Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Warmup

WOC Relay

I ran the 2nd leg for Team USA, after Eric and before Giacomo. Eric had trouble early on his leg, but ran well after that to hand over the relay to me in 30th place, about 1:30 behind Canada, who sent out Robbie on the 2nd leg.
It took me a little while to get into the map once I was in the woods, and I lost time on both the first (probably about 30 seconds, just by choosing mediocre lines through the forest) and the second (about a minute in the control circle) controls. This was frustrating, but the race went better after that. I took good routes with solid attackpoints and executed well, though I was not feeling particularly speedy.
With about two controls before the spectator run-through, I was surprised to see Robbie, as well as the Turkish runner who had started 4:20 in front of me, come into my control just behind me. This certainly gave me a boost of energy and I ran hard to stay ahead of them and try to put a little distance before the arena passage. The last control before the spectator one was tricky, in an area with tall bushes and lots of sticks on the ground, so none of us could see each other. I found the control first, after losing about 20 seconds in hesitations, and was running through the arena with Robbie and Musa from Turkey not far behind. The crowd support at the arena was once again great, thanks to the awesome American fans!
I ran really hard through the arena to stay ahead and realized that I needed to take simple routes for the next couple of controls because my brain was beyond any sort of thinking capacity. I took simple routes, but still lost time, slightly overrunning each of the first two controls of the last loop (about 0:15+0:15 lost). At the second to last control Robbie, who had a shorter forking before this, was ahead of me, but I saw him take a poor line out of the control and managed to get past him by running as hard as I could out of the control. In the end I just held him off to the finish and tagged off to Giacomo, who ran a solid relay race and brought us home in 29th place, a few minutes behind Canada and Will Critchley.
All in all, it was an ok run from me, but not great. Losing a total of 2:30 or so in mistakes was a little too much for this terrain, and having other teams around me probably would have helped me run a better, more focused race. Still, it was great to run the WOC relay with my awesome teammates, and I am quite sure we can come back stronger and better next year.

Results: www.woc2012.ch/files/results/woc2012_relay_results...

Beer relay, organized by Ross and Murray. Definitely counts as training!

Relay model event. I started by jogging a few legs and found the terrain to be quite nasty. I then picked up the speed a bit and raced Eric for a couple of intervals of several controls each. The terrain definitely seemed more fun at high speed, so that's a good sign. I do not usually enjoy or do very well when orienteering in terrain where vegetation features are the key to success. It will be a challenge to race well on Saturday,

Intervals by Lake Geneva with Patrick in the evening. After a warm-up, we did 4x90" with 2 minutes rest and then 4*30" with 1 minute rest. Good session. Next up: cheering for Sam in the long final tomorrow!

Blog post: http://usa-orienteering.blogspot.com/

C • Middle Race 4

Jogging the men's sprint final course at Ouchy. Really fun course, needed to think about route choice on every single leg!

Really tough race: the terrain is a lot more difficult than it looks, with very low visibility the whole way, tons of branches on the ground, and just needing to fight, fight, fight the terrain the whole way. I will look closer later on, but I probably made about three 30 second mistakes and was mostly pleased with my route choices. I fought hard and gave everything out there, and this result is about as well as I could have done today, and my best WOC middle race since my very first one in Switzerland almost ten years ago. I am proud of my race today and excited to get better and give it another shot in the future. Thanks to everyone on AP and elsewhere for your support! The US definitely had the biggest and loudest cheering section in the arena today, and it felt awesome running down the finish chute.

Winsplits: http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/default.a...

C • Great job Boris! 15

Warmup

WOC Middle distance qualifier, Heat B

Write-up of my race day: http://usa-orienteering.blogspot.ch/2012/07/day-at...

Winsplits: http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/en/default.a...

Map: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_E1DVS9_UTU/UASYn6u2JbI/...