Training Log Archive: BrandNewMe

Loads of sleep on the ferry. Nice!

Then run from the campsite into town to go around the sprint model. Got very disorientated out of the campsite though and ended up runing around some fields. Eventually found bad harzberg, did some controls & home.

Rest day as travelling. Driving to hull for the ferry now. Just as well as yesterday afternoon my body reminded me it was actually suffering from a cold and I ended up pretty wiped out.

Popped my kb dash (4 miles) cherry with 24.58. Had to stop & be caught up at hermitage to get past a professional walker of Alsatians. About 7 of them. Fought to get going again too, so think I could have gone 30 secs quicker. Fun.

Legs felt great so cycling well but rest of me didn't so no running this morning.

Cycle home

Urban / sprint o from firr hill school oxgangs. Really nice course. Different from the usual stiels. Map disintegrated a bit so I got a bit lost thrashing about in some green for a minute or 3 but other than that going really well. Smooth, fast, legs felt good. Yup I am bigging myself up pre wmoc sprint. Be afraid Rollins, be very afraid!

Have a cold and feeling pretty dire so making good use of a day off work to look at the seasons o maps. I've pretty much worked out what I need to concentrate on for successful orienteering. Time to put it into practice at WMOC at the end of the week.

Late so no morning running, just cycling

Cycle home

Line o sprint style on a 2008 big weekend map. Surprising how many new buildings there are now. St leonards, George square, teviot, quarter mile, grass market, esplanade, grass market, mound, then all down the rm, pleasance, dumbiedykes, pleasance and home. Nice.

Post finance sprint. Not pleased. Ran like an idiot for many controls. More analysis later. 25th. Deserved worse.

Haven't got my map so I can't give a blow by blow account but as with eoc I failed to find the start kite on the ground and wasted 10secs before even starting the race. If the start kite is not going to be visible from the start line, put barriers up to guide the runners to the start kite. FFS.

Dropped time on route to 5, trying to find my chosen route to 6, 13 and the second last one. Dropped 65secs + to Tessa and sarah. Shite.

Was depressed at the finish after a weekend of sloppiness. Started in a pretty deprssed mood tho after sitting in quarantine debating the future (or lack of) for british performance orienteering. Not great. Then my self confidence was lacking at the start, and something in my legs wasn't quite right. Bad bad bad. I'd like to say there were lots of learning points but I seem to have gone backwards in my learning recently, sloppiness is returning. I don't want to learn, I want to perform. Whinge over.

C • Oh dear 11

Come to these things to get some sleep then ba muck up and we get here at 1:15am instead of 8pm.

Wc in switzerland. Middle. This was my first oing in Switzerland and didn't know what to expect, but hoped it was a bit like a jk, which it was (you know the sort of area they can only use at Easter before the stuff grows).

1,2 good. 3 took the high route. Good. 4 good. 5 shocking route choice, partly from missing the model, thought running down a ravine would be good. It was shit. 30secs. 6 ok, 7 hesitant, 8 good. 9 lost stacks on route choice. Probably at least 50secs. 10, 11, good. 12 down too soon, 20secs. 13 too low 1 min14,15, 16 good. 17 got distracted, didn't look at the nap, and did some big mistake in some green. 1:15. How annoying. Rest fine. 3:55 dropped. Not good really, but nice first experience and feel a good result is within touching distance. Learnt a lot about good / bad route choices. 25th in the end

Sleep terrible. Lucy's fault.

Jog round meadows 8x50m and home.

Late night session as only opportunity today. Kb sprint I jacked last week. Excellent course by pat Bartlett. Lots of interesting routes to spot. Need good eyesight / magnifier to make the most of this area. Trying to do 80% and get the processes right - using buildings and sight lines to guide me and planning ahead.

Was at the physio earlier and as she was whacking the act puncture pins into my spine (bloody painful compared to other places), I bemoaned the fact that in the last 6 months I had done no running when my body was not hurting from some sort of injury. She commented that she hoped I got what I wanted out of woc so I could give up as maybe my body was telling me something! Cheers! You're supposed to be my physio! I hope she was joking. She did say that 7 races in 8 days is totally do able though.

Late night as had don around. Nice to see him tho. Cycle to work

Suntrap 5. Lovely morning apart from all the flies!

Cycle home

Post cycle jog

cycle to bobs for massage and back.

Martins. Jon Duncan turned up and dragged me around 3 of them (4:22, 4:27, 4:30) then we got bored and ran up Arthur's seat. Perhaps not great to missed planned training, but after a shite day at work, the kids screaming at me for 2 hours, on a lovely sunny evening this was great for the soul!

C • Sounds great! 1

I'm going to stop running w35 - it seems to be making me fat. had a lie in as a very late night. Ray couldn't do much in the way of helping when i got back as he had impaled his foot on a railing during the 7 hills. Nasty.

Felt not very sprightly. Going to do less this week as i want to take this weekend seriously.

Token effort. loosening muscles. Short on time due to lie in.

Cycle home and that's enough for me. Feeling blurghh. we have a problem with the water coming out of our kitchen sink. I drank the wrong stuff i think (probably dishwasher water) and gave been feeling grim and lifeless all day. Hope to be able to rouse myself for intervals tomorrow.

Vhi relays. Loads of sleep as in the campervan with the kids.

Team was mummy strain, graeme and me. How long does a w60 take on 2.5k i wondered. Bit unusual doing a relay with a friends mum. I needn't have worried, mrs strain doing admirably and coming back in the pack. Alas graeme did less well, dropping 8mins (!) to quentin. The map was pretty hard to read but still - 8mins i had to get on sarah noot in 4.4k. I'm faster than her but not that much faster! Easy course in nice terrain. Probably pretty woc relevant. Just off 5 min / k. Would like to say that i dropped time, but probably no more than 1min, and quentin beat me by 1:13. damn he is hard to beat. That might be my training focus from now on, seeing as my tally against john tullie is looking pretty good this year (2:0) so either i rest on my laurels or i find another target.

C • Grrrrrrr 9

Really bad sleep due to a ferry diversion.

Vhi. W35 blue. Meelmore.

Nit a perfect run by a long way but not dire. 1 ok, 2 dire. Didn't trust my compass, rushing. 45 secs ish dropped on one of the easiest controls i will do all year. 3 ok but thought i was going to a boulder not a wall. I didn't look at the map enough. 4, 5, fine. 6 too low. Comes from not following compass again. 90 secs. 7 a little off, again by not getting a good direction out of the control. 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 fine. 13 a but hesitant as the map didn't make sense but i was bang on so found it. 14, 15 fine. 16 too far left. 30 secs. ditto 17 10 secs. 2:40 dropped. I am looking for better than that. Pleased with the ones that went well. They generally are the ones where i respected the difficulty of the map and terrain and made a proper plan before leaving the control before. I suppose i was fairly flippant at the start. The course was an open area so should be easy enough, i was likely to win w35 by miles regardless, i was keen to get running away from the f*ing midges at the start area. Points i need to work on are the same as ever. Proper plan before leavinv the control. Respect each and every leg, no matter how easy it may look. Invest the time, no rushing.

On the whole a well planned course on an interesting area.

Was off to do 3 laps of the meadows when got bored already when i hit middle meadow walk so off to blackford hill. Wind & rain blew cobwebs away. nice. Legs felt much better. Even hamstring is less sore, but that might just be last nights acupuncture.

So tired. Got to bed at 9:30. zonked until woken at 1 and then 5:45. Feeling sleepy all day after so much sleep. Physio now so loojs like it'll be a boring rest day. .

Cycle to work. Was going to go running but legs not in the mood. Maybe lunchtime. Lucy up at 5, but fell asleep for an hour after reading bedtime stories last night so ok.

2laps of the meadows. Warm up for the sprint. Nice

Kb sprint. Legs were not happy. they were tired and grumpy. I fought against them but eventually they went on strike. So i walked to half way and jacked. little point walking a sprint, and it will make good training for next wednesday. Rest day tomorrow probably. NEED to get a good night sleep tonight to re energise.

Intervals with sula sarah o'n and tess. 6:30am, just as sula likes it. 1x6, 2x3, 3x2, 2x1. tried to keep up with sarah too much. Big mistake. Best session i have done for ages. Eyeballs out the whole way. Was going to run home after work but may have to see how damaged the legs are...

Run home. First time for ages. Enjoyed it. Legs felt surprisingly ok-ish apart from sciatica, which was better than yesterday.

Slept yesterday evening 6-7:30 so feeling quite human today despite getting up at 5:30

Felt about 80 this morning jogging. Everything hurt. Then got into it a bit and ran a bit further than planned.

To corstorphine and back for a bupa advanced health assment. Free through work & time off & needed a hearing test. best vo2max they have ever seen apparently. 70.1 but on a bike andnot to exhaustion so i would sooner trust ethans 66~ish

Cycle home. Competitive. All this cycling rather stuffs my ap stats, as i don't really think xtraining should count. Just as well i had lots of cycling todag as my legs needed the rest.

Woke up at 5, but went to sleep at 10 so ok. Ray gets sunday to run with caac fast boys, so if I want to get a run in without taking up all day its 6am, which was fine this morning. Canal, water of leith, bonaly, mucking around in the pentlands a bit then swanston, braidburn vp and home

C • Impressive! 11

Parkrun. 3:22, 3:30, 3:41 (10.33 3k), 3:47, 3:47. 18:07. a pb for this course so pleased. had no idea what to expect as have not done any race other than o-ing since march so pleased not to have gone backwards. Sciatica sore, back really bad at the start and exhausted as was up since 5 with Lucy (and i had an early night esp to catch up...). felt generally pretty strong when running and could have gone further.

used the time this morning to dig out woc maps and have a good planning session so not entirely wasted.

C • Well done on pb ... I thoug... 3

W/up / down

Cycle to work

Hw loop before work. Nice and wet and muddy. Going to get an earlier night tonight, and eat properly all day, unlike yesterday. Running faster than i thought i would. Probably as i was thinking about the woc relay.

Headwind and rain. Yuck!

Playing on arthurs seat after 7 hills reccy of pollock v ray. Very slippy indeed. First time i have been to the top in ages. Could see nothing due to minging weather.

Was goibg to get an hour in the evening but ray had a conferebce call that dragged on, and i was home all day with the kids. Probably just as well. have a cough (that'll be leigionnaires - i pass gorgie on my bike) and have had the physio do some fairly unpleasant stuff this afternoon thst should be left to settle down.

Bad night sleep due to lozza being ill.

Went for a run with toni - he is in such bad shape - chatting about stuff. we went around the meadows, once. i nearly asked him if he wanted to walk up the pitch & putt hill. I thought he was going to have a heart attack...

C • Well done on getting a full... 8

WOC middle selection race

Not really in the best of mindsets going into this one. This was good orienteering in parts, with some mighty bad bits. Disappointed with my scrappyness and lack of focus and lack of willingness to fight at the end. All in all a bit of a disappointing set of races. Not enough focus. I'll do more analysis later, when in a more positive frame of mind.

Jog w tessa and sarah.

Woc sprint selection race. Ok-ish. Dumped stacks going to 4 by being thick (25 - 30secs?), and went up an alley too soon after 14 so had to retreat (15secs). disorientated out of 16, so poor route choice. Got to the finish, no number 5! the people at the finish were laughing about it as they knew i had a duff brick at the individual.

Hamstring pretty bad now. Have to see what it is like tomorrow.

C • That's a long sprint! 5

Scottish relays. Doing an odd handicapped thing w craig & alistair h. Team were 3rd.

I thought the courses went b,b,c, which meant as i was 1st leg i would be running w open course. Found out in the start box that it was actually a,b,b so i had a mens open. Mens open mass start is not something i'd have chosen to do the day before thewoc sprint selection races.

crawford suggested i jog round, but i find it hard to navigate properly when going sub maximal so just went for it. It was great fun, just running along with the pack. Not much navigating was done, but it was what i needed to get the frustrations of yesterday out of my system properly. got a few scalps in the process. Feeling rather goosed now...

Scottish champs and woc selection races. 2nd.

Shitty shitty shit shit shit. Crappy crappy crappity crap crap crap.

1, 2 good. 3 way too high - 1min? 4, 5 good. 6 good - high route with ride then straight on. 7 slow, through deep heather the whole way - straight route. 8 fine. 9 was tricky, finding a boulder in a field of unmarked boulders and root stocks. On a good line, but saw the drinks point just infront of me. It was marked on the map as 100m beyond the control, so went backwards. Was eally confused. The only boulder big enough to be mapped had no control on. After 2 mins + of hacking around realised the drinks point must be wrongly mapped, and ran on to the control which was at the drinks point. The descriptions show the control to have a drinks point, so had i realised this i would have known that the map was trying to say that there was a drinks point at the control. Marking a drinks point on a map 100m away from a control, when the drinks point was at the control is wrong. No cup is supposed to be shown. The drinks point is indicated by the descriptions only. I know this from the countless wre's that i have done. I would expect the controller to know this. It is pretty basic stuff.

The rest of the race was dire. I was so annoyed i ran on and duffed the next one by about 90secs, then went straight on 11. i ran it quite hard as i was so annoyed. 12 tried coming in from above. Poor. 45secs. 13 should have stuck with plan to go totally over the hill. I had the running still, i was so annoyed. Went round. Stopped too soon. Shite. 90secs. 14 ok ish. Bendy route. 15 poor mapping of veg change near the control. V confused. 45 secs. 16 bendy route. 17 shite. 30secs. 18, 19 fine.

Get to the finish. No splits. Emit hasn't worked. Exactly the same as happened to me in 2008. emit really is shit. I'll wait to see the gps to see how i was doing but i reckon i lost a healthy lead at 9.... actually i had a lead of about 2:15 at 8, as i punched just after hollie. To add insult to injury it is sunday night and winsplits has attempted to hide the fact that i have no splits by giving me the splits that i would have done had i been a set %tage behind cat all the way around, making me look like a total punter! how embarassing!
I'd much rather be a mispunch thanks!

8mins lost. I am so frustrated. Feel things are going backwards rapidly. i am angry with the shite drinks point mapping (the controller didn't seem too fussed by it. Four of the women's top 10 lost lots of time there - that is shit!!!). i am mostly angry that i let everything i had worked for go out of the window by running angrily for the rest of the course and f-ing up left right and centre. Really don't want to go to woc if i am going to disgrace myself orienteering like that. Everyone says "you should be pleased because you got 2nd". they don't really get it though. I orienteer to see how well i can do. That's what interests me. How well i do against other people is of no interest. a wobble at no 3 apart, i was orienteering beautifully before 9. everything i had worked on with t i was doing. It was great. Then i threw it all away. Got to get better!

C • Maybe the point is whether ... 2

Took it a bit easier cycling in, and no post cycle jog due to chiropractors stuff settling. Was really trying to get a good night's sleep, but ray got back lateish from tt, tipsy and giggly, desperate for me to help him make an outfit for some sort of jubilee dressing up thing at work. I expressed my opinions from bed. It was quite funny. then the kids woke up at 5:15. not funny!

Cycle home. Much later than usual as a client called 5 mins before i was due to leave and needed me go fet some info for their vat return. 3 hours of running reports later i get to leave. this rather stuffs my plans of getting an early night, as packing is put back 3hours.