Training Log Archive: fletch

Event: Foot-O Malmalling
 

Turned up to this event with the family determined to just take it slow and try to get it right. Just before I started, Craig offered to shadow me around a course, so away we went. Definitely went significantly slower than usual and tried to get direction sorted better before haring off, but still wasn't making good use of time looking at the map and had a few controls where I was just too vague heading into the circle and paid the penalty. Found it really hard also to hold a straight line picking my way through all the blackboys.

Good advice on what to do to relocate faster and what I need to do along the way to keep better track of where I am all the time. It's going to take quite a while to strip away decades of bad habits unfortunately.

Next course, the aim is to treat the whole thing like a control picking exercise from one definite point to the next around the entire course.

Time includes a few significant stops discussing what I was doing and why I should be doing something else on the legs where I made mistakes (which were quite numerous). Extended time out on course meant that I ended up doing no cool down on top of no warm up (deliberate).

Hopefully will be able to get back into a training routine soon, with the current stage of house renovations pretty much done and some of the work I had to catch up on done too.

Expert 2 - Splits

Had preemptively decided to just get the lot, regardless of how long it took, then had my torch battery fall off the headband in the first 500m and spent the next little while trying to fix it, running past a critical path for my route and adding some distance to what was always going to be a hard task. Was pretty grumpy by now, but channeled it into pushing hard, determined to get something out of the session.
Up the north end of the map, my torch flicked off while I was running through a park and I faceplanted in a drainage ditch while I was trying to get it fixed. Dropped my punchcard here too, but couldn't be bothered going back to look for it.

Felt like I had dropped into a hardish but sustainable rhythm by here, which was a bit disappointing. I also figured out that I had buckley's of getting home in time so tried to pick it up a bit, but never quite hit that hard effort that I can manage when I don't have to think a bit at the same time.

Ended up 1:13 late. Would have been close if the torch hadn't fallen apart :(

Just a steady jog out to the coast and around in a loop to the north, aware that I need to do a quality session tomorrow, preferably in the morning... Also a chance to test out the new shoes. Not terribly inspired, but a big step up from the two unintentional rest days I've just had.

Must be something to do with putting in stupidly long hours trying to get the back half of the house painted before I run out of holidays. Looks pretty touch and go at the moment.

So all in all, a pretty disappointing end to what has ended up being a rather average month of training. The marathon is looking more like a matter of survival and less like something to be chasing optimistic targets. Just don't seem to be able to consistently get over 70km/week. Still, in the scheme of things, with the main target being September next year, I'm still pretty happy.