Training Log Archive: AliC

Event: WOC 2018 - Latvia
 

Women's Sprint Qual Heat A

Woo! Very happy to have made it to the final, tying with Galina Vinogradova (RUS) for 9th in my heat, 52s back from Karolin Ohlsson (SWE).

It was fast. I was hurting at the end for sure - pretty much felt like a running race at that point.

One small error (15-20s?) trying to go through a way that had a blocked passage. Just a normal fence, not an artificial one, so actually less obvious on the map. Hope to avoid that on the final.

Was reading ahead pretty well, but there weren't so many descisions per leg this race. Occasionally timid with rock walls, but all encountered and that I thoguht might be crossable were.

C • Well done 12

WOC sprint final, Riga city center

A pretty good race considering where I'm at, but I *really* would have liked to have more oomph out there!!! I orienteered decently - one mistake getting ahead of myself on the map, but caught pretty quickly (#9) and then a small one right after with #10, just being a bit flustered. Perhaps a few not-optimal routes, but sometimes you just gotta do *something* and none were that bad. A few times that it mattered I did see the right route, so that's something!

I think it would have been good to do a few 5ks or at least a track 3k time trial and gotten more used to the level of hurt necessary to sprint well. While familiar, I think I would have been able to push even where my fitness is a bit more with better mental game.

Also, it was fun! Super-cool city, made trickier by well-placed artificial fences. They definitely used the trickiest tiny passage zone that I'd scoped out on the map beforehand. They did mess up the too-close placement of GO control to start control. Got me, and nearly all the women. (Because #17 was otherwise super easy, so you're just running at that point. And the start control wasn't on our map because of a map flip. So you're expecting a control right at that spot, see one, go punch. But when it doesn't beep, you realize there's another control and go and get it... )

Also, dodging pedestrians is an art. Maybe I should have yelled more and gotten more to move out of my lines.

Running around the model map. Good to see what the artificial fences will look like both on the map and in the terrain. Legs feel well rested and brain was pretty with it despite time change and all. But racing will put both of those to more of a test tomorrow!

There was a very narrow passage between a building and olive green with the olive green taped as OOB. Missed the passage on my first pass of that control - gotta see those ahead of time tomorrow!

My plan is to run as fast as I can while the orienteering is simple, but respect when any thing looks tricky. In that case: 1) find the way(s) into control 2) find a not-terrible route that connects to a way in. I don't have to always pick the *best* route - often when the choices are hard in a sprint it's because the two ways are very equivalent. Without any contours on this map to make one route hilly versus not, there shouldn't be too many things that will make a route be bad that won't be easy to see.

I also did a 1cm pace-count, in case it is helpful for going full speed until there should be a narrow passage opening. (Otherwise easy to slow down looking for it.) At a good clip on flat, it seems like I have 11 paces to 1cm = 40m.

Here's hoping I have enough speed and brains to make it through the qual!

C • Run well! 9

Arrived in Helsinki, slept 6+ hours on the flight as planned, so hopefully jetlag won't be too terrible. Goal for today is to just absorb as much daylight as possible during the day to reset body. Now off to Riga and meeting up with teammates!

C • Welcome to Europe 13

Jogged over to the Riga city center where the area is embargoed except for a few roads, which you are allowed to use. So I walked those and got a feel for where Saturdays races will be!

Woke up at 4am for the journey to begin!

Sooooo hard to say bye to Sylvia in Chicago (she and Tom headed off to Rochester, where they will be busy visiting grandparents and also get to see aunt, uncle, cousin, 2 x great aunts, 2 x great great aunts!). I was a wreck. This is my first time away from her for even a single night and it's 9 nights in a row.

Last pre-WOC stroller jog! Was up at 4:30am and Sylvia woke up ~6am so we hung out for an hour before daycare. Going to miss her sooooo much during WOC!

Read UW campus map on the way there, Seattle Pacific on the way back. Two people commented about the empty stroller on the way back. I mean, how else are you supposed to run your baby to daycare?

C • empty stroller 8

Reading WMOC M35 sprint qual map while jogging around the canyon.

Chill Pilates.

Bah, forgot to set my 5am alarm, so woke up late at 5:30am (trying to get closer,timewise, to Latvia).

Could feel the legs were used yesterday on my warmup. Good.

2k Halprin Open Space Sequence sprint training

Didn't push as hard as yesterday, but tried to have good flow, reading ahead well, including control descriptions. Course again could have been trickier, but was good to have more training around buildings. Is a neat little map!

Lost good flow twice: didn't have my choice to 8 figured out when I punched 7 (should have immediately turned around). And also the trickiest control of the set, 19, I wasn't prepared for when I left 18 - perhaps lulled into a sense of things being easy from previous controls.