Training Log Archive: Anna

Event: Western States + Intercollegiate Championships
 

Before I ran, I was a little nervous that I would mess up, under a lot of pressure to run clean. (This time I was serious about not getting carried away running; last weekend I still had it in the back of my mind that faster was better.) I happened to run into Greg Balter playing Attackpoint bingo, who encouraged me to focus on what I should do instead of the result I was shooting for. I started thinking about taking accurate bearings, reading contours, and choosing my route one leg ahead.

I ran a relatively consistent race, making around 5 min. of mistakes.

1-very hesitant at first, nervous, afraid of over-running. Went on bearing and read contours eventually.

4-decided to go around to left, not climbing. I didn't see the little reentrant on the map, so I thought that was my control when I got there and then stood around confused a little bit when it wasn't. Then realized where I was and kept going, but went up the reentrant and then had to run all the way back down to the dotted stream.
(1-2 min.)

5-Saw all cat's claw on the spur I was going to go up, and then I got scared and ran up the one to the right instead. The bad part was that then I went all the way back to the left where I had originally planned to go. The left only saved me 2 contours and was way out of the way by that point. I saw the control from a mile away, though.
(1-2 min.)

6-Read the saddle as ditches, even though on the clue description it was a saddle. I kept looking at it, wondering where the saddle was. Then I went around the spur and when it wasn't where I thought it should be, I ran up the reentrant and into the saddle. I had to stop to figure out where I was. (45 sec)

7-aimed left, clean but a little hesitation.

8-wary of parallel error, aimed straight for big reentrant and then once I was sure which it was, I let myself drift left.

9-didn't aim for end of rough open, so I had to run up the ditch once I got there.
(10 sec)

10-bad! "Distracted by others;" wanted to lose the guy I was with and was focusing on that instead of which reentrant I was at. I saw the control on the spur before mine and somehow thought it was mine. When I looked at the map, I thought I was in that big reentrant, so I ran over, finding the big reentrant where I had thought I was. Confused when control not there. Finally, realized what I'd done and ran over.
(1-2 min.)

11-wanted to run fast to the trail b/c the course was almost over, and I took a *rough* bearing. I ended up halfway down the hill, 45 degrees from where I should've been going, and I had to run all the way back up the hill. From then on, though, I did make sure I hit it cleanly from the trail junction.
(1-2 min.)

Followed bearing and Eric Bone to the finish.

At first I was ecstatic that I hadn't made 20 min. worth of errors, but then I saw the results and regretted a lot of the 1-2 min. mistakes. Definitely an accomplishment and a confidence-builder, though.

pretty much took a bearing on every one and ran hard. I stayed in contact w/ the map. There were some Army guys and another guy who pushed the pace, which was okay b/c it was a short race and I was focused. I got tired and on the finish split I didn't run in as fast as I should have. I was probably still tired from the morning, and also I wasn't really thinking about what pace I should be going at.

Sprint - Splits

Green 1 - Splits

walked model event

Ran with a men's collegiate distance team the first half of my run today. Real confidence-booster. I suspect that I'm not in as bad of shape as I thought. Then Spando declared that he can't run with girls and convinced Jesse to run off with him. But then Lisa and Waterson caught up with them, so Spando ended up running with a girl after all. I didn't really slow down, but I didn't catch up with them either.
Also, it was snowy, which was really fun. After we'd been running on a snowy portion of the road and went on the clean portion, my legs felt really springy.

Today the crooked splashy swimmer was in the pool, but Rick, the trainer, was teaching 2 basketball players to aqua-jog. All the runners think Rick hates us, but with him in the pool looking official, the crooked swimmer didn't dare come near so he's on my good side right now.

Watched the lunar eclipse. It was really pretty.

Ran home to stretch and stole a Clementine.

Ran on the indoor track. Coach Stiles wrote on my log: "Wow, those orienteering skills must've come in handy!" The first thing that came to my mind was that half the reason his jokes are funny is because they're kind of lame, but at least he's on good enough terms with orienteering to make jokes about it.

in the pool. fun.

So aside from a 17 minute mistake, my course went pretty well. I guess the mistake made me slow down and think.
I had a lot more to write about this course earlier in the week, but it is now Thursday.
Um.... I was very intimidated by Anna Urbanova's finish split. Although I did have a very smooth last several controls, learning from yesterday's sprint-like end of the course. I even dropped the 2 people I was with because I was thinking clearly enough to make smart route choices!