Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Almost a good run. Middle Distance at the Buffalo A-meet. started out okay, for control 1 was a bit surprised that the boulder was on top... I thought that it was going to be on contours going down. It was at the middle of the circle though, so I found it even without a proper sense of what the terrain should look like. the next string of controls was pretty basic for me, maybe a tad sloppy, hard to read the map while running that fast sometimes. on 7 I was expecting the control to be higher on the stream, and had to drop down to find it. On 9 I had my only really big mistake. I decided to cut through the white woods to the next trail, and then drop down from the trail into the stream. Well, I ran through the woods at slightly the wrong angle, came out on a different trail and had a little parallel error. Except had I checked my compass more carefully I would have noticed it wasn't parallel. I was 90 degrees off and just not realizing it because there was another blue runner doing the same thing as me at the time. It took me too long to recover, but then I put it behind me. 10-13 were fine, 14 I was a bit confused by a patch of green that was on the line but too soon. lots of people were there and I kinda thought it was the veg edge that I was interested in. I luckily saw control 10 up ahead and readjusted right away, so I didn't lose too much time there. to 16, the woods had been so runnable that when I saw the light green was kinda open I went straight towards the last control thinking "how bad can that clearing up ahead be" . It was pretty bad, so much so that I got pushed north again out to the trail and then had to go around. It was frustrating because if I had chosen to take the trail I would have had a better time but I think that the right decision for me was to go straight, because I usually run very well in thick woods. It wasn't the better route this time but often it would be.

so I was 6th on the course, it was nice to see Erin Schirm up there in with the leaders. I would have had to be super squeaky clean to match Will's time.

Sprint Race. This one was good. My chest and my left calf were both hurting a lot before this race, so I wasn't feeling all that psyched. The chest thing was quite weird. I woke up on Friday with a very sore spot on my ribs right over my heart. It felt like muscle pain and I chalked it up to doing pushups or sit ups with poor form sometime on Thursday or earlier in the week. Neither bothered me during the run though, so that was lucky.

Cleanish race, got a bit wide coming down the spur to 2, and a bit right on the line going to 6. On 12 I went the wrong way around the building ( need to read those Clue Descriptions) and on 13 I almost blew up because I didn't notice that there was another ski slope to the right of me, and so I almost cruised right past the tree, but I caught myself in time. didn't lose too much time out there on the course, maybe just a few seconds here and there.

Won the race, 16 seconds ahead of Nate Lyons. He probably had a good run and looking at the splits he was as fast or faster on everything except 3 and 14, which were certainly the two trickiest controls. wonder if he made mistakes or just slowed down because they were tough.

Middle - Blue - Splits

Sprint - Course 3 - Splits