Training Log Archive: ColmM

3km Time Trial with jonnyq and lorrieq.
Legs weren't feeling great before, but not too bad either I guess. The aim was to go at 80sec laps (10mins pace), and just try and stay as close to that as possible.
We started and immediately jonny was leading, and I felt the pace was slightly too quick, but when I finished lap 1 in 81secs I knew I was going to have to push a bit harder. After 3 laps or so I was already beginning to not feel great, but it didn't get that much worse until I really pushed at the end. Seemed to keep a decent pace for most, but slowly slipping away. With a few laps to go I could really see my times slowing, and I was hurting. But with 800m to go I had done the maths and worked out 2x 84secs laps would put me at 10:30, and I wanted to dip just under that. I picked it up and ran better for this 800, really fought off the pain. I caught a bit back on Jonny here, but I didn't ever really think I was going to catch him again, I just wanted the time. He ran very well!
Nice run, enjoyable, pretty big headwind as well. I found in the last few hundred metres I was really struggling to get air in at all. My Lungs struggled a lot, but it was also my upper arms and abs that really hurt when I finished, a lot more core work to be done this year.

- Splits

Gotten a good bit of cycling around now that I'm home for the week, which is nice. Also got to a physical therapist today, she said the achilles is fine, just come back a little slow, and do some stretching. So should be okay, which is good news.

25mannakorten. Basically the side event to 25manna held on the same map. Much nicer than yesterday I thought. Enjoyed it a lot more, maybe not having hoards of people over such a small area in the forest...

Anyways, I started quite well, maybe my route wasn't as good as it could have been to 1, but quite good, nailed it and running fast. Very fluid through the next few controls and running really well, pushing hard and going fast, keeping really good contact too. By number 6, it was going very well! To number 7, I was a bit too rushed and went a bit off line at the start, corrected but I was very hesitant to the control, and thought it was a little strange, but alas it was not, lost more than I thought, about 20secs. To 8, all seemed fine, I had taken a good bearing, and could tell exactly where I was on the path, but I mustn't have watched the compass enough and was slightly to the right, hitting another boulder, for a moment I couldn't find this on the map as it was where the circle should have covered and the gap they had cut was quite small, but I found it, relocated, and lost maybe another 20secs, which was disappointing. To 9, I was fine, maybe a little low, but not very much lost really. To 10. Oh God. I was being far too rushed. I wanted to push on and didn't take enough time at all to take a good bearing, I just ran and spotted another control on a similar looking spur, but in reality, it was a boulder on a spur. It took me a moment to realise what I had done, but I still couldn't place myself on the map, so I ran where I thought it should be, luckily, I was right. 45secs lost. To 11, I steadied it a bit more, I knew I couldn't make another mistake like that and navigated fine again. To 13, I knew where I was going, knew where I was, but the other 3 guys seemed to run really low, and I was just put off by them. My relative height awareness was right, but I doubted it and dropped a little too low, realised quite quickly though, and lost about 20secs, which was annoying way to finish. From here on, it was easy, I felt I should have run a bit quicker her, but the splits are still quite good, so... Unfortunately, while I felt I was running quite quickly, I was passed on the run-in by some russian to take the final prize! 2 SECONDS!

5th place H20, about 2mins lost, really positive in terms of running though, felt I was running fast. Gleb Tikhonov took 1st, and having come 6th on the JWOC Long, was never going to beat him anyway, Conor was 3rd with a cleaner run, and the Russians took 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th and 7th so no Swedes at all. Really should have been running H20E, but we didn't enter ourselves, ah well. Good confidence booster I guess.

Winsplits

C • Fight the power, 3

To the start.

Event: 25Manna
 

Not really sure of time, Garmin has died I believe, it is not official yet, but almost. Almost 5 years though, so I can't complain.
Didn't enjoy this as much as I would have hoped. I started fine and was navigating okay, but struggled to run as there were constantly slower people in front of you, loads of people everywhere. The elephant tracks were full on tracks, and navigation was rather easy, I still lost concentration and mad one bad mistake of about 2mins and had a quite a few hesitations. Also felt quite heavy and slow.

Warm up. And then a warm down with Tomas.

Collecting Conor's controls from the other day. Took some exciting routes, ones which were more interesting, but wouldn't be taken in a real MTBO race. Some nice hard parts, just trying not to put the foot down, succeeded for the most part, but struggled with the parts taken over by marsh. The small fallen over trees and wooden planks as bridges over streams are the most fun! Really nice, some technical bits too. Unfortunately, had some trouble locating the kite at no.4, so Conor got an extra leg...