Training Log Archive: Wally80

Orienteering! For the first time in um, some time. Signed up for the H3 so that I would be back in time for Rach to have a run as well.

I was very rough out to the first few controls, I was reading the terrain alright but I had this amazing ability to look at my compass and then go and do something completely different to what it said. I realised at this point that with Juffy off in the floppy hat brigade I was missing my patented Dowling Navigation Aid (DNA^tm). Whatever would I do.

Fortunately at 3 I ran in to an apt substitute for my DNA^tm, one with very similar, um, DNA to the original. boom boom for the next few controls I would run off randomly, get to the right area as the circle then wander around like a headless chook until Jack came and showed me where the flag was. This went on for a bout 5 controls till I got a decent break and ran straight on to 8, then completely pooched 9 and let Jack back past again. 9 was a perfect example of reading the terrain correctly and then ignoring it because the compass was telling me something different. Even though it wasn’t actually. I have no idea.

After having my confidence shaken by 9 and with 10 having no obvious catching features I was being very careful on the lead in, until I was almost there and two blokes ran past at speed. They were a bit low on the hill for the control though so I managed to come in higher and punch at the same time as one of them. The next few controls were simpler nav so I kept up with the faster of the two, and got back past Jack in the process. On the last four I tried running off in front of the other guy but on 13 and 14 I veered too far left both times. Finally on 15-16-finish I got past him but I assume he beat me overall with my earlier mistakes.

Oh well. A weekend of being not particularly competitive in races should do wonders for my training motivation.

Expert 3 - Splits

I realised at 5:50pm Friday that the IOP race was actually on Saturday, not Sunday and entries didn't close till 6pm. With such detailed prep how could I go wrong?

Um yeh, anyway. I decided to register in wave 4 (of 5) since whilst I can beat some of the wave 5 guys on a good day, I knew today wasn't going to be a good day. Wave 4 was probably the largest one and with Mark in it I knew I wouldn't get pegged for sandbagging.

It was a beach start with 4 laps of a square course, there was a slight breeze that meant for one slightly downwind leg, but no real assistance from the waves. I lined up on the very left had side of the group since they were all too close together and I suspected they would foul each other at the start.

Off the gun it looked like I was right as I charged the small break and ended up nicely off the front of the pack, by the first turn Mark and purple ski had caught me, and after the second I got annoyed with being on the front so I stopped and made Mark take a pull.

Mark turned out to be far too keen to take a turn though and on the next leg he started pulling away from me. I was already working harder than I thought I could keep up for 12 km's so when he started pulling away I just had to let him go, and watch Purple ski jump the gap and follow him off into the distance. The fast start had meant that we had a healthy gap on the rest of the field though so I settled in to a time trial pace on my lonesome.

At the end of the first lap we started going through the stragglers from grid 3, and that was really all that punctuated the next two laps as I tried to hold a steady pace adn chase the slower grids down. On the last lap I was fading a bit and a guy from my grid caught me, I sat with him for one leg but he kept attacking me so after one too many surges I had to let him go.

With half a lap to go the grid 5 finally caught up, and annoyingly towed another grid 4 bloke up to me. Sadly I had nothing so I just let him go too and limped in to the finish.

Ended up 14th out of 60 overall, with it being a fairly weak field in general. I am probably 2-3 minutes slower over an hour that when I used to train. Annoying, but not unexpected.

Shattered after yesterdays paddle, but I have entered the IOP race tomorrow just to realise how slow I am.

Back to the lunchtime runs now that it has cooled down, and it was raining this morning when I was meant to go running. I started with my favorite loop on the north side of kings park, just a trot to ease the legs back into things.

Di's group paddle. Sans Di. And sans group.

I got there a bit early but since no one else was there I almost went home, but then Mark rocked up late so we talked eachother into going.

It was a lovely paddle downwind for the first half, but then as we came out from the shelter of the island on the way back the first squall hit, blus with the bounce back off the island it got fairly lumpty for a while. This was the only time I was going faster than Mark all night so I enjoyed it until the wind dropped and it flattened out. Then Mark took off and was about 100m ahead by the narrows. The second squall hit about 1kn from the end and this had a nice bit of rain to sting the face, didn't last long and it was nice again by the end.

Not a bad evening to be out, Mark confirmed that I have lost a lot of speed recently, and I was shattered when I got home, it felt like real training.

A longer ride today in an attempt to call it training, legs had absolutely nothing in them though so it just turned into a longer cruise.

ride home again

Oooh, proper trainingy stuff. long 15 min warm up then 3 x 5 mins, long paddle back to car. nothing too strenuous.

Some bastard ran into the K1 on the car in the carpark and bent the rudder quite badly. At least it wasn't the ski but still very annoying.

Starting to feel human again, though at least 3 kg's less human than last week.

gentle ride in trying to not stress the body out too much.

C • ...so where can you see lions? 2

Cruise home with the I hate Juffy song stuck in my head.