Training Log Archive: jtorranc

Had just over seven hours between arrival in London. Spent just over half of it walking around the center of town between literary and other landmarks starting with Fenchurch Street Station (of "So Long And Thanks For All The Fish" fame) and ending outside the Sherlock Holmes museum on Baker Street just to have been there.

Last WOC Tour open course. Comically sustained 180 on the way from 8 to 9 when I got turned around in thick vegetation again. Otherwise fine but still feeling slow. I may just suck but I think I'll ask my doctor for some blood testing and anything else she thinks is reasonable looking for an explanation for my feeling that I can't race at the same intensity I've been accustomed to, even when the orienteering is technically fairly easy - I'd feel very silly if it turned out something was wrong and I delayed seeking diagnosis and treatment just because I wasn't sure.

Score one for the heart rate monitor types, who would quite likely know whether something like what I suspect was wrong long before I clued in.

Great final leg from Patrick in the relay!

After watching Holger's nail biting victory, another Open 1 WOC Tour course . Shaky start technically in the thick area the last loops of the Middle Finals courses went through, then settled down and later had no particular troubles in the more open woods although I still felt slow. Think I need to work more on precision compass and pace in thick areas where I can't see very far into the terrain around me.

Open 1 WOC Tour course - no big mistakes other than between 9 and 10, where I started out of 9 by getting turned around in thick vegetation and only caught myself when I emerged onto a trail, turned the way I thought I ought to, then went through the process of converting "I'm heading due west; why isn't the terrain matching up?" into the correct "I'm heading due east; no wonder the terrain isn't matching up. I'd better turn around." Slow.

So why am I running so slowly? The possibilities that occur to me are mild undiagnosed illness, overtraining and/or insufficient/inappropriate training. Not sure how to go about deciding how close any of these are to the truth - it's not as though I've been tracking my resting pulse on waking or HRM data while exercising in the past to compare with current values. So do I try resting and risk further deterioration in fitness before COCs or do I carry on and see whether things improve?

Some silly walks and 50m strides shortly before bedtime just to wake my body up after a couple of days with no intense activity. Also, hopefully, to make it easier to get to sleep.

Congrats to Louise and las Saegerinas for their qualífying runs in the sprint this morning.

Addendum: their runs in the final also failed to uniformly suck.

Since it turns out both of my quads are uncomfortably bruised, I just walked around the sprint model in Botanisk Have. Also a fair bit of downtown Aarhus, which has many pedestrian only streets, most of them cobbled.