Saturday Apr 22 |
 | Note | |
| (rest day) |
| Rest day - flight home after a decent week of terrain running, so it seemed like a rasonable thing to do to treat myself to a rest day. That, plus getting up at 0600 and traveling until 2200 (plus 6 hours of time change) means it's a pretty tough sell. And anyway - rest counts as training too!
Major bonus - Lufthansa magically upgraded me to business class again - ohhhhh, so comfortable! Seems there are some tangible benefits to being loyal to Air Canada and the Star Alliance after all - I've been unexpectedly upgraded way too many times for it to be random chance. All this and not even wearing a Stonecutters ring.... |
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| C • Stonecutters 3 |
Friday Apr 21 |
| Orienteering (Map walk) 30:00 [1] | |
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| Not really sure about logging this but anyway....
Mike and I stopped at Botanisk Have in Århus on the way back to Copenhagen to have a look at the sprint training area provided there. Pretty unimpressive stuff. Just looking at the map you see that it bears quite little resemblance to the Mindeparken area - not much forested area, and no really complex buildings and "hidden" fences to set up as traps (although some ?uncrossable? hedges were there too). The mapping seemed inconsistent - although any map usually does when you go through at a walking pace staring at every little detail.... I don't know what else to say - yes, it is a 1:5000 map. Seems to largely follow ISSOM guidelines. Probably not as relevant to Mindeparken as we'd like.
Unfortunately time was running short so we didn't get the chance to check out any of the other areas. I wonder about Esbjerg Universitetspark - but that's waaaaayyyy out on the west coast and didn't fit this week's plans. |
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| C • Fingers tired? 3 |
| Indoor cycling 30:00 [2] | |
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| Indoor stationary cycle at the hotel I'm in overnight until tomorrow's flight home. Maybe a little easier on the hamstring - but not as nice as running in terrain with a nice accurate map in my hand! |
Thursday Apr 20 |
| Orienteering race (Relay) 39:00 [4]*** | |
| spiked:12/13c slept:4.0 |
| AM training - relay starts with the Austrian team on Sletten. Forked mass starts x2, then the third time we went off at 5-second intervals to simulate starting in the 2nd or 3rd leg. It was fun and forced us to run at higher intensity - higher than my hamstring would have liked, but it made it through in one piece anyway. With the open forest it was still very easy to maintain a good grasp on where the controls were, despite the forking and mass starting. Saw lots of other controls but it was easy enough to disregard them and focus only on my own. Good training. Based on what Mike and I saw when we drove to Himmelbjerget though, the hills there are much steeper than what we ran today - there was only one 5-contour hill which was pretty manageable. |
| Running warm up/down 30:00 [2] | |
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| Warmup and cool down (Z1-3 but call it Z2 overall). |
| Orienteering 1:11:00 [2]**** | |
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| Easy map walk/jog on Velling-Snabegård. Was feeling pretty tired and my hamstring was too sore to allow itself to be tortured any further. This was a route choice exercise that some national teams had used in late March (this map is officially closed except for certain dates...). Mike was feeling strong so he ran the whole thing. I skipped some and made the exercise a bit more manageable for my body. Very nice route choice legs and overall very hilly terrain. I counted 7% actual climb during my excursion. This map is adjacent to the classic final terrain, and I would say that if the climb here is any indication.... Still, many of the very hilly legs had viable "around" options, and I think a fit and astute runner would be able to maintain a good tempo even with the hilly terrain. |
Wednesday Apr 19 |
| Orienteering 44:00 [3]*** | |
| spiked:23/24c slept:4.0 |
| Training on Ryekol - suggested by the WOC middle distance course planner as being relevant for its vegetation (on the east side anyway). If so, then we can expect some scrappy mixes of vegetation, including a fair bit of heather on the ground. Seemed to be much more undergrowth in general there, and not much in the line of those beautiful wide open mature plantation forest areas that seem to abound in other maps. Otherwise, the area (although small) seemed OK. Privately owned though so we couldn't put up any markers or controls without advance permission. |
| Orienteering race (Middle) 51:00 [4]*** 5.9 km (8:39 / km) | |
| spiked:15/18c |
| Ran the Austrian EM test race. They had hired the WOC middle distance course planner to set a WOC-relevant middle distance test race for them, which they ran in the morning while we were at Ryekol. The controls were left out until the afternoon though, so we got the chance to run it as well. Still nursing my R hamstring (and now calf hurts too), so not going FSA, but able to maintain a relatively steady output.
If this was a typical WOC middle distance, then my take would be that he really likes to force you to change gears. He seemed to have chosen a section of the map that contained large steep hills, as well as flatter more diffuse areas - and he switched back and forth between terrain types. Vegetation was mixed, with thicker areas both in the beginning and end, but otherwise pretty open in the middle part of the race. Control locations were not especially tricky, but he did use the detailed areas of the map to decent advantage.
There were at least 3 legs with significant route choices (really every leg had a bit of a route choice and in a middle distance maybe every second gained or lost is significant). Two of them came right in a row before we'd even had much time on the map (first 3 controls were short and fast, then both 4 and 5 had longer route choices). For #4 I decided it looked equivocal and went straight. Later analysis by the Austrians showed it to be equally fast going straight or around, although probably not as physical to go around. For #5 straight looked obviously better and it was (one fast runner going around lost 40 seconds on the Austrian team). The other route was late in the race and to be honest straight looked faster to me but there was a route around that looked almost as fast and was safer - I'd have considered going around if I was really tired and fighting to maintain concentration. According to the Austrians, around was at least as quick as going straight - although both Mike and I were surprised at this. My conclusion based on this race: if a particular route looks obviously better, then take it. If they look equivocal, then I'll probably go around and save on climbing. But that's just me. |
| Running warm up/down 20:00 [2] | |
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| Warm up and cool down for the above. |
Tuesday Apr 18 |
| Orienteering 56:00 [3]*** | |
| spiked:16/17c slept:5.0 |
| Re-ran one of Holger's old relay trainings on Sletten. Nice forest, good mix of vegetation as well as steeper and flatter sections. Happy to be in DK - and the contours seem (in places) quite similar to Japan, for better or for worse. Very straightforward navigation - here, route choice (in the hilly areas) and direction maintenance (in the flatter areas) are more the key, rather than actually finding the controls. Easy enough to do at even a decent cruising pace, significantly harder at flat-out race pace, for sure. A tough knife edge to balance upon. |
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| C • Knife Edge 2 |
| Orienteering 1:22:00 [2]*** | |
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| A longer, easier training on Silkeborg Nordskov - the map is adjacent to the hostel so quite convenient for anyone staying there during a training camp. Wanted to try out the flatter areas - definitely trickier than the relatively hard-to-get-lost-on large hills. The green areas of heavily managed forest with multiple cut lines through them are difficult - you must really pay attention and count them or at least look for unique features on them, especially if you're going to a control in that area. If you're just passing through, then I guess you can afford to be a little more relaxed, as long as your direction is correct....
The flat white areas are fun - and again, having a VERY sharp grasp of your direction is key if you want to get through quickly. If you're off-line or disoriented, it's pretty easy to start doing that creative map interpretation in your head and then watch the minutes pass by until you stumble onto a recognizable, unmistakable feature.....
Changing gears (speed, focus, tactics) will certainly be key. |
Monday Apr 17 |
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| Event: Elitserien Long
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| Running warm up/down 15:00 [2] | |
| slept:3.0 |
| A lighter warmup for the "race". Not really planning to race per se, so no need to be extravagant on the warmup. There will be enough energy consumption in the hills and forest to more than compensate. Again a poor night of sleep. For goodness sake, somebody make sure that I travel a good week in advance of the next time I race over here.... |
| Orienteering race (Classic) 1:21:00 [3]*** 11 km (7:22 / km) | |
| ahr:162 max:173 |
| Cruising through the NOF test race - classic. Aiming for a steady HR around 160 bpm - "easy cruise" mode. Except it wasn't all that easy. Anyway, there were a few interesting route choices in the section that I did (I stopped after control 20). #2 I went straight although perhaps R would have been flatter and not much slower. #5 I went straight again although arguably a trail option to the R was faster and less physical. #15 direct seemed best, and #18 R on the trail seemed best.
Orienteering-wise, no major pile-ups. Unfortunately, after 70 minutes or so (and luckily only a little more than 1km to the spectator passing), I pulled my R hamstring. +++ pain with running and even jogging, although it wasn't truly crippling. But will now need to be protective of it until it heals (a week or two?). |
| Running warm up/down 10:00 [1] | |
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| Cool down after above "race". Jogging and even walking hurt, although not excruciating. Guess I can still get around OK, just not FSA. |
Sunday Apr 16 |
| Running warm up/down 35:00 [3] | |
| slept:2.0 |
| Warmup for the middle distance race. Terrible sleep last night (of course, day 2 of eastward jetlag always seems worse to me). All hopped up on caffeine this morning and still a bit sluggish. |
| Orienteering race (Middle) 36:39 [4]*** 5.5 km (6:40 / km) | |
| spiked:15/18c |
| NOF test race - middle distance. Again the goal was to maintain a steady pace, smoothly through the course. Fairly straightforward terrain - not too difficult to find controls unless the visibility was down (only in a few places). The main thing was route choice efficiency and I was suboptimal on a couple of these, although not by huge amounts. Also hesitated on one control - was in the right place but things just didn't look as I had imagined. Not pushing too hard, but a steady output. Decent result. |
| Running warm up/down 25:00 [2] | |
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| My cool down, Holger's warm up. He is nice and relaxed before his race, and wouldn't you know it, he comes out with the victory too. Way to go team H-J. |
| Orienteering 35:00 [3]**** | |
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| Again back to the coast for more of those lovely intricate dunes. I tried to maintain a steady Z3 throughout, but after about 25 minutes I semi-bonked - started to run out of gas, felt a little dizzy and nauseous, just a little hypoglycemic. Toned it down a notch and decided to cruise in along a trail in case I got too delusional. But things settled down on the way in and I managed to pick off the last couple of controls anyway. But this is the warning of overtraining knocking on the door. Tomorrow (a long distance race in hilly terrain) will need to be re-planned. |