Training Log Archive: jennycas

Not sure if I'm yet ready to patent using the application of toothpaste as a tick-removal method, but at least it does work :)

We drove to John O'Groats last night in the pouring rain and stayed/dined at the pub, there not being a plethora of other options.This morning dawned bright & clear and perfect for a scenic run out to Duncansby Head lighthouse and some coastal rock stacks/a nice little beach (on opposite sides of the headland) 2 miles out of town - although my legs stubbornly refused to function on any hills.

Anyway, the real reason for being in this part of the world was in order to do a day trip to Orkney, and the reason I wanted to go to Orkney was to see Skara Brae, a Stone Age village which was buried under sand approx 2500 years BC and uncovered due to a storm in 1850. As a child I read The Boy with the Bronze Axe and was always fascinated by the thought of Skara Brae and so getting to see for myself the layout of the round houses, where all the furniture was made of stone, the standing stones at the Ring of Brodgar and the burial mounds, was almost too good to be true (if a little smaller than I had expected).

Ferry trip across to Mainland (largest island in the Orkney group) was much smoother than it often can be, and bus tour around the island (no trees, but much greener and more pastoral than I had expected, with lots of cows & sheep) quite interesting. Fish & chips eaten for dinner while sitting at the lighthouse back on the other mainland weren't too bad either.

And, linguistics lesson for the day which I found more interesting than my travel companion did: Blair means a plain, field or battlefield; (also, for Vanessa: ness means headland, cape or promontory). We all know by now that moss means marsh or bog - and in Swedish it's mosse. I'm quite interested by the similarities between Nordic languages and Scots.

P.S. I'm almost sure that from the ferry I saw a puffin diving for its fish dinner! It was definitely a bird with a red beak...

Feeling a little more sprightly today although the nearly-3km with nearly-200m climb, to the start, soon took care of that. Today we were running on the WOC long map from yesterday, on the north slopes of the valley - which were generally more open and less soggy than the previous day, on the south side of the valley (I have noticed here that north-facing slopes are always much wetter) and the contours reminded me a little of Sweden, as did the ground being soft & mossy underfoot, so I was happier. Plus it was possible to pick a route and execute it without getting pushed around by the vegetation or by paths which other people had made (I started comparatively early today). Should have stayed low on 1, because along the hillside was not fast. Then there was a big grunt up to 2, which I figured everyone else was walking anyway. Through this and the next few controls I was seeing a possibly M55, who I didn't totally lose sight of until no.8, so that kept me motivated. Only real error was on 11 where I crossed the hillside too high and came into the gully way above the control, partly because I didn't recognise a vegetation boundary between 2 different types of pine tree! Last few controls were in the open area along the river, with lots of little lumps & bumps, and I was feeling strong through this, even overtook someone in the finish chute. 18th today which was nice after 29th yesterday.

Now, some thoughts on the Scottish 6-Days. I hadn't realised this is such a big event - even in a usual year, about 3000 people and with WOC & associated spectators they nearly doubled this. No wonder parking was such a nightmare, especially as this has apparently been a rather wet summer. In general the races were really well organised but I wonder what it is that makes people say "gee, I want to go and get pushed around by Scottish hillsides 6 days in a row" and I still don't think it's ok to have no drinking water whatsoever at any events.

And now I've watched a WOC - box ticked. Again, very well organised and the home crowd's excitement was a nice touch which made it better than watching online from the other side of the world, as did getting to run in some of the same forests (definitely my pick was the relay terrain at Darnaway, just wish I'd been able to run a bit faster myself through the beautiful beech basins). Still sad to have missed watching the sprint relay, but really can't complain since on a personal level my favourite race of this trip was the WMOC final :)

S6D - Day 6 Glen Affric - C30 - Splits

Hmm, starting in a bog on a hillside full of Scots pine trees. A bog made by thousands of people waiting around before their starts. First leg through blueberries and heather had a big uphill - apart from the going down into a steep ravine to cross a rushing stream, and then of course to clamber up the other side. So I was pretty much walking from the beginning. And those pine trees are bloody prickly when you push through green patches of them, as I found myself doing having overshot 3 only slightly, but the green extended further than mapped. From 4 I dropped to the track and was surprised to see a finish banner before I got there - guess this was for the shorter courses. Probably should have taken the wide track route around to the right, but didn't see it, and was too focused on how to navigate my way through this 1.5km leg.

2 more stream/ravine crossings, and then it should have been easier going through a flatter section but this turned out to be the "windblow" that we had been told about, with fallen trees everywhere making 5-m high rootmounds and requiring a lot of clambering over/under. So I ended up approaching 5 from the north - in which case I might as well have gone around by the road. Got through the green ok on the way to 6 but going uphill through the bracken took forever. And then at the end of the leg I found the right knoll but couldn't see the rockfaces/control hidden below me (should have stayed low) so went too far. From 7 there was a steep downhill but also a singletrack had been created by mountain goats, I mean orienteers, many of whom I had to step aside for because they were going downhill way faster than me.

After 9 there was another stream crossing, on rocks between cliffs, and it looked daunting at first but once I was in the water up to my knees it wasn't flowing too strongly. I demonstrated my technique to another lady but she still looked very apprehensive so I went back and helped her across. I should have taken a wide track route to 10, or else stayed on my bearing, because the mishmash of routes I took involved yet another steep down & up a muddy gully, as did my exit route. Just so hard to know how much time I lost on bad routes or poor execution of them. In the control circle it was probably about 3-4 min only, but my time was woefuly slow. I mean, Thierry Gueorgiou ran 2.5x the distance in the same time, and he got a gold medal. At least I was back in time to see that (and the last hour of the men's WOC race; I completely missed seeing the women's race).

C • Tough forest 5

S6D - Day 5 Glen Affric - C30 - Splits

Oh boy, more traffic queues. 20 min just to get through the town of Nairn (where the sprint relay was held on Sat; we checked out the beach and empty funfair last night and tried to imagine it populated with athletes & spectators) then after leaving the highway another 45 minutes to travel 3km to the parking - during which time I managed to put my O gear on and make/eat a sandwich, all without leaving the drivers' seat, but I decided it was too difficult to put ankle tape on just yet...and then, on the way home, over half an hour just to get from one side of Inverness to the other because of all the traffic headed for the Belladrum festival at Beauly. Apparently The Proclaimers are performing there tonight. If they get caught up in traffic they may have to Walk 500 Miles?

Anyway, the orienteering was definitely worth coming out for today - on the same area as yesterday's WOC relay, generally more open than the middle area, and which had looked really nice on the TV cameras. My hip flexors were pretty tight from a couple of days of standing & spectating so I didn't start out very fast, plus I wasn't paying enough attention to the map and hesitated coming in to 1, then lost a couple of minutes on 2 because I expected the knoll to be in a line between basins but it was off to one side a little. After this I started navigating proactively rather than reactively and actually thinking about the end of the legs a bit more. I wanted safe approaches/attack points even if a wider route would have been faster, and apart from briefly running the wrong way when I hit a track, was happy with my navigating although suspect I climbed up & over a few ridges between basins which could have been avoided. Towards the end the beech forest had nothing underfoot so I tried to run a bit harder (should have done so from the beginning, because my guess is the next couple of days will be slower terrain - if we ever manage to get into the carpark, that is. The organisers are seriously concerned due to recent rains!). 20th today and guess I lost about 3 min in navigation, but finally cracked 10 min/km.

C • queues 2

S6D - Day 4 Darnaway - C30 - Splits

Wasn't feeling particularly lively this morning - cold still hanging around and dehydrated from yesterday's spectating. Plus I am getting so sick of queues: half an hour just to drive out of the arena car park yesterday, similar time waiting to pass a road accident on the highway today (that makes at least 3 that I'm aware of this week; too many orienteers around?) and then the toilet queue at the event which meant that I had to rush to the start thereafter, heeding the "do not pee on the hedges" signs. One of the many nice things about WMOC was the number of portaloos provided!

The course was in the same area as yesterday's WOC middle final and had quite a lot of basins and knolls, mostly in beech forest or pine plantation although there was a section in the middle with rough open, and rough it was - this being the part where the TV cameras showed even WOC competitors walking. I congratulated myself on a good bearing to the first control and then totally failed to stay on compass to the second control, which little depression I navigated to perfectly only the flag wasn't there, it was (in hindsight) 200m further west. Not that I worked this out, because I thought I must be too far west and headed further east. Nothing fit, so I decided to bail to the track I'd crossed halfway along the leg, and it took me a long time to get there (probably passed within 50m of the control!) and then I took a very safe approach to the control. 7 minutes and about a dozen places lost here. Some consolation that it's the same area of forest where Ida Bobach (today's relay gold medallist) lost time yesterday.

Also a smaller loss on 4 where I swear that the depression is drawn as being on top of a spur, but in fact it turned out to be in a basin (depends how you read the formlines). The rest of the course was fairly clean, rather slow, and towards the end a little too straightforward and I ended up in 35th place - but it meant that I was back in plenty of time to watch the WOC relay. Which had a great atmosphere, and the big screen TV worked well, as did the forking on courses, and there weren't too many major blowouts by teams, and there was World Domination by Denmark in the women's (sprint finish for 3rd between Sweden and Finland was interesting, as were some other sprint finishes further down the fields). The result which I was most pleased with was Estonia's 6th in the men's, because Timo's an honorary Arrow!

S6D - Day 3 Darnaway - C30 - Splits

Discovered that there is oatmeal in the cupboard at our accommodation, among the random stuff left behind by previous guests, and so consumed a hearty breakfast of Scottish porridge (though I'm fairly sure dates & ginger aren't traditional inclusions) to fortify me against an afternoon of WOC middle race watching. Slight sense of unreality to actually be at a WOC! The arena - same as for the relay tomorrow - was excellent for spectators, with a castle behind the finish chute. And the weather, according to local MFR radio, "a warm 18 degrees". Forest looked fairly tough underfoot and obviously held some traps for even the best in the world (reassuring to note that I'm not the only one who does things like running down the wrong track). Women's race was good to watch (go Cat Taylor!) but the men's unfortunately was marred by the video screen going black partway through and the resultant absence of video feed & GPS tracking visibility made it nearly impossible to follow the race, given that there were no spectator controls and the commentary became hard to hear.

Short but slightly-epic course, made longer by my hasty 3km warmup to the start when the carpark-entry queue was seriously epic and I bailed out of the car without waiting to see where it was parked (think we took the best part of an hour to travel about 2km but later, the queue was 4km long, on a single-lane road; 5000 people at these events approximates about 2000 cars). Really steep from the start and the tracks which had formed through the head-high bracken fairly muddy. The Mudclaws turned out to be a poor choice of shoe because not only do they grip mud, they also slide sideways through it. So I walked much of the first few legs, my own legs being rather buggered anyway. Clambering up the hillside trying to work out where best to cross a rushing mountain stream, I encountered a young guy who asked me where he was and then said "oh fuck" in a tone of utter despair when I explained that he was at least 1km away from where he fondly hoped to be. Once I'd clambered up above the treeline to the hilltops of heather, I could see how easily he'd managed to go down the wrong spur though!

Heather may be spongey but it's too deep for me to lift my legs over; I saw others following the spur lines so think I'll try that later in the week. Down the hill to cross the river, where the army engineers had kindly built a bridge just for the orienteers, and then along some open hillsides with small knolls and intervening marshy bits, trying not to hold anyone behind me up on the boggy singletrails which had formed. Finish chute run-in was nice, it had even been mown for us. And then there was another pontoon bridge across the river. And then no water at the finish, just as there had been none at the start or on the course - a little annoying as I'd brought nothing with me from the car, which was parked 2km back down the road...

Think I was 33rd today. Was definitely stuffed and cancelled all social engagements for the afternoon. After spending the best part of an hour removing marsh-tannins from O gear in order to render it fit for washing machine insertion, took a nap while the washing was on.

S6D - Day 2 Strathfarrar - C30 - Splits

So, we're in Scotland now. Signs are in English, distances & speed limits are in miles. And it's necessary to drive on the left (around each roundabout). Or straight down the middle of a winding lane for 7 miles towards the event, in a chain of cars, with no chance of remembering the way you got there, which makes for some complications upon leaving (hey, it was a scenic drive, and with a little navigational assistance from Simon Rouse to whom I'd offered a lift, I still made it to Forres in time to watch the WOC sprint final).

First part of the course was nice open birch forest with little knolls and gullies and not too difficult to read although inevitably I expected the control to be further down the knoll than it was and so approached from the bottom, losing small amounts of time each time. The event info said to avoid the marshes where possible but there were a couple of legs straight across. I found myself thinking "huh, these aren't wet compared to Swedish marshes" and then saw the person who was up to his thighs in the black bog, trying to extricate both legs at once and with nowhere to put his hands for leverage. I tiptoed very carefully around that patch!

Next section was rather greener with gorse bushes and creeks and a compulsory road crossing which I overshot, and archery butts hidden among a network of tiny paths, then a longer leg out into the moorland hillside section. I intended to go around by larger tracks but ended up doing a mishmash of routes (where a track crosses a waterhole, there is in fact no bridge) and although I left the track at the correct point by my chosen gorse thicket, I managed to go NW instead of north and was too far uphill and lost a couple of minutes there. Getting really tired by now and tripping over everything underfoot though only actually stacked it twice in the heather. Final section of the course was through low pine plantation with deep ruts between the rows and the small rides were almost impossible to find. Reminded me a bit of the bluegum plantation section on Diddleum (Tas) - and actually the moorland section seemed familiar too.

About 60 W40s entered although I don't think all of them ran, and I ended up 21st. Also ended up getting back to the house, completely exhausted and desperate for a shower (had been a while since the open-air shower at WMOC), about 12 hours after I'd left it but that was better going than Blair who was still in an IOF meeting until after 11pm.

S6D - Day 1 Achagour - C30 - Splits

A final starts were a bit later and it seemed too good to be true when the Aussies who'd had earlier/closer starts and were on shorter courses came back with completely dry shoes. The more distant start was 2.4km away and an easy jog on paved forest paths. Was still feeling a bit feverish and sorry for myself but then saw a lady riding a modified tricycle which was basically a bicycle at the back and a wheelchair in front and she was taking her severely-disabled daughter for a ride (which she probably does every day) and she stopped and took photos of the orienteering start and explained them to the daughter, then had to hop back on the trike and ride uphill with all these orienteers getting in her way, yet she was so cheerful. All I had to do was go for a run in the forest, of my own volition and with complete ability to do so.

Dithered a little at the start; whether to run down the track or straight into the forest, but looked at the end of the leg and decided the control was best reached by following a clear-ish granite spur line and then going up hill with a pair of cliffs as my attack. Slow, but certain, was my motto for this race. Which is why I was really annoyed, on the leg to 2, to overrun a tiny track junction by about 100m because I simply didn't see a footpad turning off. But in the control circles I was generally pretty good. And on the complex legs through the complicated knolls I took the high ground as much as possible (lesson from the last rogaine: use the ridgelines) and while this was slow and meant a degree of extra climb, it gave the same sense of achievement as putting a jigsaw puzzle together!

I was pretty buggered though, and really struggled on hills and was also pretty slow getting down cliffs but at least I was consistently going in the right direction (Winsplits claims that I made no mistakes, but I know otherwise; however, the leg which it says was my proportionately-slowest happened to have a high percentage of uphillness). Slightly too far left on 7 and here a woman in red & green caught me, but I still can't work out who she was and where she was in either the starting or finishing order. Anyway, I upped the pace a bit and was around her for the next few controls but then veered too far left again on the approach to 12 and she got past me. From 13 I possibly should have dropped to the track below instead of climbing to the one above, but it doesn't really matter. The rest of the course was straightforward and I finished semi-strongly.

15th on the day, which was nice (and Clare was 7th). Obviously a couple of people who ran the sprints are missing from the forest races, but also there were numerous small-to large blowouts today, whereas I feel that I lost at most 5 min overall by either route choice or control circle inefficiencies. And that time difference might have got me up 2-3 more places but not into the top 10. Which I'm definitely not fast enough for, anyway...but I am fitter than I was a couple of weeks ago.

Charter flight Gothenburg-Aberdeen was at 6pm and full of orienteers. (I know now why it was so expensive - the Swedish crew had turned around and were taxiing to fly back to Gothenburg before we'd even collected our hire cars.) Drive from there to Inverness was about the same distance as Adelaide-Burra and we got to the accommodation at 11pm (stopped for takeaway burgers, but they were pretty horrible). A long day given that our WMOC household was up at 6am cleaning everything in order to avoid a 2500SEK cleaning fee.

C • great result! 2

Event: WOC 2015 & Scottish 6 days
 

Know now why I was so exhausted last night - sore throat has turned into minor cold and the thought of running a final tomorrow seems all a bit much, and the idea of 6 more days of racing in Scotland overwhelming. Achievement for today was washing Gothenburg marsh mud out of O-gear. Some pairs of socks needed rinsing no less than 6 times and the water was still Coke-coloured. Also Blair & I went for a drive up the coast to the next big island, Tjorn, which is reached by a big bridge (Tjornbron) and at the far end of which are more little villages nestled among the rocks and ferries to further islands (the baby one is called Tjornkalv - I guess it's the 'calf' of the big island). Despite the black cloud which dumped on us as we were driving home, the washing on the line was actually dry :)

C • :-( 1

Same assembly area as yesterday, not as much sogginess, although the first few controls were in the tiny-knolls-between-tiny-marshes section. Picked up the map and could hardly read the detail on the short leg to 1; in hindsight I'd have done better to deliberately aim for the track just beyond, which I bounced off anyway. Not sure what I should have done to 2, which was very junky and I dithered between cliffline and marsh when I should have focused on reading/following the knolls, because the Russian who started 2 minutes after me caught me here and the winner, having started 4 min after, ran through me on the way to 3. After this I saw no one who appeared to be on my course!

4-5 involved taking some steps down the cliffline (5 was obviously a transport control, for that reason) then to 6 was across a hillside which had previously been burned and so the rock patches were bare, the visibility good, and I dropped into the small gully I wanted at the end with no problems. Now into bigger pines; 7-8 was a transport leg across a bridge at the end of the lake but not totally easy - I didn't quite climb the cliff at the right point afterwards. Still wonder if I should have gone across the marsh 8-9 instead of around the end, but this gave me a good attack to 9. Next few controls were straightforward then on the 1km leg to 13 I decided to take the track and approach from the north, then climb the cliffs at the end. I still think this was a good route, and I went up from the correct boulder, but climbed a little too high and was above the cliff line I wanted, dropped to it but didn't go far enough south, panicked a little because I'd only identified 2 lines of cliffs when there were 3 on the map, and bailed back to above the boulder. This time I went far enough south and found the control, then got out of there as fast as I could with some respectable splits on the next couple of controls.

18th on the day, 6 min faster than yesterday despite that 3-4 min mistake (but the terrain was faster, although the winner was a couple min slower - maybe she decided not to try so hard) and with the times added together that makes me 20th in W40 and the top 30ish will run the A final. Clare was 7th today, 8th overall in qualifying. Pity Tash Key isn't here too but she's already back in Australia. And Jo Allison's 4th in W35. She has a *slightly* stronger field to compete against than Susanne did in 2011...

Everyone in our household seems a little shattered this evening after 2 tough days in the forest. Good thing there's a day off tomorrow. Backing up from Sat's final with 6 races in Scotland could be a bit much for some of us!