Training Log Archive: W

Legs felt happy enough to go for a little longer run at a little faster pace around the soidenlampi and Ladun Maija. Even after a year of running in that area I'm noticing new trails that I haven't run before that I could try. They just keep popping up out of nowhere! Which is a good thing! Except when they run closer to the dump. That smells less nice.

Monday evening run, with my legs feeling sore, maybe from the long run, maybe from the race on Saturday. In all my legs have been feeling pretty tired lately. Which, of course means, I should probably just train harder. Right? RIGHT??

Trying to get into the swing of long runs again, since I all but stopped doing them over the summer, except for maybe, most long distance races in Europe! Anyway, nice crisp fall day for around past mustalampi and then a tour around and to the top of Laajavuori. Lots of rolling trails with ups and downs, and really not very many people. Hip flexors pretty tired by the end, which drives me a little crazy because I feel like I religiously do hip core. Like, after every workout.

Event: 2015 Seattle Adventure Running Tournament
 

Well, I daresay whatever high I was on, has finally worn off. Or maybe I should have taken a gel, I'm not sure.

I was in sort of a quasi-end-of-season break for a few days, but that didn't stop me from pedaling an unfortunately long way over to Vaajakoski for a little XC race. There was 100 euros up for grabs, which was cool, but I was pretty sure someone else faster would win it. So maybe I took the race too casually. Either way, the start happened and I seemed to cruise to the front, with one fellow behind me. But, really, after 2k I was already feeling really tired. The legs didn't have a lot of energy, I could feel my calves being tight already, and by the end of the first lap, we were going at a pretty pedestrian pace and I was not feeling great.

Eventually other fellow (who turns out to be one of the best XC skiers in Finland) took the lead, and on the last uphill made a gap of about 20 meters, which I was quite certain down the last downhill I would in no way be able to close, so he just pulled away. We were well enough ahead that once he was out of reach I was not really pushing any more and he put a total of maybe 100 meters by the finish. Not exactly a high-speed finish for me. I really would have liked those 100 euros and I tried, but my legs just got too-lactate-y by the end, even my arms and upper body were feeling really tight.

So, I feel like whatever was fueling me the last few weeks has run out, and I will be thankful to maybe not race this weekend (although technically there are two races on Thursday). I figure those three days off were good enough for the time being, and tomorrow I'll really start training for the half-marathon (although recent life changes might make that not possible, either).

Instead of winning 100 euros, I won a 50 euro gift card to a sports shop in Kyyjärvi, which would be great, if Kyyjärvi wasn't TWO HOURS AWAY. And its not like its in the direction of Helsinki or Tampere. Its north, towards Kokkala. When in the world am I going to go there in the next 6 months?

Its been a busy busy few days. This week has been a symposium on "combined endurance and strength training: from theory to practice", which I wasn't allowed to attend. But I snuck in anyway.

Unfortunately, many of the talks were based on studies with recreational runners. Some interesting take home messages for me were:

- Combined session Endurance and Strength training is not a bad idea, but going S + E definitely diminishes the quality of the endurance training.

- Evenings are, in general, best if you're going to do an ES session, which is similar to previous suggestions that evenings are better for S anyway.

- Hypertrophy strength is not so great for runners (obviously). Endurance strength is a solid injury preventer, but the best performance gains come from either maximal strength (70-100% 1RM, 4-6 reps, 2-3 mins rest) or explosive strength (0-60% 1RM, low reps, high velocity - in the load phase, 3-4 mins rest).
These really needed at least 6 weeks to be effective, though.

- Plyos are also a good idea - and he referred to one particular article which lists the exact workouts they did to produce the study "Short-term plyometric training improves running economy in highly trained middle and long distance runners" (Saunders et al. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research) - I figure the title is all you need to know.

Anyway, since I'm planning on putting strength back into the training program, this was super interesting stuff.

A few days off, then its back at it with more racing! (a little 7k trail race). And then there's another one on Thursday at noon. (who holds an event on a Thursday at noon?)

C • I've heard... 3

Night-o season has begun! YAY! And, NOOOO!

See, one thing I quite like about sprinting is that its safe for my joints. And by bones. And my toes. And my skin. Night-orienteering around Jyvaskyla is the complete opposite of that. Its dangerous and painful. But night orienteering is also awesome, and for my first go of the year, I was really happy with how some of this went.

I asked for some advice for what to work on for this training, and the focus was to use HUGE features. Just stick with big ones, and check off small ones, and then be good with the compass. For a few controls that actually worked really well, strong on my compass, and big features. In some cases the big features were actual flat plateus on hillsides, which I rarely recognize in the daylight, let alone in the dark. I suppose here, though, I had to keep my eyes on the immediate vicinity, and so I was able to recognize that right around me, it had gotten much flatter.

It wasn't perfect, no doubt, but that was great for a first night-o. Maybe next time I'll try to do it at higher speed.

Day after double-sprint run. I was going to do a long run, but my legs were more tired than I thought, so it was cut short. BUT! I did find a nice new trail to run on that makes a new-ish loop, with the exception of my 500 meters where I have to brush through stinging nettles. That part is less fun.

Finnish Champs Qualification! So, in Finnish champs there is a qualification and final. I think its 13 people that make the final from each heat, and there's 4 heats. Last year I was 8th in my heat. Obviously the goal was to make the final, but, that middle of the pack area from last year didn't make me too confident this year, I figured I still had to run pretty hard, because, come on, I'm in Europe. There are like 300 better orienteers to every 1 Canadian orienteer.

I somehow ended up with a pretty late start, which meant I started with other hotshot who freakin' took off on the word go. Just, flying. I find, these days, that I really want to get a grip on what I'm doing before really really accelerating, and their mad dash to the start triangle maybe gave them a 5-10 meter advantage.

So, with my calm, calm demeanor and easy pace, I headed off to making a mistake on number 1. I wasn't supremely confident going downhill on an open forest hillside, so I decided to stay along the top and then go around the building. But, to go where I want to go, I had to go around the building, and then hard right down some tiny tiny stairs and under an underpass, but, I didn't realize this until I looked to my right, saw it, and kept going another 10 meters onto the terrace one level above where I needed to be. Thus, I had to stop, turn around, and head down the stairs.

Now already I'm on the back foot a little. I'm hardly certain if I can qualify at all if I don't make mistakes, and I just made a 10 second mistake. I wouldn't say I panicked, but I really didn't feel like I could mess around. And, really, I didn't, the little mistake pulled me back into reality, amped up my focus, and I stayed very sharp up top, doing lots of planning, glancing at my exits and future controls, reading control descriptions, and not smashing into anyone else (though there were some close calls.

After crossing the road into a little housing estate, I noticed there were a few fake fences which kept me from getting trapped in a few places, and, again, there were brief stretches where I had the time to read ahead, know where I was going, and anticipate more traps. But, given my earlier mistake and this being qualifiers, I couldn't dare tone down the pace.

And then, the ultimate fear, controls 15-19 were basically deadrunning across on open field. I had glimpses of 6-7 Yannick clones turning on the jets here, putting on 20-25 seconds on me and knocking me out of the final, so I still pushed pretty hard right into the finish. There's no doubt that effort in the qualifier hurt my performance for any race I would do in the afternoon, A-final or not.

Even more regret came when I printed off my splits. Rank - #1. Whoops.

Soon after Yannick came in and bumped me down, but I ended up qualifying second in my heat, 11 seconds behind Mr. Michiels. I could have run 1:05 slower and still qualified.

I have little doubt that many of those top guys cruised a bit in their run, and obviously I could have too. The problem is the only other sprint I've ever done with a Qualifier is WOC or a World Cup, and in both cases I absolutely need to run my balls off to even have a shred of hope of qualifying. And its happened once in 7 tries. I just can't switch off. This is a race. And sometimes I feel I'm doing a disservice to the race organizers and other competitors by not giving it my best effort. I regret not slowing down to save some energy, but on the other hand, I don't.

And regardless of if they slacked off, I was 12 seconds back of Yannick. Nice.

C • Crappy choice of control description 1

Sprint final time! This was weird. I was starting at nearly the end of the race with all the hotshots. I really felt out of place. If it were me I'd almost rather start in the middle. I like the middle. Its comfortable.

Anyway, I was definitely feeling the morning race. Maybe at this point it was all psychosomatic, I don't know. But the fact that SSL wouldn't accept my proof of having lived in Finland since the beginning of the year and thus making me ineligible for a medal was a little comforting. I was just focused on having a race I can be proud of.

Unfortunately, focusing on a positive attitude meant I failed to focus on two important things: 1) Artificial fences. 2) Dots in the control circles when it was unclear. (I'll get to moaning about this one later)

Yes, my brain had not gotten into "artificial fence mode", which put me on the back foot halfway through leg 1 where my plan was cut off halfway through by a fence. Fortunately, I was able to correct without going much off course, but then I again got busted by one on two as well. So, probably 10-15 seconds lost there on slightly inefficient route choices.

Like in qualification this made me extremely vigilant for a while. My speed was not high, but my brain was working really well and I did almost everything right, though really starting to have a tough time physically by the run through.

After the run through, though, it retrospectively all went wrong. And I'll rant about this after, so you don't have to read it. Needless to say, I lost some time on the control after the run through, and it annoys me. I think I lost a bit more time on the next few controls with a bit of hesitations, a loss of confidence where I felt the need to check my control description and mis-read the number, and then another hard run across an open field where I think I probably lost time to speed stars.

In reality - Over the last 3 controls (~300m?), I lost only 1 second to Mr. 7:59 3000m. WOW! Really proud of that. I even won the dead straight running leg through the stadium 3/4 of the way through the race. Hot diggity dawg!

Last year I was 31st at Finnish sprint champs. This year I was 12th. I wasn't the top Terä guy, which would have been really nice (down 7 seconds to Antti). But I was well ahead of the rest of the boys in the final. This last month has transformed my position on the team as "That Canadian who is not so great at orienteering", to "The sprinter". Which... uh... is sort of an improvement!

I can't help but wonder if things would have been a bit different if I had taken it easier in the qualifier, and without those few mistakes. I regret missing this opportunity because I really felt free of expectation, and next year I'm not have that luxury. But, whatever, I was 12th! 55 seconds behind Yannick, which would have put me top 30 at WOC. I've always seemed to race quite well in September, and I'm really happy with this performance. On the Finnish sprint list I'm now 18th, since I finally have 5 ranking sprint results.

-----------------------
Winge time. I've said before that I often get frustrated with the seemingly intentionally mis-leading control descriptions that appear to be trendy in sprinting now. I've experienced races where I've felt the course planner chose an illogical (though technically correct) description choice that feels like its meant to be confusing or misleading. That seemed a little like the case at #14 of this course. Here's the control location:



Now, before the race, I scanned through the control descriptions looking for the usual traps, main if there were any "inside corners" of anything. There weren't. So I didn't worry too much. As I ran up the hill from 13 I check the control description for 14, and it said this:



In the context of the middle of sprint race, I really and truly had no idea what this meant. I couldn't remember that that's the symbol for trail (duh). I considered the possibilities and since I really wasn't sure where the control was, I took the south route which was slower, but if the control happened to be on the outside, I wouldn't be trapped like if I took the other route. Naturally, the control was on the inside of the fence, so I had to go around and lost 16 seconds on the fastest time, and 9 seconds on Yannick.

I simply don't think that saying the control was at the "SW end of path" is in any way helpful or informative, even though it may be technically correct. It feels like a sneaky way to artificially create route choice and time loss.

Now, to be fair, they said before hand that there would be purple dots in the middle of the circle showing where the control is. And I had a magnifier, so I could have zoomed in to see it. BUT, this was the ONLY control that had the dot, so by that point I had sort of stopped using it. So, I can't say I didn't have an alternative opportunity to make the right decision.

Also, that corner of the fence is not normally closed, there is an opening, but they tapped it off (effectively making it an artificial fence), so maybe then by definition you can't call that a fence corner?

But really, I think everyone would have expected that description to be "Fence - Inside Corner". And seriously the control was tucked RIGHT into the corner. When I ran past it, if I was using touch free, I would have accidentally punched it because it was right on the corner. I could have easily reached through the tapes and punched it manually. It was that corner-y. Why choose a weird description like what they did?

Still, it was a really fun race. I give props to Finns for trying to jazz up sprinting around their towns that are generally all the same.

C • Congrats 12

Alas, I have no more sprint training to do before Finnish Champs tomorrow, so I just went for a run and through in a few strides while I was at it. My goodness, I sure do accelerate slowly. I would eventually get up to a fast speed during the strides, but it took an awful long time. Its one of my biggest weaknesses when it comes to sprint orienteering. The less I have to stop the better. Though, on the other hand, its not like touch-free SI was really marvelously better, as did equally poor at the WOC sprints.

Maybe it would be better if you had to do something else at each control, like.... shoot a soccer ball... play tetris....or something.

Another brisk sprint training around the university. Not the most difficult map in the world, but lots of short legs meant it was good practice to stay on task, focus on the important things to do. Like... watch the ultimate frisbee practice outside Agora. Yeah. That's what I meant.

Legs are still pretty fatigued, so my idea for this week is to alternate between rest days and slightly faster sprint training today. So, Monday I grabbed some Keskusta maps headed to the city center to do a nice training made on the map that Juha made. 3 x 1.5-ish k or so, which I ran at brisk but not fast pace.

This map would be super nice if there just weren't quite so many fences. Its a common thing with Finnish towns to have things block off so that usually sprint courses enter a little residential area and then exit the same way. Then you run down the street to the next one and repeat the process. Unfortunately, that's what downtown Jyvaskyla is like in a lot of places. Which is not too exciting. There is some more interesting multi-level stuff over near the bus station. So that was cool.

Well, my legs are just a tad tired from yesterday's 10k, but I was already registered for this sprint in Tampere, so.... let's do it! I can't actually remember the name of the race, something about some guy's name and gold and something.... whatever.

I knew my legs were tired and I also didn't have a control description holder or my magnifier, so this sprint was about doing some basic stuff, not trying to run really really hard (because my calves were burning), and keep my focus high at all times.

Missing the control description holder was one of the sillier problems, I found myself checking the map's description for the numbers just in case, which was probably not necessary, but, it did make me feel more secure for the first 3-4 controls. It might have been nice to have my magnifier too, for a couple of the really, really short legs.

In general, though, I raced pretty well, I missed doing some planning in the last set of short short legs and lost some time not realizing that there was an out of bounds area blocking my way towards the last control. Might have been cool to see how well I would have done without the leg fatigue, since I did okay with it. Promising sign for next week if I can get my legs in order by then.

Finlandia Marathon Valon Kymppi! I haven't done a 10k since the climb-y one in the spring, nor have I really been training specifically for this, but I figured I could have *probably* hit a PB since its a relatively flat course (with a few exceptions), and my previous 10k PB came as part of a 10mile race (34:19). I figured, sub-34:00 at least is probably reasonable.

I started off with getting a ribbon to the face. They had that thing where they didn't want people to cross the line so they had a tape that one guy on one end would try to pull really fast out of the way. As I stood there with minutes before the start I got to thinking how this would end badly for me, being on the far right side. And it did, since there was no way the guy was going to be able to pull the ribbon away in the split second I would take one step into it. So, as expected, ribbon to the face. Surely there's a better way to do that.

The plan was to start off controlled as I like to do, and then slowly claw back towards people in front of me. But then I lost my mind and saw one guy who was moving pretty good and decided I wanted to run with him. I was able to hang on to him for about 2.5k, but then he slowly pulled away because there was simply no way I could hang on to that pace. I did the first 3000m in 9:28, which is actually 5 seconds slower than my 3000m PB. So.... I was living dangerously.

Although I kept trying to push and keep him in sight, he slowly pulled away, and by the crossing of the Mattilaniemi bridge on the second lap, I'd completely lost sight of the lead bike light, but I was also well ahead of third. So, although the "race" was over, I was still trying to push as best I could without checking my watch. I was worried if I was behind a PB time I'd slow down and risk getting caught. No doubt my speed dropped on that second lap, and I wonder if I could have run faster if he was in sight, but, whereas I dropped about 40 seconds on the second lap, the winner actually went FASTER on the second lap, and put on an extra minute over 5k. Yikes. He was quick.

Nevertheless, despite that slight drop in motivation on the second lap, I still managed to PB at the finish, by over a minute for a time of 33:17. I have little doubt that with some other racers around me I could have gone sub-33, and now that I'm close enough to that barrier, I have a new target to enthusiastically chase on the road.

Also, amazing evening for a race, +15-ish, just starting to get dark on the second lap. Trails could have been lit a little bit better, though, it was getting a little dark in the forest! Also, Finlandia Marathon had an amazing race kit, because it consisted of a ton of different food. No papers or ads or anything, just food. Awesome.

C • 10 PB 4

Warm-up and cool-down and round numbers.

So tomorrow is that 10k I was talking about! And since I haven't run fast for a little while, I thought it woudl be prudent to go out and do a nice little 10x1min session. Nothing terrible fast, not even 10k pace, but around 3:30, 3:40, just to feel what its like to run fast and not trip over things (ironically, on the way up the stairs to my place, I tripped on the stairs).

Fall is in full swing now which means it smells like wet fallen leaves, but its warm and sunny. Mun lempikausi.

Took a few more days off after the failure of Finnish long distance champs to get my head back on right. I decided to really change things up by doing my usual loop... BACKWARDS. I know, right! This is crazy stuff. And it was a refreshing change. Nice because its not as steep a climb right off the start, a little bit more gradual and the paved part happens first rather than at the end. Maybe I should make this is a habit.

Actually it feels really no different. But I don't know why it took me a year to decide to do it in a different direction.

Sunday's race, the "final that no one cares about", like, F-final, or L-final, something like that. It was a funny course, there's a long lake in the middle of the map, so basically the course went straight along one side of the lake, and then straight back on the other. In both cases I had basically a string of 4 controls that were in a straight line.

Although I ran somewhat slowly, I didn't make any major mistakes until the end when my mind wandered off to some enchanted grove somewhere and I found myself without the slightest clue of where I was on a vague hillside (turns out I hadn't gone far enough). Much screwing around later I eventually found the control, but wasted an indeterminate amount of time and turned a fairly solid race into another disappointing one. Sometimes I took some risks that I wasn't wildly comfortable with, but I was able to see small features along the way and they turned out okay. So there is certainly some satisfaction to be had, having done things I probably wouldn't have done years ago. So, positive.

Well, its been a pretty lousy few days, so it was hard to keep my head in the game for the qualifier race for SM-Pitka matka (Finnish Champs Long). Although many controls when quite well, particularly number 1, which I feel like I nailed at high speed, at 12 I made a mistake, and then 13, and then 14, and at that point the discouragement hit real real hard and the mistake at 15 was a product of feeling sorry about myself and all other various things about my life just at that second, and I pretty much stopped doing anything. I think we can all agree we have that at some point, and personally since I knew I wasn't making the A-final and probably not enough the first B-final, it was more of a jog the last kilometer so in the hopes of not hurting myself.

And then I tripped and broke the magnifier on my compass. So, not only did I break my gear, I did it at the end of crappy race, so I can't even use it as an excuse! Most everything is definitely not coming up Milhouse.

Well, hard to believe its not been just over a full year in Finland. Its been full of plenty of high highs and some remarkably low lows (coincidentally, these last few days have been some solid lows), and although I have significantly less money than I once did, I'm sure I'm significantly richer in spirit. Though certainly not richer in work ethic, it would seem.

Technically, I only have about 9 months left of my Sport Psych program. I don't feel much like halfway to becoming something resembling someone who deserves a master's of sport psych, but maybe I will turn things around and start to get some ideas. Although I have collected my data for my thesis, it is not great, is taking a long time, and I'm not quite sure where its going. I also don't have a practicum yet, and I'm really not sure how I'm going to manage that. There's some opportunities to teach, but I don't want that to be the only thing I do for applied work.

But, in the bigger picture, I'm far more worried about what's going to happen after those months are over. I have some inklings of ideas of a topic if I really wanted to do a phD, but I couldn't do it here in Jyväskylä since it is not remotely close to a field of any of the psychology professors here. On one hand, I would like to stay in Finland. Not for an incredibly long time, at the very least another summer. But, at the moment, though, I have nothing to do here, and my Finnish is still appallingly bad. On the other hand, I have nowhere else to go. Bit of a concern there.

So, yeah. But! I've also already surpassed my total orienteering distance from last year by 10 kilometers, and we're only in September. Glass 1/8 full! (Finnish optimism)

A little 1:15 training down near Jamsa organized by Lasse. Three 2k intervals, which I wanted to run fast, but the terrain was awful difficult navigation and there was no flags so I just end up really being unsure of whether I'm even remotely close to the control circle. My head didn't seem to be in it since I could seem to spot big features or even see small ones along the way. Not a great training.

Its beginning to feel a hell of a lot like autumn out here! Cool breeze, smells like fall, leaves falling, I like fall. Still not necessary to wear 3/4s or windbriefs, but the gloves are starting to come out. That's a weird habit I've gotten into, its like, if its below 15, I find myself wearing gloves.