Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Back in Uppsala. Ukraine left me with one last parting gift of bad diarrhea. Mixed feelings about WOC and further motivation down the line. On one hand, I had two of my technically cleanest races at WOC, the sprint quali and the relay. On the other hand, I didn't feel good physically for either one of those. In the relay, in particular, I really struggled. I am happy with making the best of what I had on that day, but disappointed I did not have more. The middle quali debacle is a whole different story. I felt great physically, and felt like everything was set up in my favor. I had done plenty of training in that terrain (though, granted, not with so much low-visibility stuff), the weather was nice and cool, I had a good start time. The conditions seemed perfect. And then I simply imploded. A mistake on #1 rattled me, so I took a safe route to 2 and spiked it. Then got risky again to 3 and panicked when I didn't come to it immediately. What followed in the next 11 (!!!) minutes was like something out of a horrible dream. I'd relocate, attack, fail, see competitors run by, find the controls for the other quals, relocate, attack, fail, find the guy who was sitting on a hill watching all the controls, realize that he could SEE my control from where he was, attack again, fail again, eventually stumble onto a trail, finally relocate, and find the control. After punching it, I stopped. All this training, all this effort, completely wasted. Temptation to jog to the finish or to fabricate a story about losing my SI, being attacked by a dog, or something similar was high. Decided to continue the course anyway. Missed the next control by another 30 seconds, then slowly got myself together and picked up the pace. Ran well for most of the rest of the course, except missing the second-to-last after being stuck in nettles. Even ran hard in the finish chute (which actually paid off by letting me climb a place). After that, nothing. Last year, when I had a really bad middle quali, I was angry at myself but also knew that I wasn't ready yet. This time was different. I didn't feel angry, just empty. I was ready, and I blew it. Maybe it's putting too much pressure on myself, maybe it's trying to do too much, I don't know, but something obviously did not work. As usual, one needs to take some positives away, even from a catastrophe. With my eleven-minute mistake and another couple of minutes left out in the woods, I was 14 minutes away from qualifying. A clean run would have given me a shot, which had never been the case before. Neither last year in Denmark nor the year before in Japan would I have had a chance even with a clean run. But that's just the one little positive overshadowed by the enormous negative.
Self-confidence is low, but hey, I am back in Uppsala, racing season here is just heating up, and I love orienteering way too much to stay away. Time to sit down, figure out what went wrong, figure out what to do better, and return to work. I can't wait to get back into the woods.

C • mojo 11

An evening jog with Andrew, who seems to be sort-of living here for the time being. Great to have company to live and train with! We ran a trail loop on the north part of Nåsten and back through Stadsskogen and both commented on how much easier it felt to run here than it did in Ukraine. I don't know if it was the heat, the pollution, or the dogs, but there was something off about that place.

C • It was the goats 5

Warm-up

WOC Relay. Ran 2nd leg for team USA. Eric ran a solid first leg and handed over to me in 29th, just behind Canada, and just ahead of Germany. I ran fast to catch and pass Mike Smith coming into #1, as he missed it by a bit, and was back and forth with him and the German guy for a few controls. I then took a bad route choice to #7 and lost about a minute, as well as contact with the other guys. Leaving 8, I saw the Chinese and Japanese guys, who both started quite a bit ahead, coming into it, so I picked up speed a bit. Started feeling very tired and powerless in the steep, hilly section between 9 and 13, and just focused on being clean through there. Spotted the Moldavian going to the spectator control, but didn't really gain on him from there to the finish. All in all, a good race technically, but a tough day physically. The team finished 29th, a place worse than last year, but closer to the leaders percent-wise.

Relay model area. Ran a course that Tom designed for Eddie and me. Our courses were forked, and we started at the same time, but there wasn't much head-to-head running after the first control, as we went to our different forks and never saw each other again.

Morning jog with a bunch of other US runners, on the north side of the Hydropark island. Nice, sandy trails, weird Communist-era building remains, and some nettles.

Ran the WOC Tour after spectating the middle final. The course was the same as the men's final course for the last 5km or so. After chaos at the start (they didn't assign start times, so it was a free for all. I used my knowledge of Russian to convince the organizers to make people line up to get start times, and then graciously volunteered to form the line of people behind me, thus getting a coveted early start), I ran off, trying not to repeat my mistakes from the middle quali. Ran quite well this time, though still made two 1-minute mistakes, one in a very vague green area, and another towards the end, when I was tired and dehydrated. Still, quite happy with my time, and with getting back a bit of self-confidence before the relay.

M21E Middle - Splits

Morning jog with Sam, Hillary, Viktoria, and Pavlina over to Hydropark, then to the beach, a quick dip in the radioactive Dniepr, and then back.

WOC Middle Distance Qualifier.

I've already written enough about this race and have analyzed what went wrong over and over in my head, so I don't have much more to say. Just that I felt great and totally prepared at the start line. No excuses.

Warm-up. Not surprisingly, there was no cool-down, just sitting in a field a while.

Middle distance model event. Ran a few controls easy, a few others hard. Felt pretty good and orienteered fine. A piece of the model map had a big blob of green that was circled and labeled "example of vegetation for the middle quali." We all thought that was just going to be a bit of the map. Boy, were we wrong!

Event: WOC 2007
 

Morning jog in Kiev with Sam, Hillary, and Sandra. Very warm and humid already at 8:30am.

Warm-up for the WOC sprint qualifier.

WOC Sprint Qualifier, Heat A.
Not even close. On one hand, it looks bad. A year of hard training later, and I am further from qualifying (1:05 away versus 0:37) and further down in my heat (23rd versus 20th) than in Denmark. So I am disappointed with the result.
On the other hand, I didn't make more than maybe 15 seconds of mistakes, so there is not much more I could have expected from myself. This was also my best-ever world ranking score (1025 - first over a thousand!) and the best of all the North Americans yesterday. So there is some consolation in that.
The course was very fast, not particularly technical, and without much route choice. You just had to go hard from the start, which I am not sure I did well enough. Due to the heat, I felt pretty lethargic and felt like I had to fight myself every step of the race, Hearing the cheering from the crowd and the many familiar voices as I was passing through the spectacor control was really inspirational and motivating, that was probably one of the high points of the day.
But the real highlight was watching the countdown to make it official that Sandra made her first-ever WOC final, and shoving people out of the way to be the first one to hug and congratulate her, Seeing Marc cry as he came over to kiss her was almost way too disgustingly romantic for me, but really wonderful at the same time. It's so amazing seeing someone who you have known for years and whom you have seen work so hard and come so close finally reach the goal she so completely deserved!! I think that seeing moments like this is a lot of what doing orienteering is about for many of us who are in this sport.

My heat results: http://www.6prog.org/iof/wre_res$.asp?ID=1183&how=...

C • Sandra's A-Final! 1

C • Nice 1

C • 1

WOC Sprint model event at Feofaniya. Not the most exciting of places - forested, with good visibility but pretty tall undergrowth and a good bit of nettles. Some steep, soft slopes too. Definitely different from the sprint in Denmark. If anything, reminds me of what the sprint in Japan was like. Also, much warmer here than even the warmest summer days in Uppsala have been. It might be quite tough to race at 3pm tomorrow. Otherwise, its nice being with the US team and just seeing orienteers throughoutour massive hotel. Everyone is here now. Time to race.

C • it's yours 1

C • race well ! and a little ... 3