Training Log Archive: IanW

Longshaw National - M21L. Absolutely knackered after the week's training and really quite slow. Made a conscientious decision to try to get things right, as didn't want to run further than I had to, so too many stops/slowing downs to check the map.

Started off at a comfortable pace to #1 and never managed to pick it up, too slow through the heather towards #4 and then really cautious down anything steep and rocky as the co-ordination seemed lacking and I didn't want to face-plant. Really hesitant out of #4, still hitting controls cleanly until #8 where misread a spur as a reentrant. Dropped down too early to #10, along part of the river crossing marked route. Then brain clearly wasn't awake as didn't take the opportunity to plan the rest of the course, struggling to work out the best way from 11-12. Then really slow round the rest of the course, losing a minute or so on #15 and #19, and a bit more on #22. Became a real effort to cross any rough terrain or jump streams/ditches and Scott just eased past me on the long run-in to the finish.

About 5 minutes of mistakes - 45" on #8, 15" on #10, 1' on #15, 75" on #19, 2' on #22. Route choices weren't so great on a couple of occasions but often couldn't tell from the map what the runnability of the areas would be like. Splitsbrowser shows that my pace was alright for the first 7 or so controls then I dropped off rapidly. Probably a result of the week's training after being ill, although my endurance isn't good enough anyway.

And this week coming is certainly intended as an easy week!

Event: ShUOC Chasing Sprint and Captians Memorial
 

ShUOC Chasing Sprint Prologue - Ecclesall Woods. Got to the start just in time, started quite well but then turned wrong way when hit a big path and went via #4 to #2 - lost at least 30secs. However the running was feeling pretty good, not the hilliest of areas. Slight wobble towards #9, caught in some grot towards #13 cost 30secs, then 20secs lost by not picking the optimal route to the finish. Pretty pleased with my run though :)

ShUOC Chasing Sprint Chase. 9 seconds down on one guy, 4 seconds ahead of Chris Williamson, so the aim was clear!

We were together by #1, then took the longer southern route to #2, spiking the control but probably losing 20-30 seconds on the route choice. Then was 50-100m behind through to #12, taking slightly different route choices to #7 and #8 which didn't gain me anything - that to #7 probably lost me time. They missed #12 by about 30 seconds, allowing me back in the lead. Hesitation at #13 as had misread descriptions cost 10 seconds, found a very good route to #15 then went over the top to #16 when round the path at the bottom would have been 20-30 secs faster. However, Chris got dragged up with me, tried to contour but that was even worse. A slight bobble on #17 lost a few seconds but had enough breathing space to finish 11 seconds up on him.

Was pretty knackered by the end of that, but really happy that I could race at pretty much full pace without making any big errors - probably less than 30 seconds lost, primarily through hesitation, across the whole course. Still need to sort out the route choice thing though, looking at all the options across the entire leg and a strong entry to the control at the end of the leg to cut the hesitation time down. In traffic light terms, that last bit is trying to increase the speed of the 'red' phase.

Jog/walk to start/from finish of sprint prologue.

Plank-off on Saturday evening, don't know if I had the setup slightly wrong (overextended?) but was shaking slightly from about 30secs in and this slowly got worse... Scott got to 5 minutes relatively easily.

A - Splits

A - Splits

Hanging controls on Great Tower for the Handicap Sprint prologue, a couple of features weren't so clear so spent a bit of time checking the flag locations.

More control hanging, for the Chase - took 15-20 minutes to hang one control because couldn't really work out the map from the directions I was approaching the control site from, and it was pretty steep in this area. Got that one right eventually... climbing up and down the hill was quite hard work.

Collecting some controls, approaching the difficult one from the south as the race did made things much easier to understand and dropped straight in on the flag with no problems. The climb out of #10 was an absolute killer though - pretty knackered by the end of this!

Lakes Training Tour - Nibthwaite. Peg Relay - took it relatively slowly to #1 and was the first not to get a tape - led a small pack through to #4 where next tapes were and picked up one of them. Coming down to #5, the packs who split at #1 and #4 rejoined. Picked up another tape at #8, then caught in bracken going up and took a poor route choice back down, losing everyone else and hence easing off considerably. But people were being particularly blind at #11 and I found one tape left there, did the obligatory route to 11a and back to the finish where it was established at least 4 people didn't bother checking the flag at #11 for that final tape. Technically was pretty sound, apart from the bad route choice and a parallel error at #12.

Line course on Nibthwaite - very good training, picking out exactly where you were amongst the maze of small hills, knolls and crags wasn't the easiest of things at times. Need to get better at this given what Scandi terrain is like! Got forced off the line by some windblown at one point and took a bit of time to find my way back on.

Just a 'standard' course on Nibthwaite - missed a good/better route on one long leg but otherwise pretty sound technically, reading the detail quite well and spiking all the controls.

To finish off a great day's training (primarily as it was pretty dry!) a "Headless Chicken" race. To make things more interesting it was done in pairs, finding one control at a time, with the more experienced orienteers going map-memory. This was good - the exact location of the flags had to be recalled (got one slightly wrong). Time an estimate, area was pretty flat and felt was moving quite well for the first time in the week - guess the two are related and that my hill fitness is far worse than I thought it was...

Lakes Training Tour - Skelghyll Woods, just south of Ambleside. Mooose course - 3 possible locations for each control, the correct one determined by the answer to a question. Typical Lakeland woodland, plenty of contour and rock detail, few paths. Orienteering was pretty good, slight misses on a couple of controls - 1:5000 scale took a bit of getting used to, and a big unmapped rough open area near the end caused some confusion.

It then pissed it down for a while - didn't do the other course (Squirrel).

Lakes Training Tour - Tarn Hows. Course: "Relentless". A bit wet to start, taking it relatively easy, trying to look for every route between controls as have been missing good routes too easily recently. Also trying to read all of the detail along the way to get into Lakes terrain, and deliberately going off line a couple of times to see how certain things were mapped. Very slippery and wet underfoot mean was taking things pretty slowly/carefully - even dobs don't necessarily give enough grip on wet leaves covering rocky slopes... Couple of little misses but otherwise fairly good technically.

Norwegian course on Tarn Hows - "Espress-O" - one parallel error following the wrong line of marshes/ponds to a reentrant, but worked out where I'd gone wrong without the need to go back to the map fragment. Physically feeling a bit weak, although Lakes areas are always going to be tougher physically than most things down south...