Training Log Archive: BrandNewMe

Trossachs brown. Bit of a beast, terrain, navigation, and map-scale wise. Had been looking foresrd to this but lack of sleep I think, or coming down with something, meant I wasn't feeling the buzz today. Bummer. To 1 slow and I went over a few contours I needn't have. 2 was tricky, was running it too fast, then slowed up and got it right. 3 easy. 4 thought the hill it was on was covered in green trees, so was mucking around on the hill west of the control for a bit. 5, 6 easy. Enjoying getting to run a bit. 7 was shite. Bit of a parallel error. Saw small marsh on right, big marsh on left and thought I was near the control. Too soon. Faffed on the open hill for a bit, before sorting myself out a bit. 8, 9 easy. 10 took too hilly a route at the end, climbing more than I needed to. 11 slightly confused as to where the crag was but it was tucked around the knoll out of sight. Walked up to the knoll taking a gel. 12 Contoured around, nice fast running. Slightly low of the control. 13 thought just run down, but it was craggy, and heathery, and hard to see the crags under the heather so I went round about a bit. 14 went straight. Much slower. 15 fine. 16 major mistake. Went up the blue dotty reentrant, not the one to the right I thought I was on. The blue dotty reentrant ended too early and I was confused. 17 not attacking but ok, rest fine.

Nice course but not as up for it as I would have liked. Shame. Making mistakes through rushing. This is much easier to do at 1:15, with a map that disintegrated gradually, as you thought well I can't make out the map so I will just run in roughly the right direction and have a good root around. Not good.

Thanks fvo for a good weekend's racing.

Tulliallan middle brown

Not sure how up for this I was. My mind has been elsewhere in previous days. Achillies frustrations getting me down a bit. It's not in a bad state, in fact I think it is more soleus, but it has stopped me doing perfect training, which really gets to me. I am reluctantly going to give up my beautiful inov-8s for a while after tomorrow and hope it helps. Anyway, I never really notice injuries when I am racing, so I knew it wouldn't hold me back today, just have been struggling to get into a positive mindset.

Start to 1 crappy. Too far left. Pushing way too hard. Ditto to 2 but too far right. Hit the stream junction, jumped both streams and ran down to the bridge. 3 fine. Ran in the right direction and hit it. 4 shocking. Bearing, hit the road perfectly but thought I had gone 90 degrees right out of three and had hit a different road, so turned left, got confused at the crossroads and sorted myself out. 5 too far left, 6 wierd, hit the path beyond the control, got confused and ran back up.7 ploughed through some rodi'sstupidly, and was a bit right of it. Decided to get a grip, slow down and read the map then, so 8,9,10,11,12 were fine. Hesitant to 13, 14,15 fine, 16 poor at the start, but fine at the end. 17 fine, 18 weird but saw people punching something, so realised that's where the control was. Lost a bit here. 19, 20 weird controls. Lost lots on the fast easy bit at the end as I, as ever, relaxed too much.

Overall I found it a bit of a shock having to think so much all the time. Tiring stuff. Physically ok, not great, not dire. Not used to racing, as the nervy start showed. Nice use of a small area. Next time if you are going to so back to back maps can you tell us before. I made the same mistake at gullane, spending lots of time looking for the start triangle on the map.

Got home and realised we had invited people round to tea. Knocked up a dinner party, hosted, washed up,now it is after midnight and I can't sleep as I are too much. I'm getting up in less than 6 hours. Oh dear!