Training Log Archive: Psuba

ATP Finals at the O2! Others sweating this time and not me.

Event: South East Night Championships
 

Rainy, muddy, windy.

No chance of a PB but secretly hoped to get under 20 - didn't.

Up to start - believe it or not but getting slightly lost because there were no glowsticks up the path, so in the end just had to assume I had to go all the way up. I was right, but almost ran out of time and last to be off, so no proper stretching or mental prep!

SE Night Championships, Norbury Park

9th/24: http://www.mvoc.org/Events/20161112SENightChamps/R...

Pretty poor to be honest. Lack of mental prep, getting there the last minute shown (although to be honest happy to even be able to make it, I wasn't sure I'll be able to). Hesitant or making mistakes to most controls, no flow at all.
I also found before the run the source of my sudden sharp pains in my toe - I had a blister that I wasn't aware of. I taped it off so mostly did not affect me except from some contouring sections.


1 - Just confused straight at the first junction so didn't have the confidence to run fast for fear of missing the path junction I needed - hence too slow, even though no actual mistake. 15s
2 - Something wasn't quite right at the first junction I needed, ran off on what I thought was the path I needed, it then ended, which meant I was fighting through med green, got to the mapped ditch, followed it in hope of getting to the path, probably on the wrong side so no path anywhere. Gave up and just decided to fight my way though straight to the valley which worked but not before giving up a lot of time there. 2 mins
3 - got an OK route until right before the control - there was an unmapped large patch of thorny undergrowth at the edge of the clearing where the control was supposed to be. Stupidly thought that the map must be right so this may have been just a narrow patch at the edge of the clearing not worth mapping, tried to push through and got stuck for a very long time. Paul was of course right telling me afterwards that it would have been way better to keep going around it! 3 mins of jungle fight (ouch).
4 - Out of control in the wrong direction (20s) then messed up getting to the open area running off a road 90deg angle. Corrected fairly quickly but not before dropping another about 30s for the roundabout way. Once back on track and running on bearing I hit the control spot on, so shame about the confusions before.
5 - not bad just hesitant
6 - again, good direction but started to wonder around too early (had difficulty with adjusting the step counting for the evasive actions in the forest. Need to practice this a lot to improve the technique).
7 - spot on and finally a decent split relative to others, really what should have been the benchmark for other legs for me to be satisfied about my run in the race
8 - Too early into the forest, expected to trace the edge of the rough open from the path and I saw an area of felling that I thought was the rough open. It wasn't and it was way too early, so wasted about 1 min before getting back out to the track and finding the real spot.
9 - interesting to look at my GPS as my bearing was OK until about 3/4th of the way in the leg then veered right and went past the control, hit another ditch then turned back to find my control. 1:40 lost , quite poor!
10 - More or less straight into the control, interesting to see I have lost a lot of time on this leg without making any mistakes. The only thing I can think of is that I was very hesitant after that directional mistake before as I had no firm attach point so was running on bearing from control 9 and very conscious that I had no catching feature so could have easily ran past the control! I think once again, confidence in step counting would help a lot: must practice!
11 - well, cutting through the green clearly doesn't pay. No real mistakes but took too long to get down to the path. Considered going round to the valley and then down on med green which clearly would have been the right call.
12 - Longer, mostly contouring run around the muddy track, which should have been good for me except that I rolled my ankle 3rd of the way through and very conscious that my shoes were not right for this terrain, so quite cautious most of the way especially downhill at the end.
13 - Didn't see the path junction so wasn't 100% sure if I was on the right one - this led me to be very cautious as I hit the edge of the green, double checking that I wasn't descending without need. Should not have worried as the control was there so wasted about 50s by being undecisive!
14 - This could have been another good leg for me had I not messed up the end - hot a green patch in the field I should have ran past and thought it was the forest corner next to it, turned left ran up the hill to the forest edge before realising my mistake, took about 2 min to work this one out and put it right. Bah.

So about 11-12 minutes of mistakes/issues easily!

Event: SOC Wessex Night League Event
 

hill progression run / test?

Might use this going forwards as a reference to check strength / HR reaction to elevation.

5 min/km steady pace, progressing the elevation:
km 1 - 0% -> AHR 135
km 2 - 3% -> AHR 150 (variance of 3, steady)
km 3 - 6% -> AHR 168 (variance of 5, steady increase)
1/2 km - 0% -> (HR decreased to 143 gradually)
then 1/2 km - 0% but upping pace to 3:30 (HR up to 176)

4x circuits

ran most of it at a 4% incline

Primrose Hill Street-O, 1hr score.

13th/82: http://londonorienteering.co.uk/wp-content/uploads...

I wasn't sure to go and traffic (as expected) was quite bad, so no warm-up yet again. I was also undecided on how to approach this, given where I am in the cycle (major races for the year are done, winter training ahead). In the end I decided to just treat this as a bit of a fartlek running training combined with map memory exercise: plan ahead 2 legs, memorise the current leg. I wasn't worried about results or strategy (and it showed). I have mostly been able to execute this plan.

That said, a couple of frustrating things happened. I started quite slow, undecided on strategy (and not warmed up), so initially changed my mind on the order of controls to take quite a bit. This also distracted my navigation a bit and made a few smaller mistakes - nothing major but if this was a proper race they would have counted.
In two instances the Street-O map was not clear enough and I was lured into dead ends by nature of closed gates (street-O maps don't mark any gates so it looked like you could get though). I definitely lost a few minutes due to this and of course they could have counted for more points. I have also made a stupid error from the last control I visited on the route back to the finish - running roughly the same distance but using another crossing point I could have been running past another 30 points worth control...

That said, my strategy (which admittedly wasn't something I cared about) wasn't the best - doing the SE corner first I could have collected about 50 points more as well. Hence just with a different order (but still same running speed) I could have easily have gotten about 610 points which would have been 6th place. Again - not that it matters much.

Event: Wessex Night League
 

Decided not to drive back 1hr+ both ways to the Amesbury night event after all. I think my legs rejoyced.