Training Log Archive: jfredrickson

Cool down run after my race.

Stretching and warmup for Day 2 of the US Champs.

Day 2 of the US Champs. I started out faster than yesterday since I noticed hte beginning of the course had some easier legs. I still managed to make a mistake on the 3rd control which was mostly due to me not paying attention. I was reading ahead and didn't pay attention at a critical point in the leg and ended up attacking the control from a parallel feature. I didn't realize it right away and lost about 3 minutes before I figured it out. The next few went smoothly although I was a little shaky on my route to 7. I kept running different routes from what I wanted to do and as a result my route was too much of a zig-zag. Number 9 was my next big problem. I missed the reentrant by crossing above it. I stopped soon after realizing that I had gone too far. I was pretty sure where I was, but I knew that I had to hit something obvious just to be sure. I continued for another 50 meters to relocate on a large stream and re-attacked the control from the other direction. I lost more than 5 minutes on the control.

Overall I was a little shaky. I had some good legs, but I made too many mistakes. I think I just ran too fast at the wrong times. I thought that I was well concentrated, but I failed at critical times.

Cool down jog after my race.

Red-X - Splits

Event: US "Classic" Championships
 

Warmup for A-Meet.

Today was the US Champs. I ran M-20 in order to defend my title. I was a little worried going into the race since I was still recovering from my bout with poisen ivy and hadn't been doing much running. After running last weekend, I knew I would not be in perfect running shape, so my strategy for the weekend was to be as clean as possible. Unfortunately since I wasn't able to do much physical training I also was not able to do any technical training. This meant that I could be pretty out of shape Orienteering wise, but after having a good technical race last weekend, I felt fairly confident that I could run clean race as long as I didn't push too hard.

As it turned out running slower was in fact the best strategy and even though I had close to 5 minutes of error, I still won the day. I only made one mistake due to loss of concentration, so I was pretty happy in that regards. My only mistake as such was at the end of the race when I had an easy attackpoint off of a stream. Unfortunately I lost contact with my map for less than a minute and when I refocused, I was not exactly sure where I was along the stream bed. I knew I wanted to follow a stream junction off to the East, and I saw a steep gourge going off in the right direction. I didn't feel as if I had gone far enough, but I wasn't exactly sure since I hadn't been paying close enough attention. I figured I could either be at the right attackpoint, or a reentrant just before it. I decided that it would be best for me to take the risk and check this reentrant first, since if I was at the right one and kept going I would be worse off than going up too early. As it turned out, I was too early and had to cut across the top of the embankment to the control. Overall I lost about 2 minutes on the control.

Other than that I was very well focused. I still made some other stupid errors, but they were simply due to me getting a little confused. One time I went out of a control at a bad angle, but since I was just trying to hit a road, it didn't matter too much. I was still disturbed by this since I thought I had fixed my compassing problems since buying a new compass. I guess I am still prone to making directional errors.

Red X - Splits