Training Log Archive: iansmith

Event: 10Mila
 

Third leg of Tiomila: night, unforked, 13.0 km listed. I have much to write up. In short, I ran about as well as I could - perhaps three errors of about two minutes each. While I had access the human meat-streamer for much of the leg, I was alone or leading a pack for about eight controls. I also witnessed a few big errors by the pack.

I had a fantastic experience, and I'm really glad I had a solid run and didn't let the team down. The entire team had strong, solid runs - everyone did their job wonderfully. Giacomo brought us back in 159th, and before Ross's leg, we stayed between 150th and 176th place. I managed to pick up twelve spots during my leg, but I think that was just finishing a few minutes ahead of a big pack that I passed. I finished 171st on my leg, 27 minutes and 36% back of a sick run by Andrea Kyburz.

CSU Results. To our great surprise and elation, while we failed to avoid mass-starting PG, we finished in 145th out of some 330 teams with a net pace of 8:03/km. Many excellent pics were taken - primarily by Greg and Ken, though I grabbed a few. Expect them to be posted soon. Running Tiomila with my clubmates was one of the greatest highlights of my orienteering career so far. Relays are wicked awesome.

My map was an A2 sized sheet at 1:10 - a massive 17" x 23" placemat. Checking codes required flipping to the descriptions sector of the map, but I religiously checked all my codes. I found that I was comparatively strong relative to the pack at punching through dense green (chiefly pine trees) and marshes, and comparatively slower on trails. While the night was chilly (maybe 5 C when I ran), I overheated a bit in LS top, tights, a buff, and gloves. The temperature continued to fall, and the night was uncomfortably frigid after my run - probably not much colder than freezing, if at all.

Quickroute

C • Congrats!! 8

Warmup in the quarantine, checking Boris' status, confirming my shoes and headlamp were in order, and drinking my Gu.

Training on Nasten with Brendan, Ken, and Biggins. Felt good and confidence improved. Nasten is awesome.

To Nasten and back via the Linne clubhouse to drop off two flags.

Boris, Sam, Lisa, Ross, and I went out for a training run; while the others set out on trails, Ross and I ran south to run a training course on Nasten. It was spectacular and tricky Swedish terrain. I found reading the boundaries of marshes and the subtle contour features challenging. I made a few errors, but my confidence grew. Ross followed me through the exercise, and it was very helpful to discuss the terrain in real time as we ran through it. The US map that most closely resembles Nasten that I have run is Moreau, though Nasten has more trails.

Run to/from Nasten solo. It was very dark with a serene solitude.

C • plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose 2

We had a fun-filled day with two gaming sessions. I gamed with Johanna and Kempster (!) again, and met Mats (hey, Mats) Troeng and Marta Zdravkovic. However, I was anxious to get some time in the Swedish woods at night before Tiomila. Ross contacted a clubmate to obtain Night-O control locations and generously hooked me up with a Nasten course. I jogged over and practiced taking Swedish controls in the dark. Unfortunately, my Garmin was dead when I set out. I started with great difficulty, but my confidence increased and my orienteering improved by the end. Compass is critical, and there is too much to read on a map like Nasten. It's also difficult to simplify, and parallel errors are really easy to make.

Stuck in Oslo for an unplanned six hours; wandering into the city to rendezvous with Cristina. After 22 hours of travel, I arrived in Uppsala at about 9 PM local and decided games, food, and relaxing were better priorities than going for a training run. I met Matt Ogden, which was pretty cool.

C • I found him! 8

Travel day to Uppsala.

After making such a suggestion to Hayden, I decided to review my relay race and see what I could understand about my errors.
- I was probably running too hard out of the start. I managed to make up some ground on ebone, but I burned myself out a bit in the early step.

- Control 4: I turned back too early when I didn't see the earth bank. I was looking for the trail junction, but didn't see it. A better plan would have been to leave the trail after either hitting the crossing trail or some distance (pace counting? intuition?) and running low, where I could have run at full speed with full confidence that I would see the flag. Uncertainty cost me at least 30 seconds.

- Control 8: Had I not run into Eddie, I probably would have run high, since I thought that was fastest. Particularly in a relay, I shouldn't be afraid of running with someone. There are no bonus points for out-foxing your opponent with a clever route choice, which almost always fails. Pick the fastest way, and throw the hammer down.

- I chose a bad route choice to 11, but I executed it ok. I faded physically and mentally over the second half of the race, and I need to train harder so that I have sufficient reservoirs of stamina and concentration to push to the end. The green was also demoralizing, especially in the control picky section at the end.

- Run faster.

The substance of this workout was a 23 minute, 5.6 km tempo run. I tacked on 4x30s reps near the end. I was very sluggish over the course of the tempo run.