Training Log Archive: z-man

Ottawa O-Fest (Long) - I had an ok start, spiked a couple of bags pretty well but also had a few bubbles on two others. Then came the long leg to #8 and I decided to be cute and ran it straight. Somewhere along the way, my internal temps exceeded the limit, my brain refused to work, and my knees stopped lifting. I sat down for a bit and decided to do the right thing, walk back to the finish. It's a shame, for I really looked toward redeeming myself for the disastrous sprint the day before.

This was yet another really well organized meet put on by our friends up north. Yet, I seem to have followed the blueprint from 2 years ago. I had a decent and enjoyable middle, then blew up in the sprint followed by a horrible, or in this case DNF, long race. Will I break the pattern the next time I travel to Ottawa? Time will tell.

C • Next time we'll come to support you :) 3

Event: Ottawa O-Fest 2012
 

Ottawa Festival - (Middle). Excellent venue for the Middle and a really well designed course (except may be for #11). I had a good start but veered off on the way to #6 as I was evaluating left or right routes around the marsh. After getting to the left side of the marsh, to my surprise, I discovered a trail that led straight to the bag right across the marsh on the straight line. Corrected but lost ~30 secs there. Then after a number of technical legs, traversed a steep hill to #11, hit a trail bend and started traversing further. Found myself milling around cliffs that apparently weren't mapped. Backtracked my steps back to the trail, to discover that there were actually two trail bends on the map, with one apparently covered by the solid line from #10 to #11. So went further down to the second bend and attacked from there. Then had a wobbly route on the long leg where I missed the turn between two lakes and ended up running all the way around via #2. Lost another 1min right there. Got caught by Eric at #14 who was moving really fast and was actually pulling away on the way to #15 except that he was also pulling away in the wrong direction. But he corrected in time and passed me again before the last control and finished just ahead of me.

Ottawa O-Fest (Sprint) - A nice sprint around government office buildings I think. Had a solid start, though botched #8 as I spotted something that looked like an underpass on the right thinking that my bag was there, so had to come back and climb the stairs instead. Then a major disaster on #11. An easy control which unfortunately became obscured by a backed into it tractor trailer. I made two loops, one around the trailer and another around the bushes, but still wasn't able to see the control. Then a runner squeezed himself between the trailer and the bushes and I saw the bag. I think that organizers should have alerted runners about this unforeseen circumstance (hopefully this will serve as a good learning experience) for the sake of fairness. On to a few more controls and then had another disaster on #14. As I was rounding a building's corner, the circle seemed to be centered on adjacent wall and not the cliff as this was the clue for this control in the control description. Somehow I convinced myself that the wall and the cliff were the same thing and zoomed down the paved ram only to discover that there was nothing there. Then backtracked my steps a went around to punch the control. At that point my race was over and I finished the easy part of the sprint without other major issues. My lack of practice in city sprints became evident once more. So far, I don't think I ever ran even a semi-decent city sprint.

M21-34 - Splits

Sprint M21-34 - Splits