Training Log Archive: Wyatt

Spectator Event 1 - physically aiming for 3 pace, not 4 pace max. Cleaner than many perhaps, due to terrain practice (models & WOC Quali) so managed 9th, down to 8-minutes = 25 sec/control, using 20% behind superman in M35 (much easier than WOC Quali's 40% behind :) ). It's going to be hard to get to ~1 minute clean in this terrain. Maybe, but not sure when.

GPS died after 33 minutes. Battery life is going to crap. Wonder if something happened on the plane or other travel, as the reduction in life seems rather abrupt.

Distance note - official course length was 4.5km and my route isn't polluted by 3km of errors - running around on navigable trails (incl. indistinct) or via the more recognizable contour or clearing-features is a key part of the game here.

Run to start. Late, due to parking 4km away, and 200m below, the finish area. Even hitched a ride halfway, but getting the kids up there, and settled into French childcare (Oriana) and onto White, just on time (AJ) was higher prioirty than my start. Fortunately, the organizers adjusted my start time due to the bad parking planning, and no-notification of how far it might be...

Event: WOC 2011 + O'Festival Savoie Grand Revard
 

Jogging around on rocky trails warmup - a few short segments then about 7-8 minutes in a row, then active stretches (4 types), then jogging about 5 minutes on the way to the start. Well hydrated (lots of stops by the boys' room), with water, ~0.3L each of Coke & Gatorade, plus 1 pre-start Excedrin pre-emptively for the head. Well focused with plenty of time to quadruple check various things like shoe tying, etc...

(8/18 update, at Angelica's hotel, which has functional Internet...)
WOC Long qualifier, Men's A. 29th place of ~40, only 15 qualify for finals, so, missed final. Missing the Final was expected.

Navigationally, given my level of understanding of the terrain (well-scattered 15-20 hours of pre-study, plus 2 model days and post-analysis of that), I think I had a moderate run. No major blowouts, but not really clean, with several moderate errors up to 3.5 minutes, slowly stacking up. Felt like I was just leaking time left and right. Only spiked about half the controls. If I chose to spend the time attending the various training camps offered in this terrain over the past year or two, with flights to Europe and weeks away from family & work, I likely could've cut the navigational errors significantly, but that's a very heavy investment to make in one race that I didn't even expect to run until late this year.

Physically I felt like I could run okay, when the terrain allowed. The L-achilles wasn't a noticable problem (moreso the next day on some bad steps in the forest). But when the world elite went by me, it didn't matter if it was uphill, downhill, or flat, most of the men were going faster than me. In particular, a Swede on a downhill, a Finn on a sidehill, and a Norwegian on a King-of-the-mountain leg (one of two on the course) just ran away from me at 20-30% faster.. In some ways I felt like a spectator running along. There were a few other men out there at my pace, and a few others with camelback's I could pass, but I'm clearly a level or two behind the elite tier.

Overall, the terrain was hard enough that with a super-clean run, I could've been surprisingly close to qualifying - on my 'good' splits (7-8 of them), I was 36-42% behind the split-winner. Cutoff was close to 30%+ behind superman (sum-of-splits-winners). But that still means I'm too slow, in this terrain, to qualify.

In a parallel universe, it would interesting for me to try the Euro-orienteering-circuit life. I'm glad Sam, Ross, Cristina, and Sandra are doing this. That may help. And I'm quite happy to see Ali reaching world class even without a full-time Euro-circuit training plan (at least not yet :). Apparently 2000+ controls in 8 months, including a moderate amount of travel-to-train, is working for her.

2nd model event/training day, on the 1:15000 print of a portion of tough woods about 2km south of tomorrow's finish. Navigated pretty well to the controls. Had a really hard time finding one of the black (dangerous) pits. Time/dist includes the run to/from the map or it would be much slower per/km (10-15 in the woods, typ.)

Long distance model event controls on Thu. PM after arriving in Geneva at 11am, and bags arriving a bit later. Managed to learn a bit about the mapping style and terrain. Terrain was physically bad, but no worse than expected based on others' posts. Mapping was running-speed simplified - looking for the big stuff seemed to match up ok. Relocating off little stuff was near impossible, as I'd interpret it all differently than the mapper would, IMO.

Little neighborhood loop, in the AM, before traveling Newark, Amsterdam, Geneva

Loop around the neighborhood with Angelica & Tom.

611 days in a row, keeping it counting at 11pm... (>2miles & >20 minutes...)

Legs a bit sore after pushing well this past weekend. Unusual. I think that in general, I've forgotten how to push myself to the point of sore legs the next 2-days.

1st of 3 easy days here, then a short-fast training day in France on Thu. PM, a short-easy training day + lots of map walking in France on Fri. PM, and then a WOC Quali on Sat. PM.

Forgot the GPS http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4704614