Training Log Archive: Kat

EVENT: TVOC local event at Brill Common
COURSE: Green, 4.15km, 24 controls
TERRAIN: Brill is a very small open area on top of a hill. Mostly grassy with scattered trees, some areas of dense brambles, and lots of tricky contour detail (especially the hidden pits).
MY RUN: Mostly clean. Only made three "big" mistakes. Two of these were pit controls where I simply couldn't see the flag (#4, #19) even though I was right next to it. The third occured on #13 when I tried to enter the green a few meters too early and got really stuck. Otherwise, it was a decent race and I even beat Boris on a few controls :)
RESULTS: 9th out of 55 people on the course and the second female behind Ruth, who beat me by 23 seconds. My three mistakes cost me about 3.5 minutes in total, so I could have run around 33 minutes with a relatively clean run.

C • Brill 1

Green - Splits

Still busy.

Arrived in Oxford at 4AM. Tired and really busy.

MAP: Barbate (central and eastern parts)
TERRAIN: As usual.
TRAINING: A classic-distance course with really long legs in the beginning and a few technical middle-distance legs towards the end.
THINGS DONE WELL: Picked good route choices. Did well with the technical stuff at the end.
THINGS TO WORK ON: Relocation; Knowing where I cross linear features; Having a better feel for vague/gradual contours.

MAP: Barbate (the northwestern part)
TERRAIN: More green bushes than the eastern part of the map, more sandy trails (which were usually slower than the woods), and a very detailed and technical sandy section in the northwestern corner. The southwestern part was very vague - few contours, few features, and indistinct vegetation boundaries.
TRAINING: A long middle-distance course with 21 controls. Very good course, with lots of different types of navigation skills needed. There was a bit of route choice towards the beginning on the longer legs, then some precise navigation in the technical sand dunes, and finally some good compass bearing and luck needed in the vague area.
THINGS DONE WELL: I was pretty fast and accurate on the shorter legs. (I also enjoyed those the most.)
THINGS TO WORK ON: Distance/climb judgment through green. Having an attackpoint or a plan of what to do once inside the circle for each control (especially on the longer legs).

MAP: Barbate (central part)
TERRAIN: Usual Barbate terrain.
TRAINING: A relocation exercise with Boris. We took turns leading each other around and trying to get the other lost.
THINGS DONE WELL: In general I knew where Boris had led me. (Also, I managed to confuse him once while I was leading, which is not easy to do!)
THINGS TO WORK ON: Concentrating while tired. Relocating in detailed areas.

MAP: Barbate (northeastern part)
TERRAIN: Mostly open woods, with some undergrowth, but very runnable. Sandy in the open areas, with a very technical section in the north and a few steep hills in the south. Lots of contour detail.
TRAINING: I ran two short courses in adjacent areas of the map. I did the first one fast, just to see how well I would adjust to the terrain, then did the second one at a slower pace with Boris shadowing me.
THINGS DONE WELL: After spending several days running on steep hills, I adjusted suprisingly well to the 2.5 meter contour intervals and intricate detail of this area.
THINGS TO WORK ON: Recognizing vegetation boundaries (sandy yellow open vs. rough open); Simplification

MAP: Barbate (northeastern part)
TERRAIN: Same.
TRAINING: In the afternoon, I did a longer course on a contours-only map. The goal was to keep in contact with the map and get a better feel for the contour detail.
THINGS DONE WELL: I did well with the short legs and kept in contact with the map at least for the first half on the longer legs.
THINGS TO WORK ON: Although I can usually get to the control circles just fine, I need to become better at actually finding the controls. I need to have a better idea of what to expect in the control circle so that I know what I can use to attack off and also what can potentially cause a parallel error.

MAP: Barbate Sur, 1:5000
TERRAIN: More physical (green) than typical Barbate terrain. Relatively flat with lots of contour detail.
TRAINING: The final training was a forest sprint on the southern part of the map. The aim was to get used to the 1:5000 scale and also to get a bit of fast running in.
THINGS DONE WELL: I did well in the beginning and found most of the controls right on.
THINGS TO WORK ON: Get used to 1:5000 scale in the woods - I kept expecting things to come up sooner than they actually did. Focus even while tired - I got a bit sloppy towards the end.

Training with Boris in Spain, Day 3
MAP: Las Lagunas
TERRAIN: Steep hills and lots of green slashes. This is the greenest and most unpleasant map I've ever run on. The map was mostly rough open with thorny bushes everywhere. Even the dark yellow areas had some type of spiky weeds.
TRAINING: Since we had to make the four-hour drive to Barbate today, this was designated the easy day when we would do only one training. Las Lagunas was conveniently located on the way south, which is why we chose to train on it. At first I was enthusiastic about running through green and trying to stay on my bearings (which is a skill I definitely need to practice), but the green on this map proved to be a bit too much. Thorns cut into me on every single step and it didn't help that many of those steps seems to be uphill. So I did the first part of the course and then jogged back to the finish on trails.
THINGS DONE WELL: I did not get lost despite having to go off the line several times to avoid the green.
THINGS TO WORK ON: I need to pick better route choices through crappy terrain, both big route choices and micro route choices.