Training Log Archive: Kat

Warm-up running before the start.

EVENT: Triple-O-Severn Day 2
COURSE: W21E, 8.52 km, 335 meters climb, 18 controls
WOODS: Similar to yesterday. Hilly, with branches on the ground everywhere, along with nettles and brambles.
MY RUN: Since I ran so fast yesterday, I decided to take it easier today. I knew this course would be physically demanding, so I decided to focus on having a clean run. The only real mistakes I made were (1) not reading ahead and therefore taking a terrible route choice to #4. I climbed down a steep hill about 35 meters, only to realize that I would then have to climb back up a few minutes later. (2) picking a route choice to #14, but then not sticking to it because i couldn't go straight on the compass bearing (too much crap in the way). So I went to the control on a compass bearing and wound up 20 meters above it before I realized i'd gone too far.

Other than that, there were many small micro route-choice mistakes. For example, I would enter the woods and discover myself in marshy ground with branches in my face, even though the area was mapped as white woods. Had I stayed on the trail 10 more meters, the woods would have been a bit more decent. Also, there was one significant mistake that was just plain silly. Control #3 was on top of a hill, in a pit, and I went straight up the hill, to the left of the green, and must have come up right past the pit, but I didn't see it. Even though I was sure I was in the right area, I ran around in a few circles before I found it. In all, I figure I had about 15 minutes of mistakes today.

One thing I did well was to take an around route-choice on the long leg rather than to go straight. Having learned from the JK, I knew that it would be better for my sanity if I went somewhat around rather than straight. In fact, I started to go straight, but 10 meters into the woods, I decided I didn't want to wade through waist-high brambles anymore and headed back out to the trail. I hesitated here for about 30 seconds, but I'm glad I thought about it and took the route choice that I did. And actually, I think some elites went the same way, so it wasn't a bad route.

This weekend was quite knackering, but I feel I learned a lot from it. Running around other orienteers has shown me just how many small things I could do differently and better.

Warm-up/down. I didn't really do this in any organized fashion. I did some jogging with Vicky to the spectator control, then to the finish, then to the start. After the race, I jogged to the spectator control and back with SGB.

EVENT: Triple O Severn Day 1 (middle distance)
COURSE: W21E, 4.7 km, 155 meters climb, 1:10,000 map

WOODS: Very physical! Either brambles or nettles or branches underfoot. There were very few areas that felt nice to run in.

RESULTS: I started out on the course trying to be clean rather than fast. I tripped and fell about five meters from the first control, but otherwise found it just fine. Then I lost a bit of time (perhaps 30 seconds) zigzagging to #3 - it's tough to be accurate running first uphill, then downhill.

#5 was the only leg I really didn't like. Basically, the control was at the end of a tunnel which went underneath the main road. But instead of going through the tunnel, I crossed the road and approached it from above. This was a spectator control and therefore there were people standing around and a guy with a camera. I remember reading that competitors are supposed to go through the tunnel, so I thought I wasn't allowed to go down this way. So I wasted time and energy going back across the road, climbing down to where the tunnel was, going through it, then climbing back up. Grrr. Lost over a minute on that. I really should have just gone down to the control and not bothered going through the tunnel. That was silly.

I made 1-2 minutes of mistakes on #8. I wound up going through the "light" green (more like fighting my way through). I should not have gone that way to begin with (not the best route choice) but it turned out to be really, really bad. Once I finally got out of it, I again messed up trying to attack a control after having gone down a steep downhill. It was at this control that Abi Weeds and Christine Currie caught up with me (having started several minutes back). I ended up running with them for the rest of the course.

Running with those two fast women was quite a good experience for me! For one thing, it showed me that I have gotten much better at picking things up from the map just by glancing at it. I've still got a long way to go before I can fully navigate while running at their speed, but at the very least, I know I can orient the map, keep track of major features, and know which control number and feature I am looking for while going full-out through the woods.

Tomorrow I fully intend on running at a slower pace and trying to keep in closer contact with the map (especially since tomorrow's race is long and hilly). For today, however, it was nice to run with some fast people and see when they hesitate, when they slow down, when they mess up, and what type of mini-route choies they make.

C • Photo 2

Easy run with Henry along the river (up to the first lock and back). My legs are sore, but overall I feel really energetic and excited about orienteering this weekend.

This includes club run (which I used as a long warm-up), running between intervals, and cool-down afterward.

Today's club run was excellent - the pace was easy, there was good conversation, and the weather was nice. About 40 minutes in total and I felt great when I got to the track!

3x1200 with about 1.5-2 minutes break in between.

I didn't take splits, but Peter called out the times at each 400 and I actually remember all of them:

95 3:13 4:50
93 3:11 4:53
94 3:15 4:55

I have never done 1200s before so I had no idea how to pace. Last term I usually stuck right behind Helen, but today I was several meters in front of her on all three intervals. I know for sure that I wasn't pushing as hard as I did during my tempo run on Tuesday. Part of this is because I am always cautious when trying something new - I'd rather finish knowing I could have gone faster than die out in the middle of an interval. The other reason is that I've had a good week of training and I have three races coming up this weekend so I see no point in tiring myself out today. I was definitely breathing hard and trying to focus on keeping my head up (instead of looking down at the ground), but it wasn't even threshold pace. (At least it didn't feel like it...)

My legs felt really sore while jogging home. Tomorrow is going to be a very easy day...

C • 1200 intervals 3

Two Christ Church meadow loops while reading final details for this weekend. It is absolutely gorgeous outside!

Nice, easy swim. Just as last time, there were 4 people in the fast lane to begin with, but towards the end it was just me.

Warm-up:
4x100 (50 free, 25 free, 25 back)
2x100 (25 fly drill, 25 back, 50 free)
4x50 (25 drill free, 25 swim free)
Main Sets:
2x{4x50 (25 fly, 25 back), 100 easy}
4x25 fly FAST
5x{100 free, 50 kick}
Cool-down: 250 easy (alternating 50 back, 50 free)
Total: 2,500 meters

When I did the 4x25 fast fly, I meant to get to the other side of the pool, catch my breath, and go again. But instead I had to wait for 30 seconds after the first 25 because a guy in my lane decided to do fly as well and he took up the whole width of the lane. (So he ended up doing 4x25 too, about 20 meters behind me.) I think he did it just to prove to himself (and me) that he could. I no longer feel competitive about swimming, but I think it's great if I can motivate other people to swim fast :)

Running from home around Christ Church meadow (on the northern side) and along the river for awhile, stopping a few meters past the blue bridge.

After the warm-up, I did some stretching for 2 minutes, then took off again. The plan was to do a 16-minute tempo run - 8 minutes out, 8 minutes back.

I ran north along the river, across that small wooden bridge, then up north some more till I reached Port Meadow, crossed the wooden bridge there and ran north along the meadow, close to the water. The path disappeared then, so I was running on grass. After I'd been out for over 7 minutes (probably between 7.25-7.5), there was a big group of geese (including some really young cute fluffy offspring) and a herd of cows behind them. Geese with young must be avoided, but I felt that going around them wasn't worth it since the time was getting close to 8 minutes, so I turned around then.

I was afraid that I would end up going slower on the way back, because I was tired, but I got back to the blue bridge by 14:35. I didn't take a split when I turned around, but I figure I did about the same time going out and back.

I was a bit unsure about how this tempo run would work out because I've never done one before. Also, since I did this on a stretch of river path, I had no distance markers that I could use to check my progress. Nor do I own a heartrate monitor. So the only things I could use to judge how the run was going were my subjective feelings. I thought that it would be tough to keep pushing myself when there was nothing and nobody around to motivate me, but I did a really good job of keeping up the pace. I was definitely tired by the end!

C • Nice work. 5

Jogging back from the blue bridge home.

Biking to Brookes. After a week of biking, my legs felt really tired going up the hill.

Brookes circuits. 33 minutes of exercises (1 minute at each station) with some warm-up jogging and stretching before and after. For the most part, the stuff we did was pretty standard: push-ups, crunches, bench dips, squats, and so on. There were also some novelties. One was punching a bag, which I've never done before. (I realize that this takes some skill, as I was knocked off my feet today.) Another was jump rope! This made me happy, because I haven't done it in a while and it is so fun! Perhaps I can convince OUOC that we should do some jumprope after (or during) the AGM meeting this Thursday...

C • Circuits 6

Biking to Shotover. My legs felt really tired on the last hilly bit right after the bridge. I cycled a few meters up the steep left turn after that, then turned back around to go to the west gate. (The plan is to gradually increase the distance I can cycle up Shotover hill.)

I followed a pretty straight-forward line-O from the west gate to the southeastern corner of Shotover, then did a course (14 controls) sort of zigzagging back to the top, then jogged to the west gate again.

I imagine that Shotover in the summer is not for the faint-hearted. Nettles are springing up everywhere and there seems to be more brambles and more green. Plus, there were bumblebees buzzing around me almost constantly. Once, I heard a buzzing noise coming from my map case, so I quickly dropped it and stopped a few feet away. The insect (some bee, I think) thankfully managed to get out of the plastic without assistance and flew away.

My run was more or less easy, but each time I'd hear that buzzing drone near me, I'd do a 5-meter dash. Talk about motivation!

I went to see a physio today. So I now finally have some idea of what has been causing my knee problems!

Symptoms: Knees hurt (especially the right one) when running on roads/trails and in particular when doing downhills. I've never really felt knee pain while orienteering except for OUOC training in Scotland, and this was most likely due to running downhills each day. The longer a run I do, the more it seems to hurt. Sometimes it hurts the next day or two as well, although if I take enough time off running, it stops hurting altogether. As soon as I resume running, though, it comes back. The pain is mostly in the front of the knee, right below the kneecap. When running, the pain occurs when I put weight on the foot (as opposed to during the swinging motion).

Diagnosis: The physio said I have tendonitis. He also said the cause is most likely due to my gluteus medius muscles not being strong enough to support my body correctly while I'm running, which shifts the pressure onto my knees.

Prevention: He gave me several exercises to work on daily. These will strengthen the gluteus medius and hopefully help alleviate knee pain in the future.

Biking to Youlbury with Ian. I was fiddling with my gears towards the end, which resulted in me struggling very hard to get up a hill with my bike set on the highest gear.

Biking home. There were way too many scary downhills.

Walked around Youlbury with Ian today. We surveyed the area, using last year's map as a base. There was some change in vegetation and some new features appeared (or at least, we decided to include features previously not mapped).

I have to say, trying to map a place while just walking around it is extremely difficult and highly subjective! If we had the time and money, I think buying a GPS system and loading a base map onto it (perhaps just with the borders of the woods) and then going around and checking off features with the GPS would be a better way to go. You could stand on top of a rock, for example, and know its precise coordinates. To map a trail, you would just have to walk along it. Of course, even this way of mapping has its flaws, but I bet it would be a lot more accurate than trying to judge distance and angles with the naked eye.

Biking to Shotover, again to the western gate. I like biking uphill more biking on flats and definitely more than biking downhill.

C • Up hill, down dale 5

C • Up hill, down dale 1

A line-O in Shotover, entirely on trails, with a black-and-white map and no compass. I put it down as intensity 3 because I went at an easy pace, but there were quite a few hills on the line so it was harder than the typical easy runs that I do.

A few times, especially when trying to find a trail leading out from a clearing or when at a trail intersection, I took a wrong turn and then went back to correct it. It was nice to do an easy run with something to think about.

Biking from the big Sainsbury's to Shotover at a pretty fast pace.

After checking out the MCR kitchen, I gave up on the idea of cooking pasta for myself. All I needed was a clean pot and some water, but there were only dirty dishes in that kitchen and no soap. So I biked to Sainsbury's and got there at 8:02, only to see that the store had just closed. (Argh, how can a supermarket close at 8PM? That's obscene.)

So then, on a whim, I decided to bike up to Shotover again and test out the final stretch of hill to the top. In the past, I've always gone up the steep part right after the bridge, but then took a right turn (slightly downhill) to the west gate. Today I turned left and attempted to go up the even steeper part. Within a few seconds, I had to jump off my bike to avoid falling.

This is great! This can be my first biking goal - to conquer Shotover Hill.

I wrote up an easy training session for myself and went to the pool in the early afternoon. Usually I find it quite boring to swim by myself, but I was in the mood to do something nice and easy and it felt peaceful gliding over the water, especially with the light streaming in through the huge glass windows.

I took 5-10 seconds rest between reps and aimed to do everything (except for the 8x50 free and kick) slowly but smoothly.

4x100 (50 free, 25 back, 25 free)
8x50 free easy

4x50 (25 fly, 25 back)
100 free easy
2x75 (25 fly, 25 back, 25 free)
50 easy
8x50 free fast on 1 minute
100 easy
5x150 (100 free, 50 kick)

200 (25 back, 25 free)

Total: 2,750 meters

After 4 hours of math, I was getting restless and decided to do some circuit training. Now back to work...

C • Fitness 4

I have given this some thought and have decided to use the following criteria for logging biking as training:

Biking on flats for more than 15 minutes at a time will be entered. Biking uphill will be entered. Biking downhill (such as the 15-minute ride home from Shotover) will not be. Biking 5 minutes to Sainsbury's, or the University Museum, or the pool, etc. will not be.

Cycled to Shotover. I managed to make it up the hills on the way there just fine, but didn't bother dragging my bike up the last steep bit to the parking lot. I just left it on the western side of the map and then jogged up the hill to the grassy clearing on the trails.

Jogging around slowly to the top of Shotover and then around on the trails. Despite going slowly up the hill, it still felt like effort! Did some running drills towards the end.

Took exactly 3 minutes after the warm-up run to stretch, then did the 10-control simplification course that Ian had drawn last term as a training exercise. I meant to run fast, but messed up number 5. I have yet to find that stupid rock right on! I messed up number 8 as well (got confused by the trails). So rather than a tempo run, this course turned out to be something like natural intervals. I would go fast, then would have to slow down to navigate.

C • Control #2 2

Jogging from the finish to the west side of the map where my bike was. The first six minutes were tough (and did not feel like cool-down) because there were hills. After that, though, the route was mostly straight, followed by a downhill.

I really enjoyed today's outing. I think I will cycle up to Shotover a few times a week just to run up some hills and perhaps attempt to do some "terrain" intervals through the bracken. Also, I think I'll make the course I ran today a test course. So I'll run it again in a few weeks and see if I can do better.

Club run from Rad Cam through University Parks, through another little park (name unknown to me), and through South Park. Afterward I ran around near the Christ Church meadow for a few minutes to get my heart rate down.

I was not planning on doing a second workout today, but after I got back from Shotover, I got an email from Chris M announcing that there was club run today at 5:30. I decided not to go and in fact ate lunch at around 5. At the last minute, though, I changed my mind. I figured that several people would show up and it would be a nice easy evening jog. Instead, the guys who showed up set quite a fast pace and club run felt like a tempo run (at times perhaps even intensity 4). I've never had trouble keeping up with the guys at club run before, so I was probably just tired from this morning (as well as the racing last weekend), but I also think they were just going fast. It's sort of understandable though. I imagine they haven't been running much and now that the weather is so nice and warm (all of us wore t-shirts and shorts) they can't help but enjoy it and want to run fast through the parks. I felt similarly the first time I ran in Oxford again (on Tuesday), but today I was not in the mood for a fast run, especially on a full stomach. Nonetheless, to avoid being left behind, I had to run at their pace. Tough crowd.

I finally decided to get a bike and get over my fear of roundabouts and city streets. So I walked over to Cowley Road and got a second-hand bike, a lock, and a nice helmet. Then I tested out the bike by riding up Morrell Avenue (to the top of South Park), circling the roundabout there and heading back. I definitely need someone to teach me when to signal and when I'm allowed to turn and when I should go to the middle of the road, and so on.

The bike isn't amazing, but it works. I really like the helmet, though. It has an extra strap in the back which makes it fit snugly on my head, way different from those turtle-shell helmets which seem to slide back and forth.

C • wow! 17

A run with Boris along the river. We intended to go out for a short recovery run (30-40 minutes easy) but the weather was so gorgeous and sunny and there were swans and geese all along the river to look at, so we ended up going to Port Meadow and back. We stopped for a few minutes there to look at the cows and stretch. It felt great!

JK Relay! I ran the second leg of a men's premier relay. The entire relay team was Boris on first leg, then me, followed by Chris Wroe on the third leg and Mike Waddington on the fourth. Boris did a good job staying with the pack on the first leg, but unfortunately had to wait for me for 1-2 minutes when he got back because after jogging around there for several minutes I realized that I was supposed to pick up my map before starting and went to the tent to do that...

I started off running down the taped route to the start triangle feeling totally confused. I was trying to orient the map, get my jacket off, and keep moving in the right direction all at once. Therefore, I was very tentative on my way to the first control. After that though, I began to speed up. Turning the map over constantly to look at the control descriptions made me mess up several times and slowed me down, but I still ended up finishing with a decent time. I finished right in the middle of a pack of about 43 people on my course (forking CAD). And this was despite having made 9-10 minutes of mistakes.

Today's racing was somewhat similar to yesterday in that I just felt like going fast and having fun and didn't mind the mistakes so much. Too bad I can't really compare finish splits with anybody. Most people stopped to rest a bit after tagging the next person before they went to download. That was certainly true in my case. Too bad, because I sprinted down that long finish chute. :)

I started to do some cool-down jogging, but decided to walk instead because my blisters were hurting me. I haven't had blisters since I've started wearing Swoop orange shoes for orienteering, but Sunday was very wet and muddy and I got some on the bottoms of my feet. After I changed into sneakers, though, I did a lot of walking around the assembly area and did some stretching.

The start for the second day of the JK was 2.8 km away from the assembly area. I jogged the flats and some of the hills and walked on the down-hills.

Second day of the JK weekend. The course started out with some technically easy legs with lots of trail running and ended with some shorter technical controls in a hilly bit. After yesterday's dissapointing day, I just wanted to get out there and run. I didn't care about much else besides getting to run fast and finish the course. And this is exactly what I did. As a result, I ended up 40th out of about 90 people on my course, with some of the best splits and some of the worst. My split rankings (out of 90 people) were:

2, 39, 8, 75, 3, 73, 10, 3, 14, 2, 22, 19, 85, 85, 26, 21, 3

I made some silly mistakes. For example, the reason my split to #4 was one of the slowest was because I did an extra loop on trails (a silly mistake due to not double-checking my compass). My 73rd best split to #6 was also due to a stupid error - looking for a reentrant instead of a pit led to considerable confusion. (I should check the control descriptions even if the feature looks obvious from the map.) Then, there are those two 85th best splits, which are both due to running around like a headless chicken once near the control circle instead of carefully trying to relocate.

Despite having about 21 minutes in mistakes, I still felt good after this course. It was nice to feel fast and to finish a course after yesterday.

Cool-down running with Ollie after the race. Very nice weather today!

Running to the start with Boris, since our start times were two minutes apart. We ran part of the way through bracken, in the elite warm-up area.

JK day 1 race at Ilkley Moor. I thought that I would do reasonably well in this race, since it is physically tough (heather and bracken throughout the entire course, as well as hills and rocks) and I like such courses. But, as it turned out, my result was "DNF."

I knew that I had to start out cautiously since the map was 1:15,000 and, given the terrain and my meager experience with this scale, a disaster could happen if I wasn't careful. Nonetheless, I ended up overshooting the first control and having to relocate and come back. The first control was a tough one, though, (a ditch in the middle of bracken, with not much else nearby to help with navigation), so I wasn't really bothered by this. I put it behind me and found number 2 and 3 just fine. (In fact, I had a fastest split to #2, which is really cool since there were almost 100 people doing this course!)

Then came the toughest control I've ever had on a course. It was a long one, about 1.8 km long. Going straight would mean crossing a very steep reentrant and going through rocky stuff. It didn't look good to me. So after a few seconds of looking, I saw a decent route that went around using some trails. I even started off in that direction and got onto the big trail, but then saw other people going across that big reentrant and also saw orienteers heading to the start along the road I was heading for on the trail, and decided to go straight instead. I then went on to twist my ankle crossing that big chasm, stopping a lot to hesitate and despair about my bad route choice along the way, trying to save it by heading up north to a small trail so I wouldn't have to run through the heather and bracken any more, not being able to find it (some of the trails were hard to make out), and eventually spending about 15-20 minutes near the control circle half-heartedly looking for #4. There were many big rocks in that area so I couldn't really run through it, especially since I was trying to keep my ankle safe from further harm. So I sort of climbed around on the rocks for a while, said hi to Ollie twice, and eventually found the control and decided to head back.

I learned some important things today. First, I have to trust myself. Even though I haven't done many long legs, I have looked at enough of them (mostly on Boris' maps) that I know what type of route choices I should look for. I found a decent route choice for this long leg and I should have taken it. Second, I should get over my inhibitions about running near the assembly area, near the start, and so on. I went straight because I didn't want to run on the trails/roads which other orienteers were using to jog up to the start and since I saw other people going straight, I figured that we were probably meant to do that. Well, quite a few people did have to cross there (because there was one control right on the other side), but my control was much farther away and really did not require me to go up and down there. So I should have had more confidence in my route choice.

I've been told before that if I pick a route choice and it's too late to turn back, I should stick to it and execute it well. But I couldn't do that here. I spent the entire leg (which took me about 30 minutes) telling myself I should have gone the other way. It was hard not to think this, because the way straight meant lots of falling, sliding downhill, carefully climbing over rocks, tripping over heather. And all the while I kept thinking about how nice it could have been if I'd taken the "around" route choice of trails and roads. So by the time I was finally near to the control, I was already considering just finding it and heading to the finish. This was a hard decision for me because I have never DNFed before for reasons other than time constraints. To willingly quit a race when I had the time to finish it and was physically able to do so had never even passed my mind before today. This is part of the reason it took me so long to find #4. Once I was close to it, I just walked around debating what I should do. I had neither the heart to run fast nor the will to turn away without finding that damn control. Finally, though, I found it and decided to head back in.

Cool-down run with Boris.

Event: JK 2006
 

After several days of not training, I intended to do this sprint relatively easy - try to hit all of the controls right on and warm-up both my body and my brain for the JK weekend. And to some degree I kept to this - I definitely did not go as fast as I could have. I started out cautiously, confused by the number of controls everywhere without SI units. (I found out later that these other controls were put out for the trail-O.) But I went at a decent pace for most of the race and sort of sprinted to the finish from the last control. (I started sprinting, then slowed down because I wasn't sure where the finish was, then sped up again.)

I wound up second in the women's open category. The funny thing is, if I had actually raced this sprint (rather than did it as a training run) I'm not sure I could have done better. Because if I had gone out with an intention to win and be fast, then I would surely have messed up some controls and my total time would have been slower. Funny how that works.

Someday I hope to do both - go fast and navigate correctly.

C • Sprint-Os 4

Cool-down jogging after the sprint.

Doing the JK training event with Boris an hour or so after the sprint. Unfortunately, I tripped over a root and bruised my left quad in the middle of this, but the pain was gone by the end of the day.

Travel day to London with Boris. I'll be doing a lot of sightseeing and random walking the next few days, but not a lot of training.

C • Wow - 2 nd place in Sprint 2

Running to the start (the first control, all on roads and trails from home).

Boris and I decided to head over to Nasten and do a bit of orienteering. Instead of setting up a course or doing a line-O, Boris wanted to run the same leg several times, experimenting with route choices and seeing just how much faster the same leg can be done if the navigation is optimized. Ideally, we'd have done this leg at least three times (each "time" means going from the first control to the second, then back to the first again). However, due to time constraints, Boris ran it twice and I only got a chance to run it once. It was a tough leg!

Running home. Felt so hungry!

Warm-up and cool-down.

COURSE: D20, 4.8 km, 13 controls, 15,000 map
WOODS: In general, typical technical Swedish terrain. The snow was gone in some areas, but there was still plenty of it covering certain marshes and tops of hills and cliffs. There was also snow and ice on some of the trails and, of course, in the open areas.
RESULTS: There were only three people doing D20, including me. One of them is on the Swedish junior team and had a time of around 37 minutes. The other was just some random Swedish chick who had a time of 53 minutes. I was third with 65 minutes.

The last time I did a day-race in real Swedish terrain (and also the first time...) was back in September when I visited Boris the first time. I did a 3 km course in about an hour and felt totally lost at times. Today went a lot better. It wasn't really fast woods to begin with - there were lots of marshy areas, lots of slick sticks and rocks to slip on, lots of snow in open areas to bog us down, and so forth - but the technical difficulty slowed me down even more. However, I do think I've gotten a lot better the past few months. I managed to actually move through the woods at a decent pace and know exactly where I was! It felt great. I did, of course, make a few mistakes (#3, #7, #10, and #11) but I also nailed other controls straight on. It's a really cool feeling to be running in such detailed terrain and being able to match up the map with reality. Even on those controls which I did mess up (with exception of #3), I felt I did a good job of relocating and finding the control.

What an awesome day!

Running to and from Stenhagen with Boris.

Doing parts of an O-course at Stenhagen while Boris and Jan ran around there together. First I followed them to control #1 just to see what pace they were going at, then tried to find #2 and #3 unsuccessfully, then relocated on a trail and just decided to set streamers on the last few controls on the course so Boris and Jan would find them when they came around. Boris says I set them all correctly, which is cool. :)

Crunches after the run.

Some very easy swimming at the central Uppsala pool while looking at Boris' swimming technique. He catches on quickly :)

Easy running in Stadsskogen with Boris. We did most of the course we ran last Sunday backward, with me reading ahead and Boris following and commenting on my tactics.

Intense spinning session at the Ekeby gym. Fun as always.

Linne training session at Börje-Jumkil. There was entirely too much snow on the ground for this to be a quality technical training event for me. There were many rocks everywhere and I kept slipping through the "holes" between them. So I was spending more time trying to wade through the snow and not twist an ankle over the rocks than actually orienteering.

I got off to a bad start because when I got to the first control, I saw #73 on the control flag and figured it was not my control since I was looking for #33. But apparently, since today's courses will be run by other people tonight, there were flags as well as reflectors and the actual control numbers were on the latter. I really should have figured this out, but as it was the first control, I was confused. I spent a bunch of time running around the area relocating, before finally deciding this had to be my control and going to the second one, which I found just fine. I then went on to find three more controls and headed back in, physically and mentally tired.

Swedish terrain is hard enough as is, but with so much snow on the ground (and no tracks or trails) it is very hard to relocate once lost. Plus, since moving through the snow is so slow, I hated having to relocate today because it took forever. I was going to go to #5 and #6 before I headed in to the finish, but by the time I'd relocated on my way to #5 and knew where I was, I didn't feel it was worth the effort to actually visit the control...Plus, as happens often with training sessions, I wanted to head in before it got dark and before others got cold waiting for me.

A tough day.

Easy technical training session in Nasten. Basically, there were groups of controls (3-5) separated by long legs. The first control in each group was indicated on the map, but the others could be visited in any order. I did several groups but missed out on the last (easy) one in Norby woods because it was getting dark and I felt I'd done enough.

Gympa with Boris. My right knee hurt if I put weight on it (for example, if I hopped on it) so I skipped out on some of the running laps, but otherwise was fine and still got a workout. And I did all of the push-ups today!

Warm-up to the start (about 14 minutes) before the training/race and then running back through Stadsskogen collecting a few controls after the race. Then running (jogging slowly, really) to drop them off at Tomas' house and finally heading home. I was really dehydrated and tired when I got back. Drank 5 cups of juice.

Stadsskogen race organized by Tomas (one of the Linne guys) for training. After the warm-up run to the start, during which I felt like I was hurting all over (knees, ankle, tight calves, etc.), I started the race very slowly. Basically jogging with absolutely no motivation to go faster. Another woman who didn't have a start time asked me if she could start at the same time I did and I said yes and went even slower at the beginning to give her a chance to get ahead.

But then something happened. On my way to number 1, I actually looked and planned my route to #2, which was a long leg all the way across the map. And then I executed my route and went on to find 3 and 4 quickly. So then I began going at a decent pace and pushing it. I, of course, had a concentration lapse going to #7 (when I began feeling a bit too confident, I think) and lost about 4.5 minutes there. Looking at what actually happened, though, I didn't really go in the wrong direction at all. I took the right trails and was at the right intersection. I just didn't realize it and was confused. So I stood around for a while until I saw a guy running past me. And once I followed him off the intersection into the woods, I saw the depression there and suddenly realized exactly where I was and went for the control. After that, barring a few mistakes towards the end, I did quite well. I even won a split on the women's course. And I beat Boris on two splits (he had the same course, but with a few extra controls)! So it was a good day.

Went walking around Stockholm with Boris. It was nice to take a day off.