Training Log Archive: tommig

Left shoes at home, had to nip back and get them.

Rushing from the start, mucked up no. 2 by going to 3 instead, then number 6 by just making a bloody hash of it. I think I missed the first set of crags, then followed the second set thinking they were the first, climbed up between the two sets and carried on expecting to find a control. Then just followed the good old principle of "if i just keep going, it will be here somewhere" that I THOUGHT I had taught myself not to do. Too hot by far. Fortunately there were lots of very tame mosquitoes around, so tame they even came and ate from my hand. And legs. And Face. And arm pits. And..........

After that, not bad, not good. One more local event then up to Puolanka and the KRV for some proper big territory. Will have to be more careful there!

Positives, I was fasted on a couple of legs. Reckon I would have been 4th had I not made that one big brainless mistake on 6. When I was thinking and reading the map and using the compass, I did well. In otherwords when I was bothering to Orienteer, I got it right. When I just sort of ran about making assumptions for some reason it went a bit wrong.....

C • not far back home... 2

Much happier today. 6.2km course around Pirttimäki, much more enjoyable terrain, runnable part of national forest, less brashings, cooler, nice rain, no insects.

Made some silly route choice errors but was 5/33 and could probably have been 10 or so minutes faster with a totally clean run. Usually made mistakes when there was someone else around and i was rushing.

C • route gadget? 2

Bloody awful. 13k course with 9 controls, ran over 19k. Amazing how orienteering always manages to wake you up from your daydream of "I am not bad at this!!"

Had a decent route to 1 (east round lake would have been better in hindsight) but executed it badly. Really badly. Wandered off bearing and ended up halfway along lake rather than at tip. Careless. Then took myself up onto bare rock hills too early, I think bothered by some insects... lost contact with map, nothing made sense, eventually just bailed out to nearest road and was surprised to find out where I was.... not good. Nav OK ish from there on, but lost confidence and had used so much energy. over 26 degrees and really humid, sweating like a pig, meant that everytime you stopped you were attacked by so many horsefly, mosquitoes, midges etc it felt like running in a bees nest. Went for a lot of path/track runs as was not confident through terrain anymore. Course designed quite well, 3 long legs to start, then group of three, then another long leg, group of 2, then finally a super long leg across the whole map to the final two controls. Stopped reading map approaching number 8 and just ended up wandering in the hope that a control might be in front of me at some point.

Lessons to take from this. It is easier orienteering when there are 1800 other folk looking for the same control. When there are 6 of you, it is more lonely. Stay on bearing more, check compass more, when losing contact stop before totally lost contact. Check the alternative routes properly. Be stronger. Drink more water. Check whether there are EOD informal courses offered before signing up for the Age Class competition with stupid long courses!

Positives to take from this. I didn't quit no matter how much I felt like it. And my close up nav was OK when I actually knew where I was starting from....

Back to the drawing board....