Note
So, Spike suggested that people would post more about their plans and goals. Not having a personal blog yet (a blessing?), I thought I'd use the Comments to talk about mine.
First, the completed season (2002). For the first time in many years, I did have a set of goals. They were not all set at once, and I kept tweaking them. The whole reason I could make any plans for this past year was that my lifestyle stabilized in 2001, and I finally found financial and time resources to do O and rogaining. My life priorities also had changed somewhat, compared to my late grad school days.
The goals, and the results achieved, were:
US Short Champs: Top 5—was 4th
World Rogaine Champs: Top 4—were 5th
US Individual Champs: Top 5—was 6th
(those were overall, not eligible/ineligible, regardless of who shows up). Note that the US Rogaining Champs was not one of the goals.
I think I worked really well on achieving the goals, especially the US Champs result. It is quite worthy, given the strong field, and is my best US Champs Blue performance to date. I have no illusions about the greatness of said result in the grand framework of things, however; I am still a mediocre orienteer (mostly 'cause I'm slow) but a decent rogainer. I think I'll give O up to another couple of years, then focus completely on my rogaining.
I started the year with structured training for the first time since 1998. I knew I had some work to do, as during the break I took from O in 2000 and the first half of 2001, my 5K time went up to 19:17, 2:29 slower than the PR. The endurance suffered as well; that was why I mostly ran Red and Green in 2001, unable to survive for more than an hour.
I was short on base training this year, mostly because I did not pay much attention to it. I started interval training early in the winter but had an achilles tendon injury in March (first serious injury, ever). Looking back, I think the injury was mostly due to the transition to orienteering in the Bay Area. Things weren't going particularly well in the spring but I pulled together a reasonable Short Champs.
My mindset underwent a fairly substantial correction in the course/after my visit to Moscow where I stayed for 7 weeks. I could see how far some people had progressed, and how large a contribution to one's orienteering success proper running training was. This is something one tends to lose track of in the US (or in Sweden, for that matter). I got my training act together and was able to put in about 3 months' worth of serious interval stuff, mostly after the WRC. I attribute my (relative) success at the Individual Champs to this interval training, and the weakness on Day 2, to the lack of base mileage.
Alongside with training for the Champs, I worked on my rogaining. I realized that I sacrificed quite a few O-races, and some training, in favor of the preparation for the WRC; the bulk of long, slow running was done in the winter, and some, in early summer in Moscow. (Note that I do not qualify those as good base training for O, mostly because they were done at 30–50 s/km slower effective pace than the required "easy" pace for running training.)
The US Rogaine Champs came as a late addition to my calendar, but with Eric as a partner, I could not pass on it. The Rogaine Champs, however, cost me 2–3 weeks of interval work in preparation for the Individual Champs. I fully understand that the two sets of interests are not really compatible if I want to up the performance past a certain point. I think that 2003 will be an O-year, and I'll start to get really serious about rogaining after the summer, with the WRC in AZ, May 2004.
The next Comment will be about the goals for 2003. Great stuff is in the plans if my health holds up.