Training Log Archive: cporter

Event: QOC: Little Bennett - Night-O
 

Night-O at Little Bennet - this was such a fun event! My only regret is that I didn't run a longer course. I decided to take it easy on myself (after what I did to myself last weekend) and only ran the advanced short course, but I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more when I neared the end of my course. I only made one real mistake on my way to #3, which I think I can mostly attribute to a lack of confidence since it was the first leg of the course that (had I not made a mistake) my route choice involved no roads/trails. On my route I was supposed to cross a small, but not indistinct trail, which I never saw so rather than take a chance trying to find a point feature on the side of a rather bland hillside, I decided to just drop down till I hit a major trail that I knew I wouldn't miss and then took a bearing from there. It slowed me down and I was walking a lot because I was hesitant and also because the feature that I was looking for on the trail to attack the control from was about 20 ft off the trail as opposed to right on it - so I had to keep scanning the woods. But, I found what I was looking for (and earthbank on a very sharp bend in a stream) and found the control realatively easily, despite the massive fallen tree that was laying directly between me and the control when I spotted it (I'm not kidding it took me almost a min to get around the damn thing!) After that the rest of the race went pretty smoothly. On my way to #5 I was supposed to be running along the top of a hill line, but had drifted down the slope a bit - I knew this though and knew to keep scanning to my right and just contoured from where I was and still found the control fine, even from about 30 ft away. Also on my way to #7 I wasn't able to find the point on a trail that I wanted to attack the control from, so ran a bit further up the trail to attack, but still hit the control head on.

I was most pleasantly surprised with how much speed I was able to maintain through the woods, even in the dark with my not-the-greatest LED headlamp and only a little flashlight for a spotlight. There were definetly points at which I think I was running nearly as fast as I would during the daytime. Granted these woods are pretty wide open, but there are fallen trees and rootstocks everywhere so you still need to keep you eye on the ground! Definitely a really fun time! I only wish that we had more night-o's put on!

C • Wow. Nice pace for a Night... 3

Kickboxing

Kickboxing - all of the instructors at my gym must have collectively decided to step things up this week. Today's class was a killer, but it seems that the more a class makes me sweat the better it is. Adele not only gave us challenging stuff to do today, she kept the intensity really high, so my HR was up for nearly the entire time. Adele's favorite thing to do with us is to take activites that were once childhood activities and turn them into killer work outs. We always jump rope in class, but today she had us trying some freestyle moves, that I don't think I was ever able to do as a kid, but I managed to master most of them pretty quickly. Also, we played a modified version duck-duck-goose too. Rather than have one person chasing the goose, we all held hands in a circle, selected on person to be the "goose" and had one person on the outside of the circle running around trying to tag that person while we all shuffled around in the circle to prevent that from happening. It was really fun, and funny, and exhausting, esp. when you were the one chasing. We also had more traditional running drills to do today like doing 2 sets of sprints and then going right into push-ups, and then back to sprints (repeated 3x's). Of course there were all the usual suspects involved as well - squats, crunches, etc - but the introduction of some new stuff made the class really fun, even if it kicked my ass!

Core Workout Class - so today Chloe kicked our asses. She introduced all new exercises that definitely raised the bar for this class. The hardest thing for me (which I could barely manage to do) was a pike on the bosu with our feet on pieces of carpet flipped upside down so that we could "glide" into our pike on the wood floor. If I weren't trembling and stuggling so badly to keep from falling over, I'm sure it wouldn't have been a pretty sight. Still, my abs had that great "good hurt" feeling at the end of class, so I know it was a good work out.

Just passing the time after class while Joey finished up on the treadmill. Pushed it pretty good though to keep my heart rate up after class.

So after I got back to my desk from class I was greeted with some not-so-great news which turned my day for the worse. I told my self that I wouldn't run today cause I def. needed the break after the weekend, so I decided to take my frustrations out on the punching bag in the gym after work. I alternated between reps of punching hard, kicking, and punching fast - not really sure how many sets I did, just did it till my arms felt like pieces of spagetti. It worked though, I felt much better afterward.

Long stretch session after boxing.

Event: QOC: Rosaryville
 

DVOA's French Creek East - so I think running the Stumble yesterday was doable, but pushing it... today, however, was not a good idea. Again, the climb killed me today, and I tired out pretty quickly so I walked a lot of the course. I also had several controls that were quite a disaster with at least 15min of error for the course. Right off the bat I completely blew by my number one. I was high, but hit another control that I thought was only about 100m away, but I wound up hitting a trail that was probably 300-400m from my control. Luckily I relocated almost instantly and found the control from there without any trouble, but it still cost me 6-7 min. My second control was even worse, it was hung on a depression amidst some rocky ground and next to a charcoal terrace. The only safe way to navigate the leg was to jump from either charcoal terraces or boulders along the hillside which I did fine, but of course I ran off my bearing from my attack point and then stopped short and had literally no idea how I was going to relocate, there was nothing out in the forest at that point. After a few minutes running around randomly, I finally made the decision to keep going on my bearing and scanning the terrain for anything that looked like a terrace and if I missed it then I'd just have to relocate from a trail that wasn't terribly close, but was the only sure place to relocate from. Luckily, I hit a terrace pretty quickly and figured I was probably on the one that higher up the hillside amd not far past mine and I turned out to be right. Again though, damage already done. I didn't have too much trouble navigating after that and spiked most of them, but again, I was reallllly slow. I hit some spots of pretty bad vegitation that was much worse than mapped, that slowed me, also many spots where I tried to contour were too steep to really run much. At any rate, any time I ran it wasn't usally for a very sustained period of time until the end of the course. Starting with #7 the woods began to open up a bit and we were generally moving in a downward direction so I was able to run more, I actually picked up enough speed that I blew right past #9, I hit a trail right after I passed it and relocated quickly and found it fine so it was a minor error in comparison to #'s 1 &2.

Still quite disappointed with how today went. This weekend wasn't that great for me in general orienteering wise :( I guess I should keep taking it easy, although I had hoped to pick it back up again this week...

C • Overdoing it. 3