Training Archive: NixonIn the 7 days ending 2007-09-02:
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Sunday Sep 2 | ||
| Orienteering race 1:34:48 [5]*** 13.4 km (7:04 / km) +520m 5:56 / km | |
| spiked:23/30c | ||
| Euromeeting Long, Seefeld-Wildmooslam:
1) 1:26:34 Håvard Lucasen, NOR 2) 1:27:42 Mattis Millinger, SWE 3) 1:28:26 Magne Daehli, NOR 16) 1:34:48 Mark Nixon, GBR Physically, I felt pretty good. I got a bit tired in the loops, but a mars bar fueled me up for the long leg back home. Technically, it was OK. My biggest weakness is alpine orienteering and route choices. Mentally it was great, I was focused on my orienteering and it all came naturally, I didnät have to force it like in the relay yesterday. I have concluded that to become a better orienteer I need to get fitter and better at navigating, Simple. | ||
| Jogging (Warming up / down) 30:00 [3] | |
| Warming up / down. It was sunny today. | ||
Saturday Sep 1 | ||
| Orienteering race 51:19 [5]**** 6.5 km (7:54 / km) +280m 6:30 / km | |
| spiked:15/23c | ||
| Euromeeeting Relay, Seefeld-Wildmoosalm:
1) 2:23:19 Norway (Bjerkreim Nilsen, Lucassen, Østerbø) 2) 2:23:22 Sweden (Holmberg, Lind, Millinger) 3) 2:23:46 Finland (Tervo, Wickholm, Taanila) 11) 2:40:44 Great Britain (Mercer, Coombs, Nixon) Bloody hell, that was steep. I felt pretty crap all the way round, it started straight up and then get steeper. I made a few mistakes early on, and my brain just wans't focused. I kept thinking to myself "orienteer", but I just wasn't doing it. Muppet. The gaffling was pretty epic, which may have explained why Anders came through about an hour clear. The last leg must have been exciting; SWE, FIN, SUI and NOR all starting within 25s. | ||
| Jogging (Warming up / down) 30:00 [3] | |
| Warming up / down. Saw Anders attempting to catch a duck by trying to feed it a moutain flower. The duck was having none of it.
Evening jog + stretching. | ||
Friday Aug 31 | ||
| Orienteering 12:00 [4]*** 2 km (6:00 / km) | |
| spiked:8/11c | ||
| Final training session before the Euromeeting. We dropped down into a big valley for a sprint session on one of those micky mouse 1:5000 jobbies. I decided not to do controls 7, 8 and 9 because they were clearly planned by the Grand Old Duke of York. I felt pretty good, maybe because we had dropped back into the oxygen layer. I still wasn't that used to running on 1:5000 though, it was the 4th time this year.
Some of the other teams had turned up by the time we had finished. Norway were there with a good team. The Swiss were there with a not as good as the Norwegians but still better than us Team. Maybe some others, I can't remember. What I can remember is that the Norwegians were wearing there nice Norwegian national team kit. I, on the other hand, could not wear my British kit because I don't actually have any. You'd think that being selected for the World Cups, Euromeeting and reserve for WOC might actually get me an O-top, but it didn't. Thanks Hilary. Atleast the coaches can stand around in their's... | ||
| Orienteering race 17:14 [5]*** 2.9 km (5:57 / km) +85m 5:11 / km | |
| spiked:18/26c | ||
| Euromeeting Sprint, Seefeld-Wildsee
1) 15:44 Anders Holmberg, SWE 2) 16:03 Magne Daehli, NOR 2) 16:03 Erik Rost, SWE 17) 17:14 Mark Nixon, GBR The pressure got to me. I was rushing and orienteering like a punter at the start. I settled down after the long leg, but then made a stupid mistake on the first urban control and Rost caught me as I was leaving it. I stuck with him for the next few controls, although I took some different routes (like not trough the olive green to 19, it's not really his fault, sprint maps are just shite), and then he just dropped me on the longish leg back to the finish, there was nothing I could do, he was fast and I was not. I think I learned a lot from today. I don't like sprints, but I think they can teach you a lot, so I will try and do some more for training. | ||
| Jogging (Warming up / down) 50:00 [3] | |
| Warming up / down. I had some nice healing water to drink before the sprint from the fountain. It was tastey.
Short evening jog with streching, again. | ||
Thursday Aug 30 | ||
| Orienteering 34:12 [4]*** 4.3 km (7:57 / km) +110m 7:03 / km | |
| spiked:14/14c | ||
| A downhill(ish) course, planned by an Austrian. I have learned about the forests and the maps, now I must learn about the course-setting. It was nice, nowhere near as hardcore as Big Jon's courses. The jog to the start did have 250m of climb though. My orienteering was much better today, no mistakes. I felt better running too, but it was nearly all downhill. Control 3 was quite hard, I had to go through lots of wet bush and I couldn't really see much. So I just kept my head down and waited til I came out the other side and then had a good look around. Still on line, you beauty! I had put my compass through my map bag at some point, and as it was still raining my map got a bit wet, and as Austrians are cheap the map was printed on some guys home printer and so all the ink ran, making it quite hard to find 11 and 12. All that is left now is the black ink. | ||
| Jogging (Warming up / down) 34:00 [3] | |
| Warming up / down. It was 1km to the start with 250m of climb. The ski lifts were not operating, probably due the lack of skiers, which was probably due to the lack of snow. It was raining though.
Another short evening jog followed by stretchy time. | ||
Wednesday Aug 29 | ||
| Orienteering 40:00 [4]*** 4.8 km (8:20 / km) +260m 6:33 / km | |
| spiked:15/20c | ||
| First session in Austria, a short course planned by Big Jon on a very big hill. The aim was just to learn a bit about the terrain and maps. The forest was nice to run in but bloddy steep. They weren't detailed like in Helsinki but the orienteering wasn't easy. I was OK, I wasn't forcing the technique too much, just running round and seeing what happened. It was raining.
Before the training we popped down the Seegeld spar to get some supplies. Unlike every spar in the UK, this one actually had some nice food. It also had a life size Milka cow. Now that I've seen a giant purple cow, I'm definitely going to buy their chocolate. | ||
| Orienteering 29:20 [4]*** 2.4 km (12:13 / km) +175m 8:57 / km | |
| spiked:7/9c | ||
| Slope orienteering: A whole course of wonderful contouring on a nearly vertical slope. It's almost impossible to run at any speed when it is so steep, and the orienteering can be quite tricky running across a blank slope looking for a tiny crag. I wasn't really enjoying this type of orienteering, I find it boring and pointless, like Hollyoaks. Despite this, I seemed to have good altitude awareness, and did OK. My alpine route-choice making is not quite as good as Hannibal's. It's still raining.
I dislike Germany for many reasons, but the biggest one just now is their relentless dubbing of foreign TV into German. Literally everything is translated by mediocre voice actors with poor timing. I know English is my first language but let's face it, it is the international language. I did do 5 years of German at school, but that was 7 years ago and I wasn't good, even back then. Luckily we have eurosport and the World Athletics Champs is on, unluckily I am British and therefore have very little to lookforward to. | ||
| C • I hate dubbing too. Voice/spea... 1 | ||
| Jogging (Warming up / down) 44:00 [3] | |
| Warming up / down. I seem to be getting out of breath really quickly. I'm not sure if it's the altitude (1200m) or the fact that it's always uphill.
A short jog in the evening followed by some stretching. | ||
Tuesday Aug 28 | ||
| Jogging 30:00 [3] | |
| My plane doesn't leave untill the evening, so I went for a wee jog to keep my legs moving. I did a couple of spurts just to make myself feel good. It#s got really cold in Helsinki now, the summer is officially over. Boo. Matti gave me a lift to the airport on his way to orienteering which was nice. The place got delayed because all baggage handlers are layz, but Captain Jack put on the afterburners to pull back a bit of time to München. We then drove, the wrong way at several points (Duncan was navigating), to Austria, had dinner and went to bed. (Duncan and Joe went to the same bed)
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| C • Good to hear that Duncan and J... 2 | ||
Monday Aug 27 | ||
| Note | |
| (rest day) | ||
| A nice lie in, followed by pretty much nothing. I did some laundry, moved some mess abobut my room and re-organised my maps. Tomorrow I fly to Austria (I'm actually flying to Germany and then driving to Austria, but it's a bit long winded to write that) for the Euromeeting. We have a Sprint on Firday, Relay on Saturday and the Long on Sunday. It should be good. | ||
| C • euromeeting 3 | ||