Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Quickroute
Winsplits

A fun day orienteering. What a fun course, a real long distance. Not my most inspired performance. Little hesitations all over the place and a big mistake on 4, and running slowly enough that winsplits doesn't even pick up on all the other stuff that I consider to be a mistake.

On the positive side, the orienteering felt a lot like the WC in Norway earlier this summer, with the same kind of terrain, and I handled today much better.

C • my favourite place to be! 8

Quickroute
Winsplits

Awesome orienteering weekend! Superfriends convinced me to signup for the weekend's races and then we took the club minivan and stayed in a cute cottage just next to the competition center.

Felt great running-wise. Running uphill makes me stupid, and so on my way to the 2nd, lost confidence, and thought that I was too low passing a different cliff, leading to my first 2min error. Fighting my compass a bit, but keeping it together until control 8, where the feature was really tough to see. I checked off the boulder but pulled up short when I couldn't discern a dot knoll in front of me. Used the yellow marsh to know I was about right, but waffled back and forth a bit before I was able to use the triangulation of other incoming runners to pick up the flag.

Last big error was on 19, misread the marshes, and actually got enough off my line that I hit 20, and used that to relocate.

Lots of swimming in the lake afterward. Awesome day.

Unintentional Rest Day

Truth is, if you miss out on the normal running time, and then it starts to rain, it is hard to motivate and get out there. Body seemed to like the rest though, so maybe it was good for that.

Playing games until late in the evening. Feeling motivated to go out and run, and weather was actually pretty great. Cooler than during the day, and kind of fun and exotic to run so late. I guess it counts as Midnattsloppet training, though I only went for half an hour.

Wow, very surprised at how tender I feel after yesterday's intervals. My calves especially were super tight today, to the point where it was affecting my ability to go down stairs.

Went running from the lab, with the intention of loosening up. Had hoped to run a bit harder and a bit longer, but this was what I had in me today.

In the afternoon, the prevailing winds shifted or something and now all of Uppsala is smothered by smoke from the big forest fire directly to the west of us. It's a serious fire and there is enough white smokey haze that I can't make out the dom kyrka spires from here.

Up north along the river, then back through town. Back and showered before the next and last timepoint in today's experiment.

Pried myself up and forced myself out the door. Feeling super tired, but knew that I should go out and train. Calves tight on the way to KG and from KG to the start of intervals in stadsskogen. Pretty high Blodan population in the crew today, Rassmus, David, Lovisa, Lisa, Elisa, Petra and Karna.

A few running drills, and then into the session. 4-7 x (2',1',1', 30") with 30" rest after each interval and 2' rest between sets.

Session was hard. Really quite hot and humid and my legs were tired from yesterday's run on pavement. Also, chasing after Rassmus and David is tough work. (Incidentally, this was David's 2nd interval session of the day, the first was 8x3' that he did after lunch).

Rassmus was aiming to do 4 sets, as he is winding down into a taper before WUOC and after my first interval I was thinking to do the same. Made it through the first 4 sets congratulated ourselves and started jogging back. Then Lisa and Lovisa were all set to do a 5th set, and so David and I were convinced to join in as well. Last set was tough, and it was great to have Lisa and Lovisa as positive peer pressure.

C • Yay for positive peer pressure 1

I miss the half marathon Monday's we used to run from the castle. If I had been more organized, I would have put this up on the training's bank, but it was nice to go out with just my podcasts and run pretty hard on a very flat and very easy loop around Uppsala. I designed the loop to be easy to do on autopilot. Beautiful out today, though warm.

I ran in just my team shorts, and was really unhappy about the number of kamikaze black flies that got stuck, squirming in my sweat as I ran back towards the city from Sävja. Tried to keep the 4min/k pace, but just got tired for the last kilometer or two. That's where it would be nice to have some company on these long runs I guess.

C • Faster 2