Training Log Archive: W

Well, I cut Croeso short and headed home after just 3 races and 4 days. Not only was it going to be a massive pain to try and get there, but I just was no longer feeling the health love, and I'm mildly sick of orienteering. Whodathunkit!

Well, my performance is steadily going downhill, and quite a bit of uphill as well.

Another day out on the fells for day 4 of Croeso. One would think that a vast open hillside would be pretty easy, but it was actually surprisingly difficult at times, particularly with quite a bit of rock feature and sidehilling. Despite being sick, I actually started off fairly well, though I made a bit of mistake on number 4. Number 5 was a classic, an epic long leg that spanned the entire map. I love those kind of controls. It wasn't a hugely difficult route choice leg, but they are still great to have, in my opinion.

On my way to five, though, I tripped on a rock and on the way down slammed the meaty part of my quad on an unseen rock, which required several minutes of hobbling before running again. It caused a lot of weakness in my left leg, though, since taking a lot of force on that leg was pretty painful. It led to another few trips on that leg.

After that, things went down rapidly, a bunch more climb started to make me really tired and the congestion gave me quite the headache, and the leg was making downhill running pretty unpleasant. I made quite a few errors for the next 10 or so controls; being unable to tell where I was on the side of a hill, going to short or too far, having bad compass bearings. Wait a minute, those are all the things I screw up normally!

Anyway, there was a lot of walking by the end, and I honestly don't know my result in the end, and would really rather not know. Orienteering is really starting to get old by now.

Rest day from Croeso 6-day, featuring wandering around town, a bad cold, allergies, and a remarkably swollen second toe.

Another day of Wales 6-day. A middle distance. Kind of a weird map, for no other reason that I couldn't figure it out. Despite being quite close in reality, there were features that appeared really far apart on the map. Made a big mistake on number 3 in the twilight zone, I eventually found it and discovered it was pretty much fallen over on its side in the ravine, so it was even harder to see than normal.

The rest was mistake filled of all kinds, and all started to feature a rather unpleasant cold, and some seriously aggressive allergies. I don't know where they came from, but I had run out of allergy pills and I was super allergic to everything. So I'd run along with nose running, sneezing, and teary eyes. It was a new and unpleasant experience.

C • me too 3

*phew*, well, time to begin the racing train again. Instead of going to O-Ringen like all the cool kids, I headed to Aberystwyth in Wales for the Croeso 6-day. Or, well, at least 4 of the days. Day 1 was underneath a very large open hill. That's pretty much what all the Wales days are like. Lots of contours, rock, and wide wide open moorland. Totally different from what I've been doing for the last month.

Relatively easy, biggest challenge was just making sure you could minimize the climb. There were quite a few occasions where everything looked like everything as well. It was going quite well until 8 to 9 where I was concerned that I'd hurt myself on the way down a rocky bit, and I promptly put my foot down and it bridged to rocks and really extended my toes to a point that its really not meant to go to. The result was a fair amount of pain for a couple minutes, until I generally got over it, though it distracted me from my navigation and I drifted left. Generally the rest of it was problem free. Though maybe could have again worked more on really attacking the control in and out.