Training Log Archive: W

Full break day. Fully.

Travel day from Sweden to Scotland! Although a long day of taxis and planes and buses, I really wanted to do a little shakeout road run with a little sprint training in Edinburgh. Unfortunately the control picking exercise didn't get printed, but I did one of the sprints around downtown Edinburgh and it was really fun. Quite difficult and I needed liberal use of my magnifier to identify where I could get through and where I couldn't. Tried to focus on the things I learned from the Elite Sprint at O-Ringen and they were put to good use here when running along a straight road and trying to figure out which turn I needed.

Although I wasn't running super fast the focus was mostly still there and given the technical difficultly I'm not even sure how much faster I could have run and not made big mistakes!

O-Ringen Day 5 (or 6). The chase day! Last time I was in O-Ringen I was in the chase start of the elite category as well - 89:30 behind. Yes, I made the chase start, by 30 seconds. This time was about half that gap after 5 days, which was a bit of an improvement! I had a couple people starting just ahead of me, including a club mate, and a couple just behind. So, by the long leg of #4, we had grouped up a little and had a train of 5 going until another long leg to 8 and we broke up into a group 3. The fellow from Belgium was definitely at the front driving the group, and he was doing a great job with navigation. He was nailing the control locations and was quite fit but I was able to hang with him because I'd sometimes take slightly more efficient route choice and end up right on his tail again without having to expend much effort.

Unfortunately, at 17, I thought he was going up the wrong re-entrant (which he wasn't) and I lost his back, and then lost the other guy after hurrying and making a mistake on the next control. Now by myself, my control taking pace decreased quite significantly and I actually managed to lose 4 minutes to them in the last 20 minutes of the race, doh. I think the losses were compounded by coming into an area of downhill and sidehill controls which always make me anxious because I have trouble with them and wanted to keep errors to a minimum. Still, I went too high on one control, and then picked up a tail myself who contributed absolutely nothing to our joint efforts to find the last few controls. There was no way I was going to let him past on the long straight run over the last two controls,

Super fun to run into the stadium and polish off 6 stages of O-Ringen, which I would assume really doesn't happen very happen, or ever. I only know of two other people who did it this year.

A little disappointed with how my speed dropped off once I lost the group, though, if I could have hung on I was in for a certain top 10 place, since I would have gone sub-100 minutes. Still, top 20 is satisfactory for the sixth race in sixth days and it was a great lesson in running with a group and a speed higher than I probably would have otherwise achieved alone. I lead the group sometimes myself which was also great practice.

After six long days I'm also pleased at how my legs feel pretty okay and that my navigation and focus is still progressively getting better. Had quite a few irrelevant thoughts today but perhaps being in the group meant I had more opportunities to drift off into space because I had not a lot to think about while other people were doing the navigation.

I'm pretty sure that's not a good thing.

Day 3 (or 4) of O-Ringen. If there was any race I was going to skip, it might have been this one. I had been resolved that if it was pouring heavily, I'd not do it. Unfortunately, it was a super nice day and so I couldn't possibly. Then I thought, "well, I'll just do some of the course". But then I saw the long leg and wanted to try to go straight and at that point I was at the furthest part of the course and there was really no sense to not do the rest of the course and 96 minutes later I did the whole thing.

Oops.

I wouldn't say I was blasting at all points of the race, but I was going fast enough to try to tax my orienteering skills and force me to continue to pay attention. Made a bit of a mistake on three with another green rock, and it was entirely a product of more poor compass work. I knew I just needed to stay rock solid with my compass while going through the green, but... didn't.

Near the end of the course, there was also a couple super vague controls in some green, which although had plenty of elephant tracks, was still kind of scary and I took it pretty slow and cautiously. Nice day, nice orienteering, I'm glad I did it, though my intense fear of getting sick is getting worse and worse.

O-Ringen Day 4 (or 5). The middle distance day. I was also very much on the fence about this race, since I have no interest in the WOC middle (now, at least), but, yet again, it wasn't raining, so I was cool with toughing it out, and it was almost certainly worth it! Really nice forest, with little round hills. Not a lot of it was remarkably difficult, but a few legs the forest thickened up quite a bit and you had to cross some marshes in the hopes of hitting the intended round hill on the other side.

Ultimately that's how I lost most of my time; seeing some super scary legs and practically walking to them to keep my time loss to a minimum. On some legs, in retrospect, the actual location of the control was pretty easy, it was just everything in between was really difficult. It was a little bit too much paranoia and fear, especially on one leg where it was across a hill ridge with tons of rocks and features, but ultimately the final feature was an extremely clear round hill at the far end of the ridge. So, who cares about the stuff in the middle?

In general, it was a mistake free race, but just not very fast. I suppose its just another building block in trying to find that level of speed and precision that is optimal for me. My threshold. I guess we could call this a "push" day, rather than a "pull" day.

In the context of aerobic thresholds, pull days are great. In orienteering technique... a little risky.

Rest day at O-Ringen! And by rest day, I mean sprint day! Last time I was at O-Ringen, I got to do the elite sprint (being in the elite category), and it was super fun.

The first half was mega technical, and made very difficult by two turns before the start triangle. For some reason, that always makes things quite tough. You immediately get quite turned around and everything gets a little bit panicky. I managed to recover and hit the first 3 pretty well before number 4 which was a longer leg and had many, many traps in it. I navigated the really tough part well but then turned a turn too early at one point into a dead end. It was only 4-5 steps but enough to probably lose 10 seconds. Too bad.

There were more tricky legs that involved a few map stops and some liberal magnifier use to be able to see if I could get through certain gaps. Number 8 in particular was difficult just to figure out how to get into the mini-cage that the control was in. I often fail to realize that a great way to determine where to turn when running along a row of many passages is to use landmarks on the other side of the road. Here, I stopped a few times to try to count before realizing I just needed to turn when there was a cliff on the other side of the road. No problem.

The second part of the course was super easy and all a running race. Two days of long distances took its toll on my legs a little, and although I don't think I was going my absolute, "try to qualify for WOC final", hard pace, I was running pretty quick and staying focused on having perfect exit directions or even spotting the controls ahead of going towards them. So, no hesitations, just smooth and powerful running. Not relaxed running, though. Could definitely been more relaxed.

I was still well behind the winners, but most of them hadn't already done two days of racing, and I would have placed 30th in the Elite class, which is a far cry from the 60-something I placed 5 years ago.

So.... improvement! And fun! And sprint relay at WOC!

Day 2 of O-Ringen. But, really, who cares anymore?Yeah, I still want to race well, but my pace is a bit lower and I'm just trying to do the right things and with strong focus. This stage was a little bit more of the same as Day 1 with spongy ground and runs across marshes, but also a little bit more climb and some really pleasant areas of white. And a whole bunch more road running. There was a long leg where the obvious route seemed to be going slightly right and on the road, which provided a whole ton of time to look at the whole course and plan where I'm totally going to blow it.

Okay, so I didn't quite plan that, but I did certainly blow it at 16. I haven't had a chance to plot in on QR, but I can tell that generally I was going straight, but coming over one of the hill sides I suspect I saw another re-entrant to my right and failed to check my compass and got sucked down that way and was now doing 90 degree parallel errors. This lead me to having no idea where I was and I found myself climbing the hill back to the road to relocate and continue.

A big time loss which marred an otherwise fairly good run, which is disappointing, but if I look at it "binarily", it was generally quite good with a large number of error-free controls. I unfortunately missed one obvious route choice during the middle of the course which I shouldn't have, which just means I need to make sure I invest an extra second when leaving the controls, especially if I haven't had time to plan.