Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Jogging from the MIC to the start of the backbana and back.

Running the backbana. My first time running it by myself, and i actually enjoyed it. Looks like i am overcoming, albeit slowly, my fear of the hill course that i developed way back in August. Hopefully this means i'll make myself run it a bunch more times in the next few months. Felt pretty tired most of the way, but still reasonably strong on the hills, especially towards the end. Thought about running a second loop, but decided this wasn't the time to kill myself.

C • Smart choice. 1

The jogging part of the new Wednesday night JSS workouts - Jogg-Spanst-Styrka.

The Spanst part of the workout - secret russian running drills.

THe Styrka part - standard circuit training. My last club training before coming to the States for two weeks. I am excited!!!

C • US 6

Janne's backbana in Uppsala - Splits

A nice easy run on a beautiful sunny morning - to the clubhouse, around the lit trail loop at Norby, and back home.
Wildlife sighted: lots of birds, and a big butterfly that flew into my face.

Running to the clubhouse, warming up, cooling down, dragging myself back home.

OK Linne test course. It's about 6km, mostly on trails, varying from very fast to very slow, with some of the forest trails narrow and rocky. And, of course, some swampy bits. This was my first time running the course, and so one of my goals was to not get lost. The other was to beat the all-time best women's time on the course - 25:48, held by Anna Imberg. (All the best times are up on www.oklinne.nu . Under the menu option Junior/Senior on the left, click "Testbanan".) Right from the mass start, everyone was running fast, just like in a cross-country race, and i was just trying to hang on. Unfortunately, the lead pack (Rob, Jan, Micke, and so on) were running to fast and everyone else too slow, so i ended up alone for a bunch of time in the middle until i made a wrong turn, turned around, came back and had Per Togenmark catch me. We stayed together the rest of the way, and I picked it up and pulled away on the last km or so, feeling pretty strong. The final time - 25:47, 1 second ahead of the all-time women's best! The lead pack ran just over 23 minutes - impressive!

A few people have recently asked me how many members OK Linne had. I didn't really know the answer, but i guessed about 200. Well, today was day 1 of Uppsala's big junior cup (U-Ringen). The start list, composed of juniors 16 and under, had 123 Linne kids on it. Holy crap!!!!

C • US doesn't match up 8

Was going to take the day off, but Jan put up a nice-looking training on the training bank, so here i was (as were Micke, Ulf, Jan, and Lina A). We ran a course of a map i'd never been on before - Alands Kyrka - and the first half of the course had some of the nicest terrain i've seen here! My goal was to focus on control circle execution and visualize what stuff would look like in the circles and where the control oughta be. So i cruised along nice and easy, orienteering well, though feeling a bit tired in the beginning. Unfortunately, a chunk of the course towards the end went through a giant clear-cut area that appeared after the map was made. This was followed by a couple of controls where the map made no sense at all, and i wandered for a while (as did Ulf) and then headed home by way of the last control. A nice, relaxing training on a beautiful day - exactly the kind of day i had envisioned when i first decided to move here!

Event: WC Round 1/EUOC
 

Warm-up and cool-down

Roslagen weekend, middle distance. After analyzing (and over-analyzing) yesterday's race, my main conclusion was that i wasn't nearly aggressive enough and often did not run hard, but rather very tentatively, hoping to avoid mistakes. That way, even my splits for controls i took pretty cleanly were mediocre, at best. So today i decided to try the opposite - attack the course and be aggressive. This resulted in a mistake of 2:20 right off the bat. After running up to the start triangle, we were supposed to almost turn around to go to the first control, and i didn't turn enough, ran up the wrong hill and, next thing i knew, i was relocating off a lake. I came to #1 with the guy who started two minutes behind me. Great. After this i just decided to run hard and make the best of it, and ran very well, though still having occasional problems in the circle (10sec on 3, 15sec on 6, 20sec on 12, 15sec on 15, 10sec on 16) before losing about 45 seconds on 17 and another 50 on 19. Still, i finished strong and ended up 25th out of 50 or so, 6:55 (19%) off the best time. Not a great race, but still probably my best middle distance race in Sweden so far, mostly because I was able to attack the course and run hard the whole way. As a result, i actually had good splits on controls i took cleanly, with a few top 10's, and even a 3rd. So, still lots to work on, but progress seems to have been made.

Splits at http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/sv/default.a...

Jogging to the start - probably one of the roughest start jogs i've ever had, through feled areas and all sorts of crap. Don't know how the old people even mde it to the start. :)

Roslagen week-end classic race. This is the first hot day of the year, and I sure felt it. Started out very confused, as I stood at the strart triangle trying to find the triangle on the map for like 15 seconds before realizing the course went on both sides of the map and I needed to flip. In general, I wanted to keep a nice, steady pace and had as my not-too-important goals finishing in the top 20 and being less then 25% behind the winner. Well, I made a mistake right off the bat on number 2. We had a longish leg with a stretch of technical swamp/small island terrain (just like Lunsen, only at 1:15) with a control on a boulder. I came right to the boulder, didnt see the control, saw another control literally 10 meters away (that was our #11 - on the other side of the map) and panicked, thinking i had to be in the wrong spot, since there couldn't be two controls so close. Ended up losing two minutes or so. Grrr. Made another mistake right after we had to flip the map - by the time i figured out where on the map i was, i had already gone 20 or so meters in the wrong direction and never adjusted. Otherwise, i had no major mistakes, but continuing annoying problems in the control circle - 15 seconds here, 30 seconds there... On the whole, i managed to keep a pretty constant pace throughout, which is always nice for such a long race and was pretty happy with my route choices, but still was too tentative in the woods and never really attacked the course for fear (probably justified) of screwing up. Anyway, i ended up 20th, but that wasn't as pleasant as I had thought, as only 27 finished and 10 guys DNF'ed, probably because of the heat and long course. I was 23 minutes (30%) behind the winner (results at http://www.svenskidrott.se/Organisation.asp?WCI=wi...), which is a lot, and I was quite disappointed until I got home and looked at the last time I ran a classic race of comparable length in comparable terrain, which was the classic DM when I first got here in august, and saw that I was 49 minutes back of the winner (>50%) and 46 minutes behind today's winner. So at least there seems to be progress. At any rate, compared with when i first came here, I feel a lot more confident navigating here and actually believe that i will find the controls, which is more than i could say last August.

I walked home from the clubhouse on this perfect summer-like day and realized that i never really appreciated the sun as much until i came to Sweden. I mean, everyone is outside today, working, playing sports, relaxing, everyone is in a good mood, smiling - people are so happy to have a nice long sunny day, which is something i often took for granted in new york. Kind of cool.

Nice easy recovery run before breakfast, just like Sandra advised. Feeling a bit beat up from the last few days' training, so it felt nice to take it easy and take in the sunshine.
Wildlife: almost stepped on a great big bulfrog sitting right in the middle of the bikepath.

The usual

2-on-2 and 3-on-3 beach volleyball at Polacksbacken after class. Couldn't resist on such a nice day!

The Stadsskogen trail loop on a beautiful, sunny May day. Scared up some bunnies and deer and ran into Ulf T. along the way.

Running to and from the start of the interval loop.

Forest intervals! The loop this time had long stretches of deep swamp, which became deeper and wetter with every rep. We did 2:30 on, 1 minute off along the streamered loop that was about 1.1 km long. I did eight intervals, a few guys did 10, but i twisted my ankle a bit at the start of the ninth one and decided to jog it off instead. Feels fine now. For most of the intervals, I was right behind attackpoint's (and Tennessee's) own Mats Froberg, and he always pulled away in the marshes. I definitely need to work on leg strength! Luckily, though, I don't think Team Trials courses will have too many legs going through knee-deep marshes.
Anyway, forest intervals always make for a great workout and today, especially with the great weather, was no exception.