in: szurcher; szurcher > 2006-01-10;
| # Posted 2006-01-11 17:35:29 | |
| BorisGr: | Hey Sandra,
good to read your thoughts on 2005 and training summary. Thanks for posting it! A couple of thoughts from watching you race and seeing your training: it seems like you are stronger and faster and better in terrain than I have ever seen you before. It was easy to see both in Japan and Italy that you were running at the level of girls who finish solidly in the 20s and 30s at WOCs and World Cups. And that's pretty awesome! I think it's a great thing to build on and, if you do succeed in getting more (maybe much more) orienteering _training_ (i agree that you race enough) during the year - not just in little bursts like training camps and stuff, results will come! As I've told you before, even if you are still frustrated by some results, watching from the side, it's obvious that you've made a ton of progress and are going in the right direction! (And lastly, watching your progress - along with the setbacks - has been a great motivation for me this year.) |
| # Posted 2006-01-12 19:30:20 | |
| szurcher: | Thanks so much for the comment Boris. It's always nice to have someone looking from the outside give you an objective opinion. I am really motivated to increase my O hours and think that it will help a lot. But the mental preparation is still a tough one, I don't know how to do it& but I know that if I get my nerves and expectation in control I would run better than I do. So I guess it is as important as more map time. One of my goals for 2006 is to place in the top 30 in an A final. I have seen it in my splits all year; it's possible if I put a constant race together for all my splits. I often have one or two splits that take me way out of the results zone I could be in. Thanks for the support and encouragement. It's ironic that you say I have motivated you, because the way you are training in Sweden motivates me:-) |
| # Posted 2006-01-12 21:47:09 | |
| Wyatt: | Good to see the posted summary, and the goal of focussed technical training. I think that should definitely help your results.
I noticed you were going to analyze your races and try to figure out what you need to do better. That's a great way to get an idea of what areas to work on. Once you identify those areas though, you may want to at least some of your O' training runs as focussed on relatively small parts of the navigational effort. Don't try to focus on everything at once, like you have to in races - that's hard, and you probably get enough of that training in races. For at least some of your O' training, you might want to pick a very narrow technique and do drills of that technique to try to get more automatic at it. For example, you could choose contours - pick a local map, draw a course with a bunch of contour features, and go run to all of them trying to focus on the contours alone (if you can print a contour-only map of the area that would be even better.) If the contours ever seem unclear at all, stop and figure them out, even going back right away to where you got confused and reapproaching it. And this doesn't have to take much more training time - you can do this as part of a long-slow run and get reasonable physical training at the same time. Other examples includie things like a vegetation run. Draw yourself a line-O' and read every bit of vegetation on the map as you go along, trying figure out what the mapper was mapping, what isn't quite right due to age, or season (or bad mapping)... Or a compass & pace-counting run - again, draw yourself a course, and trying to compass & pace every leg. As you find yourself missing the pace count, try to adapt your estimate on the next legs... Even route choice - pick a leg and go run it several different ways (that can even be good interval training...) - was your first chioce route the best? Were there small route optimizations you made the 8th time you ran it, that you didn't see the first time? With each of these small-focus O' training runs, you can make that one technique more automatic, so that when you have to do that and everyting else at once (in a race) it's easier. As you get better at this, you'll be able to use more techniques at the same time (as just one example: reading contours, reading rocks, and compass-pace - all at the same time). Doing multi-mode navigation really helps reduce the occurance of those 1 or 2 leg per course mistakes - because when one technique fails, the other technique is there to correct it! Just my 2 cents! Good luck in 2006 (& '07, &....) - Wyatt |
| # Posted 2006-01-13 00:46:25 | |
| szurcher: | Thank Wyatt for the advice!
Yeah, that is my plan, once I have narrowed down what I need to work on, I want to work on one thing at a time in my training. I think my biggest mistakes are not that I misunderstand the map, but rather moments when I loose concentration. Yet, the exercise you mentioned above are all exercises in concentration as well as fine tuning the technical aspect of orienteering. Should help, or I hope so. I am appreciative for the ideas, thanks so much. I wish you also luck in 2006 and beyond! |
| # Posted 2006-01-14 06:28:32 | |
| khall: | Okay, not much for me left to say, as the others have made great suggestions.
So I'll stick to the 'psycho stuff': I think you need to work on both relaxation and positive thinking. Not that I ever mastered this one, but you can see that top sports people (in all sports) have. It is all about mind control, and I think to be good at it takes A LOT of practice. I would suggest getting a good sports psychology book (written for athletes, not for psychologists!). Peggy and I both have 'Thinking Body, Dancing Mind' which I love (though I never used it enough!). Get a bunch of meditation/visualization etc. exercises, and make time in your life to practice them as well as the rest of it. I think your body is clearly doing great, and your technique is improving, so that leaves one aspect left for a lot of work!! The pattern of your errors (eg. problems on #1!) suggests that you are letting the pressure get to you - and until you get that one under control, perfect technique and great physical training will still not get you the results you want, and are capable of! Of course, I never got my mind fully under control, so I am not fully qualified to tell you what to do here :-) |
| # Posted 2006-01-15 04:33:01 | |
| piutepro: | I wonder if you could join the Swiss team, kind of like the ski racers from Lichtenstein join the Swiss Ski team. Maybe if you pay your own way or something. What I hear and read, they work a great deal on the mental part. Just look across the kitchen table: Somehow Marc learned to clean up his act after running some races partially well but then some big mistake blew his race. It seems himself and Thomas B. or whoever coaches him was able to correct the mental lapses.
One trick to prevent stop losing focus is something I figured myself: When I feel I think something like 'wow, I am doing well', or any other 'meta' commentary, I immediately give myself something to do, in a technical way. I read the map to keep myself busy, I anticipate the next leg. I don't give myself any downtime to think about how good or bad I do in the race, I ignore other runners if possible or at least always read the map fully. I also develop some pre-race ritual, breathing, getting in contact with my body, warming up, visualizing what I want to do during the race. Some martial art exercises help, too, to get the right level of being awake and punchy. Sometimes I produce short three point program/sentence: E.g. Go direct [e.g. when the woods are open and fast], no green [Stay away from any green, since I know it is very tough in this specific place] and lead [meaning think like a leader, ignore other runners, race my own race.] I like Thinking Body, too. I felt the main thing is to become playful again, to completely focus on the task and not be concerned about the outcome that much. Which of course seems difficult, yet in the same time it is still a game which we are playing. |
| # Posted 2006-01-15 15:49:38 | |
| ndobbs: | other point for #1 controls - the body is rarely fully warmed up before the race starts...
run up a couple of steep slopes to get the heart pumping can help, especially for sprints etc. The three or four minutes of call up will let you recover. Also read some other map during warm-ups. may you achieve all your goals and more in 2006 |
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