Training Log Archive: Bertbennett

Model map jog with Alvin. Alternating controls. Actually one of the most enjoyable areas I've ever run on. However I looked at the amiens map again tonight and there's some pretty stark differences between the model area and Amiens. People are saying the rock was mapped poorly but honestly I didn't mind it at all. If you're confident enough in your nav small differences in what boulders are left off the map shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Took the str8 compass out today. The magnifyer was f#$k@n awesome in the detail. Not sure how I'd have read anything without it today.

Legs felt a little dead after yesterday, even though it was only 7km. I think the heat and my lack of warm down/food afterwards contributed.

Aus schools relay champs. Junior boys 1st in Aus with a great last leg by Alvin. That kid is going places. Still 3 years in junior boys and already on the honour team. Senior girls 3rd after an MP by tassie.

Supervising disco. Amongst the cringiest 2 hours of my life.

MP'd on the senior boys course on the shortest control! But physically I felt pretty alright out there. Technically a little bit messy but mostly pretty clean. I think the control I missed would have added all of 30 seconds to my time -_- Didn't even see the control on my map! Woulda won the "race the kids" but alas...

C • Don't 7

Travel day. Thought I'd take it off despute wanting to go for a jog this morning. Going to "race the kids" tomorrow. Best case scenario beat all the school kids, worst case, get beaten by all the school kids. Motivation enough to not stuff up.

C • "Motivation enough to not stuff up." 3

Public event for the schools sprint. Would have made the senior boys podium but a couple errors late in the course and one control #18 being in what I think was the wrong spot, and a few older participants taking their sweet time punching controls, put me down on what was a very impressive winning time for the senior boys.

Surprisingly fun for such a small map.

5 minute plank workout

On the 25th of september 2016, it was declared that there was to be a sick relay race. The stage was set. 6 teams. But who would come out on top?

Macey was sent out first leg. I hoped that Macey wouldn't blow himself up trying to hang onto Simon. He did a great job pacing himself and came back in 2nd place just ahead of a hungry chase pack. But where was the ACT? Their first leg runner had a pretty average run by the looks of it and sent Shep out with a bit of a task ahead of him.

Toby was the 2nd leg runner for my team. He had a great consistant run and came in in 1st place! Pressure on... no idea how big the gap was to Eon. Turns out about 2:40. Which shrunk significantly after bungling the 2nd control. A 100m short one... s#$t! Was messy through the 1st 3rd of the course and I could feel the pressure of the situation really getting to me. Ian caught me just before the long leg. S#$t!
Got a tow from eon on the long leg. Then the next leg couldn't see him anywhere and assumed he'd gone off into the distance. Saw him again coming in as I punched the control! Must have missed it a bit. I had a narrow lead going into the 3rd last control but wasn't certain of the ponds. Attackpoint felt funny. Eon punched first and from then on I couldntreally get around him. Tried a sprint in the finish but the shape of the finish shoot wasn't conducive to a sprinting overtake. Disappointed that I couldn't bring the W home for the boys. They did an awesome job to put me out in the lead. Next year?

Congrats to ACT!

C • Great work 13

Technical campus sprint. Never my fauté. Brute forced my way to 8th with running speed more than anything else I think. A frustrating sprint but I don't think many had a clean run. Sprints are something I seldom get to practice so my expectations are never high for this discipline.

C • It's "forté" 4

Spent 6 hours after my flight waiting in the airport. Got through most of youtubes catalogue I think.

Pre aus champs fartlek, to remind the legs what fast pace feels like after almost a whole week of slow stuff. Found a bush loop near mum and dad's place and just did 10 times 1min on/1min off. I think distance is off, considering I was pretty much going at a full out sprint and the lap distances were never more than 300m for the 1min. Legs felt much better than on Tuesday! Flying out tomorrow and meeting up with the junior team!

Nice evening recovery run. Legs felt a little full of junk today which I expected after the big weekend.

Taking back my comment about the legs feeling alright :p Big day helping dad build a dividing fence for the new house that we're building next year. Left hammy which was often nagging in the background during the super longs was a bit painful today but a week of light stuff should have it feeling fine by saturday.

A nice hit out prior to Aus Champs. The legs actually felt fine today after yesterday's run which is weird. Took this one easy because I just wanted a nice clean run before heading up to Queensland. Kinda regret going so easy! I feel like I would have been close to Macey's time today given a full effort! Congrats to Macey on the W today!

Can't say the area was terribly inspiring. A lot of vague gullies and track running. Good to practice my compass. Annoyed at missing a few gullies by 50m here and there. No real time losses more than 20 seconds (I missed #5, just ran straight past it, felt funny in relation to the two gullies). Did lose a minute on the 2nd long leg to Macey who went straight. I should have trusted my terrain running a bit more!

Event: World Super Long Orienteering Champs Newie Edition
 

Rough distance and time as I forgot my watch. This is based off Ondrej and Andy's distances and times + a little bit of extra distance and time added for route choice + slow running towards the end. Will do more detailed write up of this after nap.

Pretty sure this is the biggest week distance wise I've ever done, a lot of which was running through thick forest with a map in hand. Not the idea taper! But I still have 2 weeks til the "Aus Champs". Sprint doesn't count right?

C • Aus champs 1

Nice tempo run along foreshore in the afternoon before netball. 2km warmup then 8km tempo and 2km warm down. I was aiming for km splits between 3:45-3:50 but the wind just played havoc with any idea of consistency... 2 first kms I held back because I had a massive tailwind then I struggled for 4km into a big phat headwind with the splits venturing into the low 3:50s then last 2km with a tailwind I got excited finishing with a 3:23.. woooooops. Rest day tomorrow so it doesn't really matter that I over did it.

Salty as hell about this game! OMG! Number one the umpires forgot to add one of our points on in the first half, meaning we lost by a point when it should have been a draw. But let me continue.

Opposition team, violent and bad sports. Their GD said to me after a particularly violent contact (which didn't get called up again) "How's that for contact you c#nt". Wow.. 3rd division netball and we're bringing out the C word and contacting as hard as possible. Then the opposition Centre kicked the ball and the umpire gave the penalty to the other team instead of us. Then called contact on their shooter, who then got the ball instead of Nicola! Come on we're paying good money for these games at least try and seem like you're paying attention! Then with less than a minute to go, they threw the ball down the other end of the court while we were out of play and their whole team deliberately walked close to the ball like they were going to pick it up and throw it back, and instead they just left it for us to pick up to waste as much time as possible! Are you serious! Such a team of scumbag, Tony Abbot loving, good for nothing arses.

GPS Decided to delete run data before I could download it :( But these are the numbers I remember when I saved the run. Nice long run on a wednesday evening. Got dark around 1/3 of the way through and it was only just light enough to get through glenrock without faceplanting. Held back on the pace this run, aiming to keep it above 5min/km so I didn't burn myself out for the rest of the week. Still felt strong if a little hungry towards the end. Good run. 0 small animal fatalities which is always a bonus.

Tuesday speed session with the flyers and Nicola. 1km effort to start with then 8 times 400. Did the 1km in 3:23 which felt comfortable and then 400s in 74 seconds to start with then down to 62 for the last one. Last 4 were all between 67 and 62! Felt really good today, the regular speed work must be paying off! I was getting a solid 80 seconds rest today because we were taking the 60 second recovery off one of the other guys' watch, which meant to get a good training effect I figured I'd have to push the pace.

Nic did all of the efforts today and kept up with the blokes! She wanted to quit after 6 of the 8 400s but she hung in there! Good on ya Nic!

What a bloody adventure that was! Really keen for this one as it was a great test before Aus champs for fitness and nav over a long course. Whenever I get excited about a course I always make mistakes early on which is something I'm going to have to rectify with some sort of mental preparation. Lost about 4 minutes on the 1st control which should have been a REALLY easy compass off a track bend. No idea what I was doing for the first 10 minutes of my course really.

After that, smooth till 10 where I was caught up by Shep. I saw him as I was going back onto the track on the way to #5 so I figure he was about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes behind me at that point in real time. I had a pretty smooth next few controls and he eventually caught me at the control on 10, the placement of which which confused us both a bit. We ran together till 13 through the BINGO controls and back into the sandstone. Then I made the bloody huge mistake of thinking I could take time out of shep with some nifty route choices. BAAAAH WRONG! Lost 2 minutes in the thickest tree-corpse infested gully I've ever been in, as well as a good section of bark from my legs. After that I was physically pretty wrecked from the effort of getting out of that gully.

Long leg to 18 and my mind was nowhere. I had a route planned and just ended up on the wrong minor track and couldn't figure it out. Probably needed 2 gels out there today as I was seeing stars. Lost around 6-7 minutes on that control alone just through not finding that track and having to bash till I got to the major track and then bashing back into the control :(

So if you've made it this far, the message is mixed. I'm pissed off with myself for some really rookie errors especially when I had planned on taking the 1st part of the course really carefully and ignoring that completely. I should have just ran with Shep rather than trying to avoid following him. As much as I hate following, most of the time if you try and not follow you're putting yourself in a bad route choice just to avoid following. I think physically I was capable today of around a 1:35:00 or even better but after 3 hours sleep the night before and a 4:30hr drive I wasn't quite mentally up to it. But I'm buoyed by feeling strong in the forest and having the mental fortitude to push on after missing the 1st badly and getting completely scratched to shit by the forest. Shep is a great mark to look up to. Always great to have him at events as something to aspire to and a mark to strive for :)

C • :-)) 4

SL12 Hard 1 - Splits

Event: NSW State League #11 - Mittagong / #12 - Belanglo SF
 

Well the hammy and calf probably would have preferred if I didn't play netball but my mind craves the game. A win this week. Opposition down a WD, which made it a bit easier.

Muscles complaining. Will probably have no training for a few days while I let my calf and hammy rest until Sunday. I think I just keep coming back to training a day or two too soon and it never quite heals. Annoying. Pathetic training session really.

seeing a very fat man on a very small vespa struggling to go up a hill today with heaps of traffic behind him lifted my spirits.

Decided against my usual tuesday speed session with the flyers because I want to give my muscles a little bit of a break from high intensity stuff for a little while. But I wanted to make sure Nic had someone to introduce her to everyone as she was trying out the flyers session for the first time.

Introduced Nicola. Made the absolutely massive mistake of mentioning orienteering to someone who I thought I'd already gone through the labour intensive task of explaining it to. I had not explained it to this man. There went 5 minutes. Anyway, ended up doing 2 of the 6 800m intervals just cause, then went on with my long run. Down to bar beach, then merewether, up to the top of the hill then back down to the beach, then into Glenrock. Then down fernleigh track, through Adamstown, past the race course and home.

I encountered a black cat near Hamilton. Apparently the sight of me running down the footpath scared the shit out of it and it ran onto the road. I hear a crunch, and a loud meow of pain. Then I turn around and see the cat dragging itself off the road. A few minutes later and the cat was dead. The guy who hit the cat (driving an X5, soul patch, douchebag haircut) didn't want anything to do with the situation but I made him take responsibility. I left the scene, and jogged home. Sad for the cat and its loving owners.

Wow! so tired today! A couple days in a row with 5 hours sleep really destroyed me. Took a 3 hour nap in the afternoon instead of going for a run. Fair trade off I think.

Arrived in the morning and had to put water out at the two water controls. Very heavy. Many effort. Then collecting controls afterwards. Due to a lack of control collectors Alex and I had to put in a big effort. Hit all the controls perfectly ;) what a surprise.

I think I definitely overset some of my courses today. Quite a few people spending 90+ minutes out on course is probably evidence of that. Sorry to all the poor people I sent out on courses that were maybe a bit too hard!

2 people finished my superlong course. Another bloke punched the finish, wrote dnf on his block and walked away all without a word. Woops!

C • Hey 8

Putting out controls with Macey. Surprisingly tiring just being on your feet for so long and carrying stuff. Got everything bar the green/blue controls out.

Left calf and hammy feeling a little bit iffy I think owing to wednesday's KOM effort. I think I didn't warm up enough. Rookie error!

Planned on a longer run today but immediately knew something was up when I left the apartment and I felt kinda tired running at 5min/km. Legs didn't really have anything beyond that to give. I'm not sure if I've just put in too much high intensity stuff lately and my body needs a break or if I'm just getting sick. I think I'll just have a few light days with either nothing or low intensity. This fits nicely with my plan on spending a few hours on saturday putting controls, streamers and water out.

C • Dude look at your log, you'... 4