Training Log Archive: Craney

Start of a long journey home. Nice to spend a bit of time wandering around Riga this afternoon, and the upside of my extreme tiredness last night means I don’t have a post-WOC-party hangover this time.

C • You've changed 2

WOC Long, 60th place. Lame. Found my limits. In hindsight, this wasn’t a very good idea.

Haven’t really felt the inclination to analyse the race much. The first half hour was fine (bit of a miss on #2) and I was feeling quite fresh still at the start of the long leg. My choice to #9 was poor - I tried too hard to find a link between the best entry direction into #9 and the best exit direction out of #8 rather than looking at the leg as a whole. So I didn’t spot the best route left of the line. The hills midleg felt worse than I expected and my momentum took a hit. When Krepsta caught me at #9 I got negative feelings, which I let get to me too much when I was climbing to #11. When I then got confused midleg and climbed a spur unnecessarily I mentally threw my toys out of the pram and I lost the racing edge at that point. At about the run through the physical side popped too and the rest of the course became a case of trying to pick the least physically tiring routes, even if that meant more distance. I had to stop to stretch a few times as my legs were cramping up quite bad. Got to the end eventually and was completely spent after crossing the line - quite cold too.

C • Impressed 8

A nice jog from the team flat. Right, I am now better and I’ve been eating food. Not the best preparation but I am all set for, and really looking forward to, the long race tomorrow.

C • Good luck! 6

In the end the decision not to run the relay was simple even if it wasn’t easy. Hard to imagine much worse timing for getting food poisoning. I was really glad to see the young lads (youngest team apart from Kazakhstan) run strongly though.

C • young 2

I was probably more sick than I realised during the middle - spewed dinner up that evening and was up most of the night with more emergent properties of food poisoning.

50th place. Pretty happy with my run all told. Felt rough in the warm up - one of those days where you’d normally pack in the tempo and just do a jog. Not an option here. Dry wretching just before the start - which I just saw the funny side of and actually set off in quite a good mindset - focus on the nav and don’t think about the running. Hit the first 8 fairly cleanly and was in 34th at that point. Then a biggish miss (1.30mins?) at #9 in a parallel gully which I hadn’t seen on the map. Only a couple of small misses thereafter but feeling quite drained so it was a bit of a plod to the finish. Still, managed to enjoy myself and I am lucky to still be doing this kind of caper at my age - only the Colombian in last place was older.

C • Well done 5

Not the most enjoyable warm-up I’ve done.

Started today by worshipping the porcelain god. Then didn’t do much energetic. Managed to stomach some dinner ok and had a good long sleep.

Middle model - first team out there, which was nice except that we also beat the control hangers there too. Quite liked the terrain though.

Event: WOC 2018 - Latvia
 

Ran a course from a recent event on a map near Ligatne. Felt much better in the legs this time, partly aided by cooler weather and more runnable terrain. Made a couple of mistakes but overall it was a positive experience.

Non orienteering day. Tobogganing to start the day then 8x3min tempo on a nice forest trail along the Gauja River. Legs felt pretty rough and I sweated buckets but in hindsight I was moving ok and sustained it no problem.