back up to scratch. To top things off, inside of right knee very sore this morning. Will need to go see someone about this.]

C • not good 3

Was so disappointed with my O race that I went out for a MTB ride in Fontainebleau - had brought down the bike and the gear just in case. Temperature was up to 19 degrees and glorious still sunny day. Tracks were a bit sandy, but mostly pretty firm. Just stuck to fire trails as I do not know where the mtb tracks in Fontainebleau might be and the walking tracks are just too hard to cycle on for the most part. Just cruised around, stopping regularly to check the map and try and make sense of the maze of tracks. Used the new Garmin 500 for the first time and it was pretty cool. Legs tired at the end.