Training Log Archive: markg

Canadian Team Trials Long at Mt Laurie; 8th place. One of the Smiths won in 1:55. Started slowly and carefully getting the first couple nicely and then blew it with my biggest mistake in a while, a 17min error on number 3. The control was a highpoint on a pretty vague hillside, I chose to attack from a ride that I never found and did a bit of wandering around before finding it. In retrospect I should have relocated at a much earlier stage and gone in on compass. I had a pretty good race after that, just a couple of 1min mistakes in really technical negative terrain. This was very hard to read at 1:15,000, I had to stop to work out a lot of it. I lost about 3min at number 26 but hammered the remainer, downhill, part of the course. A highlight of the race was seeing Brent at controls 3, 8, 12, 23, and 24 even though he was running much quicker than I and only on the short control 4 did we run in sight of each other.

After further analysis I think I made about 26 min of errors! Quite a few little ones but also 2, 3, and 4 min errors. I also recall having to tie my shoelaces twice, on number 21 and somewhere earlier. How amateur!

Event: Moose Creek Splash (Canadian Team Trials West)
 

Canadian Team Trials Middle race; 7th place. I'm pretty happy with this run despite making about 3.5 min of errors because I was reasonably competitive and without I would have been quite close to the Smiths. This means I'm getting faster! It was also a good course on a lovely map on a beautiful day, so hard to be too unhappy!

I started with a conservative route feeling a little unsteady and slow but spiked it, then wasted 30s on 2 checking a control that clearly wasn't mine. Cruised through the next 6 nicely but occasionally lacked a bit of urgency and felt like I should have been moving faster. My HR data shows that I wasn't slacking off though. On 9 I made a stupid parallel error about 100m out from the control, through lack of concentration, and though I relocated fairly well, lost about 1 min. Then on the following, 100m leg, I didn't aim off properly, passed close by the control (in a pit) while looking the other way and lost another minute. Managed to string the next 4 controls together quite well, though ran a bit off-line on 12 and lost a few seconds. Then another mistake on number 15 costing another minute. Brent caught me on the way to 15 and we raced throught the last couple easily.

Canadian Team Trials sprint at Elbow Bluffs; a long way down the order and about 3min off the pace. Not really happy with this run, despite only a couple of things going wrong. Unfortunately, one was the 1st control, which caught out a number of people, and I lost about 40-50s. I then kept it together until number 10 with only a couple of hesitations, then I left 10 thinking I was off to 12 and didn't notice until I'd crossed the fence just out from the control. I picked 11 off okay after that but had lost 25s. Better planning ahead would have avoided this stupid error. The rest of the race was okay though I was really slow up the hill to 12 and was less direct than is desirable on a couple of legs. The main problem was I wasn't running fast enough.

Lunchtime massage. The new massage therapist at work is a genius, I leave her every time with a euphoric glow and a stupid grin on my face.

Warm up, between ints and warm down

6 × 1min with equal floats — wanted a little high intensity work for my 'taper'. Legs felt pretty heavy today but managed to pump these out okay except for the fourth one where I had to stop for a coughing fit.

Picking up controls from FWOC wed night event. Hadn't expected to pick up all the controls, and hadn't expected to do it while it was snowing. Crazy country.

C • crazy Calgary 2

Along the Bow River up to the 10th St bridge and back through Princes Island. Felt quite good today, a lot better than yesterday, and also reasonably fast. Kept my HR a bit lower than for the threshold intervals I was trying in the last few weeks, in fact, the average HR is about my aerobic threshold, but my speed is above my tested anaerobic threshold. Threshold training is paying off?