Training Log Archive: Matej

2nd day Western States Championship Blue course at Calero.

With no more excuses in my head about "leaving something for tomorrow", I was able to better focus on keeping my speed up for the whole course, something that I had lacked the day before. As before, the route choices were mostly about avoiding/minimizing climb, and even on short legs, taking climb-efficient micro-route-choices could save a lot of time.

I started out relatively quickly, as the first six controls had very little climb. The next few controls involved some brutal slogs up hills, and I caught Ian on the long crawl towards #11. I almost lost him on the trail run towards #13, but was in front by #14. We took different route choices to #16, and I was on my own again. I made a few small bobbles within the control circle on #20 and #21. I was a little hesitant approaching #22, since I had made a fifteen minute mistake approaching a control in very same location from the same angle two years ago. Fortunately, I nailed it this time, and the rest of the course went OK.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to have to mentally "re-orient" myself towards NAOC, where the contour interval is 2.5 meters instead of 7.5 meters, the terrain is thick instead of open, and the features are subtle rather than massive. Still, it was a lot of fun running two well-designed courses in my favorite type of terrain: steep, open oak forest.

I'll post map links from both days once RouteGadget is up...

I finished 1st out of 10 overall.

C • Way to... 4

Blue Day 2 - Splits

Event: BAOC: O in the Oaks - 2014 Western States Championships
 

Western States Championship Blue course at Calero.

I started off this race with a very conservative mindset; I was trying to navigate efficiently, consistently take optimal route choices, and not worry that much about running speed. Calero is one of our steeper parks, and a fast start could have proved incredibly painful later on in the course. I succeeded in not making any early mistakes, but I could have picked my speed up a little, especially on trail runs/downhills. This might have been the first course that I've "over-paced" myself on.

That said, the course was one of the most brutal ones I've run so far (second perhaps only to the 2013 Ultralong). The uphills looked negotiable on the map, but the 25-foot contours (7.6 meters!) masked the fact that the terrain was much, much steeper than it looked. As usual in BAOC parks, the optimal route choices avoided as much climb as possible. Cow-thinking always seemed to pay off...

I finished 1st out of 12 overall.

Blue Day 1 - Splits

Quick staircase sprints session before Calero.

C • tapering 1

An orienteering training around UC Berkeley campus designed by Lori. There were no real controls, but the challenge was more in choosing the fastest route choices than in navigating through any technical areas. Afterwards, I was happy about all of my route choices except for one leg where I overlooked a tunnel that might have saved me ~20 seconds... That was fun!

Staircase sprints.