Training Log Archive: Tundra/Desert

Event: Flying Pig VII
 

Warmed up (quite actively) before the first day of the Seventh Flying Pig. I had some sleep on the redeye.

MVOC Pig Sprint at Woodland Trails. I won the one and only A meet held on the map so far, in 1996. This year, the "streak" was to end, as I made four large booms. Placed reasonably well, however, as everyone made booms. (Note to the concerned: Only one control this year on Blue, #10, was on the part of the map that I had made in 1993. I remembered nothing as I ran.)
My speed was way lower than in 1996. The plan was to take it easy and to try to race the Sunday event. But I maintained good intensity until about Control 13, after which it was too long for a Short course. The heart felt great after I finished, so I went and picked up some controls.

Picked up the 5 controls on the E side of the lake. Paced by how much I had missed out-of-#6 and into-#5.

Blue - Splits

I did Jim's NWR run. Except Jim is doing the Monterrey half-marathon this Sunday and only did E today. And I took a wrong turn almost right away and ended up doing extra, just over a mile (last loop first). The wind was crazy, and I couldn't pace. The sun was thermonuclear. 9:57 (2.3 km) 5:36 (interpolated; mile – x) 5:09 (interpolated; mile – y) 6:32 (mile) 4:30 (mile – z) 3:58 (speed against wind, ~7:20/mi, makes this 870 m) 1:45 (x) 7:06 7:19 7:21 7:00 7:26 (miles) 8:09 (yes indeed) 1:33 (y) 3:38 (same 870 m with wind—agrees with ~6:40/mi) 2:38 (z) 9:04 (2.1 km).

Had a lot of motivation to go out tonight but also serious doubts about what a 5–7 km easy run would accomplish. Fell asleep.

From home to De Anza track, warming up. Late. I didn't tell anyone about this session, and changed my plan from I-1 to T* about an hour before leaving work.

A bit of stretching.

Daniels's T*: 20 minutes at T + 4×200 R (~200 rest after the T and 200 rest between R's). The T was 20:11 for 5412 m, a 6:00/mile pace (mile splits: 5:53 6:03 6:05), the 200s were 39.1 37.3 39.4 38.6. I could feel some heart sensations on the last two 200s.

Back home from De Anza. Was not dragging!

A rest day. Felt just fine.
I think I can start normal training for this week (Week 13 in Daniels), but I have to (1) be very careful of R activity and (2) not do any sessions longer than about 80 minutes. It is most likely that one or the other type got me those heart issues. I'll also move one of the I sessions to the next week because there are the Pig, Jr Camp, and transcontinental flights this week. I'll do MP with Jim.

In the morning, I gave my presentation on physical training, based on the paper. I got more attention and response than I had hoped for. I could see, however, that most concepts were somewhat alien to most kids and coaches, and I didn't even go into the numbers and VO_2max stuff. I mostly spent time explaining the definitions.

Alexei set a Line-O. I kept constant contact with a high confidence level, only getting off the line in about 6 places. The pace worked out to about MP, just above E but well below T.
The course was well laid out, along major "flow channels"—between hill chains, along marsh edges, etc. But it showed that Alexei hadn't been there in advance, as many of the "channels" were blocked with the famed Blue Mountain downed fir.

The Jr Camp Park-O; second session of the day. Third, behind Ross and William. Followed the whole way. Felt OK.

Line-O - Splits

Park-O - Splits

Flew out to LGA, took Metro North to Peekskill and a cab to Blue Mountain. Some sleep.
Got in time for the 2nd training session of the day: shadowing younger juniors. Jeff handed me a 15-year-old kid named Michael Sandstrom who'd been orienteering for 6 months. Off we went on an Orange course (2.9 km straight-line). The first leg involved a slight-uphill run on a forest road for about 600 m, then attack a hill from a road junction. As we ran on the road, I went superlactic in about a minute and anaerobic after about 2.5 minutes. We promptly missed the attack point but recovered in no time, and nailed the bag after a furious uphill scramble. The downhill to the next control was equally furious, with Michael jumping over downed trees at more than half of his height. The run continued in the same key until the end, the intensity only tapering down slightly. My only chance at surviving the exercise were Michael's map-reading breaks. The kid is going to be something. We passed many shadower/shadowee pairs, some multiple times.
Splits for future reference (you never know): 5:28 2:00 4:25 1:42 2:48 1:38 1:48 2:03 4:30 1:21 1:00 0:52 (Michael was 0:47).

We ran to Depew Park from the lodge, to warm up for the mile. The mile was the third training session on this Saturday.

The Jr Camp mile. Started well; thought it was too fast but it wasn't. Had to pass bomfunk shortly after the start. Boris and Ross made way upfront after the first 200, and I never had a chance of catching either one. Sandstrom held on for most of the first lap. On the second lap, I started to feel the earlier "interval"session, and slowed down dramatically, to about VO_2max pace. William was more than 5 seconds ahead after the 2nd lap. The third lap was no better. On the last lap, however, it all came together, and I almost caught up with William, finishing fourth.
The splits were inaccurate because whoever was taking results at the finish line also had a transmitter which blocked out the interface on mine. Still: 76 81 82 76, for the total of 5:15.0 (total is accurate).
I am tempted to say that the 76 is my "real" lap pace for the mile. The mile is run with a substantial dip into one's anaerobic energy reserves, which are limited. One of my books has plots that show that the total amount of VO₂ equivalent of one's anaerobic capacity is constant, regardless of race duration. You can use it all on the first lap and slow down after, or you can distribute it all through the race for even splits. In my case, I'm tempted to say that I used about half of it an hour earlier, chasing Sandstrom, and only mustered 81.5 per lap for the middle two laps because 81.5 is close to my fully-aerobic pace.
Given all that, I postulate that Vdot = 57 (time for 57 is 5:11). It has not improved since last month, which is reasonable given two rest weeks.
The heart felt totally fine for this session and the previous ones.

Back to the lodge from the track.

The morning sessions were followed by Richard Blom's presentation on technical training. Typical Swedish stuff. There were two things in the presentation that most people would agree with, and I think they need serious re-examination. One was the following statement:

"Main reason for mistakes: Running speed exceeds navigational capacity."

I agree with what Mr. Blom wanted to say, in some sense. Most coaches would endorse this. But as I start thinking about it, here's what I get. Speed is an easily measurable number; meters per second. What is navigational capacity? How comes we have an inequality (one thing greater than another), and we don't even know what the dimensions are on the right-hand side?

The "navigational capacity" would more properly be described as "the maximum speed at which you can perform navigational tasks". But then, the fallacy comes out. You can complicate the problem on hand and put yourself through too many nav tasks, or you can simplify and face less objects that come out at you per unit time and you have to interpret, hence increasing your maximum-correct-nav speed. Furthermore, Mr. Blom seemed to have futher defined the "navigational capacity" as running at a speed at which you have 100% knowledge of where you are. But why do you need 100%? Can't you reasonably expect to fulfil the task with some other percentage, dependent on the nav regime (coarse/fine), of course, say 70% confidence for coarse and 98% for fine? You'll be taking risks over the length of the course, but the chance that they go against you is small.

The reason I don't like the wording is that the most natural response one would have to the logical question, "How do I reduce my mistakes?" would seem to be "Reduce speed", and it shouldn't be. Increasing the speed at which you can navigate with some confidence that you are happy with is the right answer. The other thing he said was

"Be a `There I go!' orienteer, instead of a `Here I am...' orienteer."

This is sort of true for people for whom a proactive style works. I am one of those for whom it is not the best. For me, `Here I am...' works out just fine. But even if the task were to coach everyone to become a proactive orienteer, regardless of her natural perceptive framework, then `Here I am...' must come first. In other words, instead of "instead of", the above postulate should say "in addition to". Making grand plans ahead and visualizing isn't worth squat if you don't have a well-trained skill of working out where you are, based on the information around you.

I hope this makes sense.

I did, however, feel the redeye, and also the possibility that the heart would not feel so fine if I did yet another training session. I thus passed on the fourth session of the day, Contour Line-O; I only helped Alexei set controls for it. I walked for that. I could see that the run would be technically hard.

People were so wasted that they passed on the last (5th) session of the day, Map Memory-O. Most sat around playing cards instead, while the die-hards, Ken and William, went out for some night-O. Afterwards, we were scheduled to "see Peter run", but instead, watched a bad video of the 2001 JWOC (with a cheap-porn soundtrack to boot), and a much better O.MOV, the latter probably for 27483492th time for most juniors.
Since the first video showed an interview with Andrej Khramov (1999 and 2001 JWOC winner), I put his 2002 5 km track time up on the whiteboard. Some dropped jaws there.