Training Log Archive: AliC

WOC Long

Happy with this. Not a perfect race, but I pushed physically (just wish I had more - another month, perferably two, and I would have) and I think I made the right big choices for my trail versus terrain speed. Occasionally I think I should have favored the trails even more and perhaps would have gained a couple minutes.

Because of my trail/road running preference, the race seemed like a trail race plus a few control-pick o-tervals. In a way, I'm disappointed because I think the training courses at Gillingsrod favored straight more than around and I would have liked at least one hard, long leg that made me pick my way through this terrain.

The running in terrain was hard out there, harder than Gillingsrod, exactly for the reasons the Bulletin described: high heather/blueberries and logging work. It's amazing how much having your stride continually broken can slow you down.

Had a small mistake on one control, about 30m off trying to find a control on the edge of a green marsh. But other than that, just hesitations were slowing me down on the short legs. Probably a bit more cautious than really required, but since I was moving slow through the terrain, perhaps it was actually the right cautious-level.

The race was fun and I dealt with most of it's challenges well.

I finished as the first woman (started 6th- didn't have a 4th WRE race to round out my score to where I shoudl be) and stayed in the lead for a bit, until a woman from Hungary got me by 9 seconds. No leader chair or even attention for me though, because the focus was on the top men who were finishing at the same time. Think they did announce me once, when I was in 3rd place right after they switched commentary over from the men.

C • Really good 36

Event: WOC 2019 - Norway
 

Final super-easy tune up at Gillingsrod. Did 11->8->12 of the long training course I have.

11 - Had a good plan, enacted it, went well.

8 - Missed. Compass drift about 300m from control and then parallel feature error close-in. Think some cliffs helped deflect me off bearing. Which can happen, but have to notice that and correct. Pretty quickly realized where I was (about 100m too far S of control), so wouldn't have been a huge error, but still, have got to keep all techniques working tomorrow.

12 - Good, was a bit sooner than I expected, but everything was telling me it was time to climb up the bank to the little hill and so it was.

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Mantra for tomorrow: firm attackpoints, firm plan.

I just can't run off and lose my head in this terrain trying to go fast. There will be plenty of time to physically push it out there, when I'm deciding on a plan of action for each leg isn't it. So for any legs longer than about 300m, I won't let myself leave the previous control unless I have a dedicated plan. For long legs, I'll come to a full stop and consider any possible left/right trail options. If no possible trail options, I'll aim to run at big unmissable features and pick up the pace!!

Excited to race tomorrow. The terrain is amazing around here and know the race will bring good challenges.

C • Patience 8

Jog into the car, reading some routes I didn't get to do out there.

Model at Rudskogen

I was very happy with my plans working, distance judgment and compass work being accurate on the first half, where the woods was less steep and less green. In the steeper and greener woods of the second half, things didn't go terribly, but they weren't spot on and I reded a few controls.

My first puzzlement was coming up against what I thought were cliffs too early on the way to my 7, now looking at the map I can see very close contours: the 'cliffs' I was seeing weren't mapped. I also just missed my 9 the first time: the end of a ride in medium green. I should have known when I was heading back up on my bearing I must have passed the low the control was in. Need to heed warnings like that on Wed.

All this said, this was a very detailed area at 1:15. Some of the long will be spent needing to pay this much attention to detail, but during long and medium legs, more of the game will be come up with big-feature attackpoints to run to and then navigate from. It would not be fast to stay in perfect contact the whole way for long legs. Will also be very mindful to look for trail options around. For the woods-shape I'm in, trail legs will be favored unless just too much longer.

Woo!

C • Trails around 2

Trained, but watch is in hotel room where S is currently napping, so just some notes now.

I got to the Gillingsrod training map and realized I forgot my o-shoes, so went in running shoes which at least forced me to go slowly.

It's delightful, but not easy terrain. Visibility is much better than COCs, which is a relief. Underfoot is soft and sometimes up-to-knee blueberries, but more often just midshin. So it takes effort to get through, but isn't impossible or anything.

Cliffs are big. There are definitely meter-high cliffs that weren't on this map, will have to pay more attention to that on model map. But in general, ones that I wouldn't want to go up or down were marked on the map. At least at low speed it wasn't hard to make sense of them.

Dot knolls a-plenty! The border between formline-hill and dot knoll seems to favor dot knoll by a bunch, at least by this mapper. Another thing that could be different by WOC-mapper, so to pay attention to on the middle.

Marshes weren't that nice to run through. More tussock-y than I remember Scandi marshes, I guess they can be different in different places. And it's been wet, so they are wet and suction-y, probably worse in running shoes. Based on today, I wouldn't favor routes going through lots of marshes. Although yes, yellow open marshes are great attack points and zones of perfect visibility.

Eva J. set an excellent long training course on Gillingsrod. I still don't know what one should do to be fastest from the start to 1 or from 2 -> 3.

C • Can't wait to follow 5

Car seat recovered!! Phew!

Line-o-ish, checking stuff out, to where I started the course.

1-2-4-3 of training course. Very slow, taking it in.

Line-o-ish back to a trail.

Running back on the trail. Some pace-count calibration. Seems to be ~80 per cm through the terrain, ~50 per cm on a flat trail.

Made it to Sarpsborg, but without our carseat... and no sign of it turning up yet from baggage tracing. Have already contacted Cristina, but if anyone has any leads on someone who might be able to loan a carseat for up to a week here in Norway (relatively near Oslo), let me know. Also looking into seeing if a more local Sixt rental place would rent us a car seat (who we got the car from, but all the way 1.5h away in Sandefjord...).

The trip went smoothly, other than the super-tight connection in Paris CDG which probably explains the missing car seat.

Easy peasy last Kahshe run. Went out Wigwam.

Last row here at Kahshe, has been great to row!