Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Warmup/cooldown

My first real race of the spring!
I ran the spectator race for the Swedish Ultralong Champs. It was really fun! I was running along and thinking to myself how much fun orienteering is. I felt pretty confident in my orienteering, and only really had one bad stretch, where I made a small mistake in the circle on #11 and then left it in a hurry, taking a really bad direction out of the control. Otherwise I felt technically solid, but the speed was off. It wasn't that I felt slow, it was more like I wasn't at all aggressive in my running and let terrain push me around. I am not sure why this was - one possibility is that I simply haven't run fast in terrain enough this winter/spring and just need to keep doing more of it. Another possibility is that I don't really have much explosive speed, and that's showing here. There is also the fact that I am constantly thinking about my knee and my wobbly right ankle as I am going over rough ground, and that might be holding me back. So, a lot to work on still.

QR: http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...

A couple of comments about the spectating:
This was an ultralong champs, with winning times over two hours, but there were no spectator controls or arena passages or video from the woods or a big screen. There were four small screens with GPS tracking, and so the crowd had to jostle for places in the mud in front of these screens in order to catch a piece of the action. Not exactly the spectator-friendly arena production that is all the buzz in orienteering these days...

Tove was pretty impressive.

Gustav Bergman was less so. In the finish chute, beaten by Johan Runesson by a few meters, he turned towards the spectators with a look of disgust and tossed his map, happening to hit me in the face. Not exactly sportsmanslike or graceful behavior from a brand-new silver medalist. Though I guess you become good at winning by hating to lose.

Snowfree camp in the west of Sweden!

Tired of all the snow in the forests around Uppsala, I co-conspired with Cristina to head west (east for her) and run in some actual forests, without snow underfoot. Within an hour of starting my drive towards Göteborg, I was stuck in a massive blizzard and going no faster than 40kph. Irony!

After a couple of hours, the blizzard let up, and I was happy to see snow gradually disappearing as I kept driving west. I picked up Cristina at the train station, and we drove south towards Varberg, ending up at Mike and Marie's place quite late at night.

After a lazy morning with a nice walk on the beach, we got some maps and headed into the woods. The four of us did a joint training on a control pick course in some beautiful woods. We took turns leading and talking out loud about the features we were using. It was really nice, and so good to not have to struggle through the snow. It helped that it was fairly warm, and that the terrain and the company were great.

Afternoon training: Cristina and I took maps of a course from the pre-Oringen training from 2012. It was a nature reserve right next to Marie's work at Ringhals, and consisted mostly of bare rock overlooking the sea interspersed with dense gorse that was either ankle- or knee-deep. This made running pretty challenging, especially until you get the hang of it. The orienteering was fun with high visibility and great surroundings, and I really liked this session too.

Running to the start in Stenhagen from Blodan with Inga, Cat, Ross, and David. Felt very stiff and sore at first, but quite a bit better by the time we got there.

Sprint training for the local orienteering high school in Stenhagen. Really fun to run a sprint with actual controls and SI units. I was definitely rusty and kept falling behind in my orienteering. I think I got the route choice wrong to 10, 11, and probably also 9 and 14, at least judging from the route analysis here: http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...

Really fun training, though. Would love more of these!

Cooldown and jogging around after the finish with Cat, Inga, and Ross

Tisdagasbana R on a Thursday with a small group of Lisa, Christoffer, and a couple of others. Definitely feeling tired from the last few days' training, so was not moving too quickly. Less snow in the woods than there has been, but still quite a bit. It was really nice to run a whole tisdagsbana in daylight!

Tiomila training at Turelund, the southern part of the Morga map, wedged between road 255 and Ekoln. We did three loops in different order, with a mass start. I had the same forking as Mata and Ross and was battling them for most of the way. I mostly orienteered ok, except for a couple of questionable routes, until the last few controls where I completely lost my head and was running around like a beginner. Gotta get it together.
Still a lot of snow in the woods.

A representative loop is here: http://www.dxdeluxe.se/linnekartparmen/show_map.ph...

I wanted to get some extra distance today, so decided to run home from training. Thankfully, I got Ross and David to join me and we had a nice run home, though I am now quite shattered and falling asleep. Good training evening.

Jogging to Sten Sture with Sam and Kate, after running around Blodan looking for Kate. Clearly, we missed each other while going around the house from different sides. Doh.
Met up with the massive Linné crowd on top of the hill and did some drills.

Hill intervals with Linné on a piece of the Sten Sture hill that had the least ice/snow on it. It turned out to be a pretty short interval, taking me 36-39 seconds (except for the last one, which was 33), but the rest between intervals was short too, so it felt like a really hard workout. There were lots of people all around, and I was mostly racing Pontus, as we were going about the same speed. We did 15 of these, which was plenty.

Rockgympa

Fun set of innebandy games, including a highlight when Rassmus managed to score on his own goal by stepping on the boll, slipping, falling, and kicking the ball backwards into the goal. Classic.

C • Babyface 3

Warm-up from Blodan with Lisa, Sam, and Johan. Conversation focused, unsurprisingly, on lamenting all the spring races getting cancelled due to the snow.

A tempo run with Sam and Johan on the bike paths going towards Lurbo. It was definitely easier on the way out than on the way back, with headwind and more uphills.