Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Event: JK 2007
 

Morning jog with Kat to Port Meadow and back, in Oxford.

Warm-up / cool-down

JK 2007 Sprint.
Not very eventful - a nice, fast sprint course around the University of West England campus. Not too technical, meaning you had to run hard the whole way. I made one major parallel error on an easy leg, losing about 40 seconds. Ended up 40th overall out of 200+ starters on the men's open course. Definitely felt like top speed wasn't there - a direct result of a lack of short, fast intervals and more focusing on strength and endurance this winter.
Winsplits: http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/default.a...
Route gadget:
http://www.jk2007.routegadget.co.uk/cgi-bin/reitti...

C • and splits at http://www.attac... 1

Men's Open - Splits

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 4.
This training day was on the way (more-or-less) between the Lakes and Oxford, on Cannock Chase, site of JK 2005. I hanged one of the two courses Joe designed. Had some trouble, since we were told the map was a 1:10, but it clearly was not. About halfway through I convinced myself it was 1:15, and things went better. Indeed, it was.

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 4.
After a break, ran a piece of the other course on a contours-only map at race pace. Had no real problems navigating, but the legs did feel a bit tired.

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 3.
Jogging to the start at Big Land.

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 3.
The plan for today was to take it easy on this technical area, where Joe set a course with a focus on slope orienteering, in other words being forced to pay attention to how much you've climbed or dropped on lots of the legs. I ran this without a compass and really enjoyed the terrain. Orienteered ok for the most part, though did catch myself leaving controls in the slightly wrong direction a couple of times.

Yes, there is a video of this one someplace too.

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 2.
Got up for a morning jog with the OUOC ladies - Kat, Helen, and Alison Crocker, a former Dartmouth skier/rower/runner who has rediscovered orienteering at Oxford. We ended up in the middle of a flock of sheep, with the ones in front of us running away and the ones behind us trying to rejoin their comrades. It was very funny - sheep in front, runners in the middle, sheep in the back, all running in the same direction and making strange noises.

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 2.
Running a short course of Graythwaite hard.

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 2.
Running the same course again after a break, to see how much I could improve. The answer, obviously, is quite a bit.

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 2.
Hanging some controls with Luke McNeill after lunch.

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 2.
The day's last training was a Peg Relay - same thing that the Swedes call Nypjakt, or clothespin hunt. I described this exercise the last time I did it, but here it is again: Everyone is mass-started and has the same course, and at every control hang between 3-5 pieces of colorful tape. If you are one of the first three people to get to that control, you take a piece of tape and then run to an extra control, drawn on the map in a different color from the regular course. After that extra control you proceed to the next regular control, thus running somewhat more than the people who didn't get the pin. This continues all the way through the course, and the person with the most pins in the end wins.
I ended up winning this peg relay by using a bit of sneakiness: i deliberately avoided getting a tape at the first control, because the extra leg on this one involved a very steep 30m climb. Skipping this tape allowed me to get enough of a lead on the fast guys who went for it so I could collect the next three tapes, which turned out to be enough for the win. A really fun training, culminating in a mad downhill sprint against Joe Mercer and Ben Stevens in the end. I gotta learn to fly downhill like those guys!

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 1.
A beautiful day on a treeless, runnable, hilly, and detailed area called Loughrigg. Started off by hanging controls for the "long legs" course. Found a sheep skull for future use as a start triangle. Named it Dolly.

OUOC Lakes Training Camp. Day 1.
After a short break, ran a middle distance course at medium intensity (fast enough that navigation is a challenge, but slow enough so that i shouldn't have to stop at all.) Made a couple of mistakes and got tired on the hills towards the end.

After lunch, shadowing Kat on the same "long legs" course I hanged in the morning. Trying to focus on taking advantage of the visibility and improving distance judgement.
Shadowing (photo by Benjamin Grandey):

Warm-up/cool-down.

BUSA Relays. I ran for an unofficial Oxford 3rd team, consisting of me and Per Forsberg (no, not the legendary announcer, not even his namesake.) I had the option of also running the 3rd leg if I felt like it, but I didn't feel like it. The relay went on a 1:5000 map of the University of Durham campus and surrounding steep hillside. The first part of the course went through the woods on the hillside, and I had some problems getting used to the scale there, and squandered about 1:40 there on a few controls. I went through spectator control about halfway through the course in 8th, about a minute down on the lead. I passed two guys on the next climb, one more on a run across a large, open moor, and soon found myself chasing the lead pack of three, with one other guy having disappeared somewhere. By now we entered the campus part of the course, and the pace picked up. I spiked the next two controls and then took my own route choice on a long leg, climbing on a trail instead of up a slippery slope. Two controls later, I was with the leaders. The pace picked up again. The SHUOC guy ran to the wrong control and disappeared. The EUOC guy did the same thing just a bit later, and it was down to David Roome and me on the last couple of legs. David punched the last control first and stayed ahead, but it still felt very nice to battle back to the lead pack in the second half of the course. Per ran a very good 2nd leg, and I was almost tempted to go out again on 3rd, but let Kat persuade me that this would have been foolish and unnecessary.
Results: http://www.dur.ac.uk/orienteering.club/busa/classa...

Event: BUSA Championships
 

Warm-up and cool-down for BUSA with Per.

BUSA Individual Race (in other words, British intercollegiate champs.) As a non-official competitor, I started very early and got to hang out at the finish and cheer for Oxford people coming in for hours after finishing myself. I wanted to treat this as a "training race" - run hard, but controlled, not taking any risks I might take in a race that mattered, but not slacking off, either. The result was underwhelming. The course consisted of three parts: first, a steep hillside with a mix of green and white woods, trails contouring along, and some rock detail, then a flattish open moor on top with great visibility, pretty good runnability, and lots of sheep and cows, and finally, back down to the hillside for the last couple of km. The change of pace was a lot of fun, but the steep hillside was not. I made a few mistakes (about 5 minutes total), including two that made me particularly angry at myself. In both cases, it was a textbook leg of "drop down to the trail, run along the trail, and attack into the woods." The only tricky part is knowing when to leave the trail, and I blew it both times. This is the kind of skill I almost never get to practice in Sweden, since there is always plenty of detail to read, and it showed here.
In the end, I finished 14th, a whopping 15 minutes behind the imrpessive Oli Johnson:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/orienteering.club/busa/indivi...

C • knowing when to leave the trail 1