Training Log Archive: Charlie

Lovely crisp morning in the Plaça de la Font awaiting the start of the last sprint in the old town of Tarragona. The other day we saw a quite wonderful video representation of the ancient Roman city fading back and forth to the modern one. This plaza is what remains of the circus where the chariot races were held in front of a huge stadium. Bits of the old city remain, including parts of the old wall both ancient and medieval. Quite a beautiful city.

C • 1

C • Tarragona 1

Best result of the week, 4th of 22 in my group. Just one small bobble, stopped one intersection short at #13, and pondered it for a while. Otherwise mostly slow to puzzle out the route, particularly in the part up on the wall. Very satisfactory. Physical inventory: definitely better than when I started, pain from the fall a few weeks back much less, back held up well. One hamstring a little tender, but no incidents with it.

There will be no track, as the watch did not respond to me pushing the start button.

Stage 9 Tarragona old town 4/22 M70

C • feeling better 5

Forest race today in Les Pinedes Castillejos, an hour north of Tarragona. The area around the start finish was the ruined remainder of some kind of development, lots of broken walls, concrete slabs, broken steps, piles of rubble. Overall, the run was good. Lost some time, mostly in the early going, but no huge errors and ended up 9th out of 22. It was pretty hard, and a lot of people were out there wandering.

I learned something on every leg. Leg 1 I learned that all the rubble is in fact not on the map, and I lost some time trying to find it. On leg 2 I learned to stay on the trails. I tried a diagonal through “white” woods and it was pretty miserable, high stepping over stony ground with low scratchy bushes. On leg 3 I found a patch of medium green to be darned near impassable. On leg 4 I was approaching a control that seems it would be easy, a small reentrant or gully at the low point of a broad reentrant, but I found the land had a lot more shape than I was expecting. After that I settled down, or maybe it got easier. Had no trouble with my #9, in that it was right in the middle of the circle, but it was hung so low in a tiny depression that it was not visible from more than 2meters away. Very satisfied overall with the run and the result, and the general experience of being up at this forest.

Stage 8 Castillejos 9/22 M70

Night sprint in the old town of Montblanc. Old walled city and a fun race, mostly good, with a short backtrack to get inside the wall on the way to #1, than fine until I took a wrong turn out of 7 and couldn’t puzzle out why the street seemed so wrong, persisted long enough that I had to make a complete circuit by 7 again before heading outside the wall to #8. Yikes! That cost two minutes, an eternity in such a tight race. Ended up 12th out of around 20, but the mistakes cost 6 places.

A nice visit with Greg Ahlswede before and after. Also had a chance to chat up Jonas Leandersson who is a good friend of Erik Nystrom.

Stage 7 Montblanc Night Sprint 12/22 M70

Event: MOC Championship Mediterranean Open Championship
 

Park sprint in Francoli Park in the city, walking distance from our very centrally located hotel. The time kept getting pushed back, so that first starts ended up happening around 6:20, but then they started people every few seconds, and it wasn’t too dark. Dark enough to make the map reading tricky. Anyway, pretty easy navigation and I was mostly running as hard as I could. One slight error when I tried to cross a wooded hill to my #10 and got hung up in deadfall instead of going around on the road, maybe 10 seconds, and one more significant one where I stopped short and looked around for a bit on my #11 before realizing I had to go a bit further - maybe 30 seconds. Otherwise pretty spot-on. Fun, glad to get in before dark.

Alas, the WiFi is pretty terrible in this otherwise very nice hotel.

Stage 6 Francoli Park Tarragona 3/15 M70

Bus ride to Tarragona, where we will stay the rest the of the trip. Nice town, boulevards with statues at the major intersections, walked out to the sea and back by a different route.

Low key city sprint in Andorra La Vella. Very long day for a not particularly interesting race. It became apparent that the whole point was to be able to say we had orienteered in Andorra. Beautiful mountains surrounding it, but the town itself is not all that interesting.

Stage 5 Andorra 6/14 M70

C • Will you be staying around ... 2

Middle distance race in sea-pine forest near the beach at Pals, east of Girona. Today they split the 65s and 70s, so not as young and sprightly a group of competitors. I was a little slow and tentative on the first two, and probably left a minute and a half or two, but after that I was more into the map and the rest of the course went well. Finally saw the results, and I was a little farther back than I thought. 10th of 17, 5 min behind the winner and 2-3 behind the next several. It was my best day physically, as well.

On the way back we stopped in Figueras and visited the charming Dali museum. A pretty fascinating place, with many, many of his works. He was quite prolific, as well as being very talented and, well, strange.

Stage 4 Pals 10/17 M70

Spent most of the day wandering around Girona with a couple of o-maps distributed by the tourist center. Points to find all around the old town on one, and then up in the hills behind town on the other. Quite a nice walk around a lovely old town and through the countryside. Started out around 9:30 and didn’t get back until almost 6:30,although there was some lunch and a cathedral tour in the middle somewhere. A really good way to get a sense of a town.