Training Log Archive: BorisGr

A long course on Nåsten with Oskar S, Johan H, and Stanley in beautiful spring weather. Felt tired from the start, which isn't really too surprising. Nice to be out.

C • hejsan, I was wondering if ... 4

Warmup + cooldown with Tobias Eliasson

Drove up to Hälsingland with Mats and Albin for an impormptu training day. They were running a race up here, and I decided to enter the H21 class on the day, since there were vacant spots in the start list.

The race did not go well. I was tired from a hard session yesterday, the remnants of my cold, and a combination of stress and lack of sleep the night before. Those all excuses, of course, and none of them explain the 4 minute mistake I made on easy leg climbing diagonally across a bland hillside to a single boulder. My direction out of the previous control was terrible, and I never corrected it, convinced that I was on the line. Ugh.

Other than that, I felt very unstable running in the extremely rocky terrain, and impressed with the speed shown by runners who grew up on this terrain. Sometimes I think that it's easy to become lazy and complacent in Uppsala terrain, as everything is runnable, and there are no big hills to force route choice.

Anyway, I ended up 10 minutes behind William Lind - unacceptable on a middle distance race. Albin would have won easily if he hadn't punched a wrong control - 30 meters from the right one. He is in impressive form right now.

C • lazy and complacent 3

After lunch in a local pizzeria (pizza with salami + bacon = delicious), we drove over to the map from Day 5 of O-Ringen 2010 in Mohed, and reran parts of the course from that day. I did a middle distance version of that, about 4.8km of what Mats called "heaven or hell" terrain, where the difference between picking a good and bad line through terrain can be huge. On this map I encountered some of the most enormous boulders I have ever seen while orienteering. In order to be mapped at all, a rock had to be at least 2 meters high. In order to be mapped as a large boulder, you had to be at least house-sized. And at least a dozen boulders were big enough to merit having their shape drawn on the map. In between bouts of rock-hopping and climbing, I was rewarded with gorgeous bare rock hilltop terrain with beautiful views in all directions. I orienteered slowly, but did a decent job of maintaining contact through the super-tricky forest.

It was a really nice training day, and a great way to kick-start WOC preparation. As Albin decided to stay around and keep training for three more days, Mats and I spent some time on the drive back daydreaming about the possibility of orienteering full-time again. Not many more years left when either he or I might be able to do that... Tempting!

C • boulders 1

Decided to declare myself healthy, meaning that this is Day 1 of WOC training.

Had a rough day and decided to unwind by finding some HittaUt checkpoints. Ended up doing a pretty ambitious run, covering most of northern Uppsala and pushing fairly hard to make it feel more like sprint orienteering. It was raining on and off, and the world looked beautiful with rain on one side and sunshine and a giant rainbow on another, as a backdrop for the old burial mounds. Got 15 checkpoints.

I've decided to not run the European Champs (which are also the first round of the World Cup) next week, meaning that Team USA will be represented only by 2/3 of the population of Blodan 23. I have been sick and unfocused on orienteering the last few weeks, and I would rather get back to training hard so I can prepare for WOC as best as I can.

At the same time as I am making the *choice* to skip EOC, I have been nervously refreshing the Swedish orienteering federation's website, looking for an announcement of the Swedish EOC team. It finally came, and I was really upset not to find Mats' name on the list. He worked so damn hard all winter through injuries and setbacks and ran so damn well when it mattered, that I thought for sure he'd be selected. But this is Sweden, and there are at least six guys who were thought to be better, faster, hungrier, and it feels a little bit unfair that Mats is forced to stay at home next week, while I can choose to run or not to as I please.

In some ways, this is just how it is in sports - and the converse is also true, that representing Sweden in orienteering is a much greater honor than is representing the US. Still, the take-away message is that while I can't change the rules and let Mats run EOC or WOC, I can at least remember to never take for granted these amazing opportunities that I have had, and to train my ass off in the next two months so I can proudly represent the US at WOC.

C • Mats 6

Some rock gympa + jumping exercises

Innebandy! Took an elbow to the head from Tierry. I will never wash again.