Training Log Archive: Psuba

QO Galoppen, Quantock North East, Brown course.

(result not known as yet)

Very strange. Felt quite weak, especially compared to previous night, so very slow, which was mainly due to my running speed rather than navigation. Quite visible on my HR which is low for a race, but legs felt tired all the way. Had a few cramps overnight which is unusual as well, so probably I paid the price here for the strength training I started this week. Hopefully though it will pay off next season.

As far as the course is concerned, I am surprised by the planning: I had 5 controls that I also had yesterday evening, and 2 legs that was the same. OK, that was a night event, but still...

Did not make that many mistakes navigationally, except for No. 9 where I ran up the wrong reentrant (bah) and had to circle around losing about 1:30m. The rest of the mistakes were all smaller directional corrections, 20s here, 10s there - sure they add up, but I think the biggest time loss today (apart from No. 9) was my running speed accumulating over the course.

Event: Southern Night Championships / QO Galoppen
 

Ha! The sudden sharp pain from time to time recently on my big toe wasn't the blister. I just found and extracted a small thorn. How did it get there?!

Chatty jog round with Ian, just to flush some of the Lactic Acid from the strength exercises earlier in the week before tonights race. Deliberately slow, except for the last 300m stretching the legs a bit.

Southern Night Championships, Rams Combe. Course 1 (Short Brown).

2nd M40 / 3rd on course.

Not a very good start (to say the least), but once Geoff caught me up at 7, the rest of it was actually quite decent. Based on how Geoff left me behind on the British Sprints in the spring, I fully expected him to leave me behind here too, but somehow we ended up changing "leads" until the end of the course, which was quite interesting as a learning experience, but also surprising that I could keep the pace with him. In fact in some cases I seemed to have been running somewhat better, and I had a strong suspicion that he was deliberately holding back. In any case reasonably happy with my running and how I coped with the hills, this area was much more like the Hungarian terrain than most others in England. Not fully - there was still a lot of undergrowth in lots of places, but a lot of the navigation relied on using big landforms which was a similar thing.

Mistakes:
1 - from my attackpoint I intended to find the earth wall and follow it to the control - instead the earth wall started a lot further out in the "white" forest, so ended up fighting through the green until I got out in the white bit and circled around for the control. Cost at least 1 min.
2 - Slight directional mistake on compass bearing, 10s
4 - Temporary brain melt - I thought I was going to No. 5 so as I got out to the road I started running right before realising and doubled back. 40s
5 - The nightmare control of the night. 8 min 10s! I would be very interested to learn if anyone knows of a technique by which I could avoid this. I knew the control was going to be tricky (a platform in the middle of the hillside), so I picked a good attackpoint and was very careful with my direction, and I even pace counted. I passed about 1m past the control not seeing it, then knowing I was too far, looked around, saw another control (knoll), located it on the map, ran down a bit to check if there was another knoll to figure out which knoll it was and ended up running past under the control again - this time by about 5m! - scanned the hillside above on the way back, going back to the knoll, using compass bearing again this time direct from the knoll, and this time hit the control spot on. The reason I am upset is that this cost me over 8m (which is more than what I ended up getting from Geoff in the end!), and it looks to me to be sheer luck, considering I was just running past this control this close!
6 - for good measure I ran past this control as well by about 10m. 1:30. Ben caught me up at this point, with Geoff not far behind. I decided to try and run with him for a bit, knowing the young legs will get rid of me soon enough.
7 - Took all of 1 controls for him to get rid of me but to be honest this was again my stupidity. Running around the dark green on the road, then running on bearing from the corner, I saw that Ben was running too far to the right. I kept my bearing for a few seconds longer then the "he is in the top 5 UK ranking so must know what he is doing" thoughts took over, and I gave up my bearing to run right too. At this point I also convinced myself that this was right because of the curvature of the spur... of course I was right first and wrong second! Geoff caught me up at that point cutting across the green and picking up our headlamps, but Ben fixed his error first and by the time the penny dropped for me, he was gone. I spike the control in front of Geoff (just) and expected him to run past here. 40s
9 - Out of 8 Geoff was slightly ahead now and he was running too far left but I did not want to let him go completely so I ran with him instead of going direct. We picked up the path and smaller route choice differences meant I ended up spiking the control ahead of him. Nevertheless I think this could have been faster going direct by about 30s, although I would not classify this a mistake.
10 - running ahead of Geoff on the road, I ran into the forest at what I thought was my attackpoint, the path in the middle of the green. It soon turned out to be simply the ditch slightly before the path, so as Geoff followed, we both had to fight through the dark green before finding the control. 1m - at this point Geoff ran away through the undergrowth (he deals with that better, it is quite clear).
11 - Got to the control ahead of Geoff as he made a mistake running off the wrong road, but made up that mistake by the control. From here on until 14 the recepie was the same - Geoff ran past me in the rough, then I was cleaner into the control and spiked it in front. He kept behind me to 15/16, then again started his engines to 17 overtaking me in the rough. Then again made a directional error out of 17 so I spiked 18 and finish ahead.

Very interesting, although to be honest more as a head to head racing than the course instead.

Left about 13:30 in the course then, of which the most annoying clearly was No. 5 with that 8+min mistake...

Warm-up at the gym. 1km 5m/km + 1km 4m/km

Similar routing than 2 days ago so leg strength mainly + all around.

Gym hill progression treadmill training. Forgot the HR monitor so not much to deduct other than I got bored and stopped earlier than I planned.
1x1km @ 5m/km 0% elev
1x1km @ 5m/km 3% elev
1x1km @ 5m/km 6% elev
1x500m @ 5:30m/km 8% elev
1x500m @ 5m/km 0% elev
1x500m @ 3:30m/km 0% elev
1x1km @ 5m/km 0% elev
1x1km @ 5m/km 3% elev
1x~300m @ 5m/km 6% elev

Jog to get dinner and back

Gym session, the now usual hill progression treadmill routine.

~1km - 5m/km, 0% elev -> 138BPM ave HR
1km - 5m/km, 3% elev -> 155BPM ave HR
1km - 5m/km, 6% elev -> 171BPM ave HR
0.5km - 5m/km, 0% elev -> HR ramp down to 145BPM
0.5km - 3:30m/km, 0% elev -> HR up to 178BPM (log curve)
+cool down

core & leg strength exercises.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQcGXGf1-TU
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIh4DNuQUbQ
+ leg lunges

Event: SLOW Night-O 2016-17 #2: Wimbledon Common
 

Wimbledon Common Night-O, long course.

5th/44

Fun little run, if a little short for a proper training.
Nevertheless, fairly happy with most of my run, one large mistake and three smaller ones (one I only noticed upon looking at my track). But mostly navigated well and selected speed fairly well - could have pushed more, but this isn't really an O-shoe and the mud and standing water out there especially on the tracks meant I was slip-sliding all over the place, and wasn't wearing gaiters which mattered in some areas of undergrowth (admittedly only a few places) so wasn't comfortable with full speed.

5 - this was a 3 minute mistake, basically ran past the path junction that was my planned attack point. I felt that I was in the area so got into the vicinity of the control by using the ground features around, but they were a little vague and that's fatal in Night-O. Ended up going back out to the track, locate the junction and found the control on proper bearing.
2 - This was one I did not notice while running, 90deg mistake out of 1, really stupid in hindsight and could have been a much bigger mistake have I not corrected gradually using compasswork. The positive of this is that I seem to start ingraining some basic O-techniques into my subconscious and this saved me here from a much bigger time loss.
3 - Lost about 25-30sec as again did not see the path junction, however I should have instead followed the stream when it deviated from the path. I corrected fairly fast again, but in order to move ahead I need to move beyond just not making big mistakes (khm, control 5...) and reduce these smaller ones too
12 - decided to go around but fallen on the mud and then lost concentration so looked for the control too early in the ditch. I finally believed it would be a bit further on, wen around the vegetation and there it was - but took me about 45s more than it should have.

So about 4,5m timeloss on mistakes.

Long - Splits