Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Middle Distance race in the same venue as 25-manna. I was feeling quite out of it at the start of the race, and was not orienteering crisply or quickly at all. Still managed to enjoy myself though. Not sure why I lacked the spark today, but wasn't too good or too bad on any of the legs. I ended up a few minutes back on all of the people I was comparing myself with, Ulrik, Boris, Andrew. Robbie put a nice run together and ran much faster than I was going. Johan also had a great time, coming in 2nd on the H21-3 course.

Throat is a little sore from cheering, but today was a very cool day to be wearing Linné colors. 25-manna relay is a real zoo, but we had good teams leaders helping us get through it (Thanks Elin) and there was good weather too.

I was running leg 5 for the 3rd team, which means that I was waiting for the last of the leg 4 runners to come through the changeover and hand me a map. For our 3rd and 4th team, all the runners were coming back almost at the same time, so there was a whole gaggle of red and blue heading for the start triangle together.

I was running pretty well today, the terrain was open and runnable and there were paths into and out of most of the controls, which meant that it was a fast day for orienteering. Actually it could be quite frustrating to be running through the woods and get stuck in line behind a bunch of slower runners heading through a swamp. I swung too far wide on my short leg to 2, and hesitated a little heading into 6, but always felt in control. My biggest error was one of decision making, when I thought it would be okay to cross a small river - and not at the marked crossing points. I sunk into mud up to my waist and got my leg tangled in a submerged branch.... the only way to extract myself was to flop forward and grab ahold of the far bank and pull myself through the muck. I lost some time there, plus my map was temporarily unreadable as everytime I tried to wipe the mud off, I just made things dirtier. I ran up the wrong hill as I contemplated ( but ultimately rejected) the idea of licking a spot of the map clean, but quickly sorted that mistake out and the rest of the course was really only a glorified finish chute.

Passed off to a club member that I had never met before (and still don't know yet) and got to spend the rest of the day cheering and chatting.

Our first team came in 5th!, second team 35th (I think, results are still a bit dodgy) and Sam had an awesome closing leg. They were the fastest of the Club-2nd teams. And then Boris and Karin had good runs at the end of our relay too, and we ended up as the best of the Club-3rd teams.

Tomorrow we go back to the same terrain for a short race, and in the evening it's a big pizza party!

C • Stuck 4

Wander.Lost

C • you look kinda tired 4

With my bike locked up across town, I made my morning commute to work in jogging mode today. It's a short run, but a great way to start the day.

A really productive day at work, feeling very pleased. A short jog to retrieve my bike, and adjust the rear wheel so that the chain was tighter.

A good day a work, but then disaster struck as I left the lab, heading on my bike down to Lunsen. Somehow, while swerving to avoid a cyclist trying to turn right into me, I shifted the spacing on my fixed chain bike, and then spent the next 30 minutes dealing with a chain that kept slipping off the gears. I didn't have any tools with me, and it was too long to walk my bike all the way to the map, so I locked my bike to a post and ran with my bag the few remaining K - in the rain - to see how the training was going.

Hannah set a really run czech relay training, and I will happily go down and run the course sometime later.

An inadvertent rest day, but probably being a little rested before 25-manna this weekend is a good thing.

This week's half marathon took us more west (rather, east) of the city than I had ever gone before, which was pretty cool. I had timed things wrong at work so I left the lab in a rush, in the process leaving my access card and my Garmin in my office. So I can't upload my track and I also can't see the screen because I took out my contacts and my glasses are with everything else. So excuse any typos :)

A group of 8 tonight, which I guess means it's gaining in popularity. We all started out together, running at about 4:10 pace, then speeding up. Oskar split off at about 6k, and Olle, Mandus and I took a "short cut" (read: Ross was confused about which way to go) which was fine because Rassmus, David, Mats and Henrik were speeding up to a pace that was faster than we could go. Mandus split off next and then it was Olle and me running and chatting about the neighborhoods we were passing and the upcoming weekend.

I again led us off the route (adding an extra half k in the process) but Olle was able to once again get us back on track. We faded a little after about 16k, but still pushed really hard up the hill to finish strong in the castle.

Great to have company and legs felt much better than last week. A winter of this and I'll be going places...

C • I think you lost your direc... 3

Warming up with the club before intervals. Jogging and going drills in the stadskogen. A pretty big crowd tonight.

It gets dark so early. Intervals tonight were 4x (3,1 rest, 2,1 rest,1, 2 rest). Legs more lively than last week, but still working hard to keep up. Intervals on a track are much much easier because you don't have to work as hard mentally. On a dark dirt track with rolling hills, you need to push yourself and pick out foot placements. I think these types of workouts will make me a much better runner.

Snuck in a quick trip around the backbanan tonight. I biked over and quickly put on my shoes ( quickly because the mosquitoes are out in the evening) and decided that I would really like to break 26 minutes tonight. Set out fairly quickly and almost immediately started slipping out on the downhills, but kept a pretty good effort and avoided any falls.

Came through the halfway point at 12:12 and felt pretty strong. Only started fading on the killer hill (the pebbley one). I peeked at my watch going into the last hill, and saw that I was going to be a little too slow to make it. I focused on short steps and made myself keep pushing. Was immensely surprised and gratified to come through just under. Beating Boris's time was one of my intermediate goals... now I need to keep chipping away at 25:27 which is place 20 on the top 20 right now.

Garmin was nestled in my backpack in the lab, so there is no way to watch how slow I was crawling up that last set of hills.

C • backbanan 2

C • I have to ask.... 7

Janne's backbana in Uppsala - Splits