Training Log Archive: the kempster

Once again, I dragged myself and my dad out of bed at 6:00 although I didn't find it as hard this time. It was supposed to be an endurance class, but it ended up being a little bit of everything. We did some hills, some flats, intervals, everything. Then I had to race of to get to band on time...

Dragged myself out of bed this morning to make it to x-country and we had a pretty good practise. Did a warm-up loop that was actually pretty fast and then after our stretching, we started the actual practise. I was in the 1st heat which did 6 loops in 25min. The first loop was really fast so I fell behind and just went at my own pace. The loop consists of running down a hill at the beginning, and then up it again near the end. It was pretty tiring, but I did make the 6 loops except in 27min. Not sure a long the loop is, but I'm guessing between 1 and 1.5km.

Had another junior training thingymadooer where Stefan set 2 sprint courses which were a lot of fun. The first one had a lot of route choices and I did bobble a few where I wasn't reading my map very closely near the control and lost about 15sec. I had a pretty good pace going the whole way which was good. The second one was more of a one-route-to-the-control kinda thing but you did need to read the map pretty carefully. My orienteering was sooo much better than Sunday thankfully.

I had a field hockey game at the Nepean Sportsplex so my dad and Eric came after the game so that we could train in the woods. It was pretty funny because as we were getting ready, one of my coaches drove by and asked where I was going to now? I answered "into the woods!" Then as we were all running past my other coach with our cleats clicking, I just smiled and said I'd see him at practise tomorrow morning. Then, as we were running past the bus, I waved to the rest of the team and Eric said that I was becoming a legend even before I got out of gr 9!! I think that everybody thinks I'm the crazy athelete!!! Anyways, on to the actual run. We took turns leading and following on the map which was fun. Went at a pretty good pace and there were only a fewe spots where things were alittle confusing.

Had another sick team for ultimate and we won or tied all of our games. They have learned to fear the "Mixed Berries". That's what we were called since we weren't all yellow (bananas) red (strawberries) blue (guess the fruit). It was pretty windy today so you had to be careful to not throw at an angle.

Wow, what an awesome gym class. We started ultimate frisby and when we made teams, there was me, anther good player, and then the other 3 people were pretty good. I don't think anybody ever got a point so we dominated all of the teams!!! I hope we can play ultimate all week.
Oh ya, at the beginning of the class, we did 2 laps around the field which was fun except for the big puddle at one end.

It was such a hard course today!!! The whole thing was in the woods and I just wasn't in the orienteering mood. Control 1 and 2 were ok, on the way to 3, I went through a bunch of clearings and I just couldn't tell which ones they were. So I lost a lot of time there. Then 4 was a disaster!!! I was sucked inbetween 2 hills that I didn't want to be between and got totally disoriented and had to relocate of these big cliffs. 5 was a stupid map reading mistake. I found these boulders that looked perfect to fit into the ones on the map, but I hadn't gone far enough. So I lost a lot of time there running to and from the boulders trying to figure it out. Finally 6 and 7 actually worked out for me and 8 wasn't too bad. Just once I got to the trail, I wasn't sure of where so I ran down a bit the wrong way but figured it out pretty quickly. 9 was pretty good too since it was a bingo control so I'm lucky I didn't screw that one up. 10 was a funny leg. I had plan A which was to go around the swamp along the hill and then into the control. So I started running but ended up on the wrond side of the green and into a clearing. So then I come up with plan B, which is to run across the clearing and then across the swamp in a different spot than I had originaly planned. I look ahead, and I see the "crossable" swamp that looks pretty much like a pond so I come up with plan C, which is to run out to the trail which turned out to be pretty good. The only problem was that once I got off the trail, I came to this cliff with a rock pile beside it which fitted right into where the control should be. There was even a ribbon that had the date and OOC on it. But, no control. Fortunately, another runner came along and said that the control should be farther south than this. After that the rest of the race was pretty good but now I'm very very sore, the woods in there are not white at all!!!

C • sunday 6