Training Archive: KikiIn the 7 days ending 2007-08-11:
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| S | M | T | W | H | F | S | |||||||
Saturday Aug 11 | ||
| Orienteering race 2:57:56 [3]*** 14 km (12:43 / km) +515m 10:44 / km | |
| 18c shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Long Champs
Sometimes, half the battle is showing up and the other half is finishing. Today was one of those days. Long courses and Cristina don't mesh - I just can't get in to them mentally. Today, mediocre performance as it was, was actually better than usual for a long. No disasters, just slow, combined with plenty of inefficient route choices. No sense of urgency at all. By about the 8th control I realized that I wasn't having much fun. I couldn't run much, I imagine a combination of the altitude and the steep slopes. So that meant that I'd look at each leg and just sigh and realize that I just had to slog through it. It wasn't that there weren't any interesting route choices (though there could have been more), it's just that my body wasn't into it today. Anyway, finished okay, and that's all it took. First (of the US eligibles) on F-21+. And yes, it is neat to win a pair of US Champs, regardless of the circumstances. ;-) | ||
| Note | |
| I think this weekend should serve as exhibit 531 (or does it have to be a letter?) for making the US Champs system a bit more svelte.
Ditch the short and long (and maybe the night-o), ditch the two-day classic, and go with one, important, focus-of-the-season, hype it up weekend of Sprint, Middle, Long. Makes them *important*, makes them more competitive, results in slightly less strain on clubs to put on champs events, saves USOF money on medals, puts us in line with international competition, etc., etc. National Championship events should be a Big Dealˇ. It's easier to have one Big Dealˇ per year than several. Hm, maybe we could even get, oh, I dunno, sponsorship? Prizes? I just get all tingly thinking about it. Honest question: why is this such a hard sell? I want to hear the objections so I can formulate my attack. :-) | ||
| C • I'm on this bandwagon... 26 | ||
| C • Not a disaster 7 | ||
Red - Splits | ||
Friday Aug 10 | ||
| Running warm up/down (trail) 10:00 [1] | |
| shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| On the way to the start, then back to my car to find my glasses (they were on the ground), then back to the start. | ||
| Orienteering race 48:16 [3]*** 4 km (12:04 / km) +150m 10:10 / km | |
| 12c shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Short Champs (Middle Champs? Maybe if we just all start calling it that we can actually make it that.)
Today will serve as my (positive) reminder that I should never give up, even after a big boom. I totally blew the first control. Like, practically lost. I think I know what I did, though. I was actually pretty close to the control, to the right, but I thought I was left and went right. Found the first control for the Brown course, though I had no idea at the time that that's what it was. Ran around for a bit (getting even farther from my control) and finally decided to bail to a big open area downhill. On the way down I realized that I was on a very narrow ridge, just like the one between the first two controls. Turned to look over my shoulder and, wouldn't you know it, there it was. At least 8 minutes lost, probably more now that I look at the splits. And this is was a 4km course. Ouch! Put my head down and ran the rest as best I could, since you never know. Maybe everyone else blew the first one, too? (A lot of people did, though mine was quite spectacular). And it went just fine. I found myself "aiming off" a bit more aggressively than necessary, but the small amount of time "lost" by doing that was probably well worth knowing which way to turn. No significant errors and I ran fairly well. The result was first in F-21+ (of the US Champs eligible), surprisingly, and not entirely satisfying for a variety of reasons. But hey, a win is a win. Significantly behind the visitor from Halden SK, not surprisingly, though I did beat her on two splits. Take 'em where you can get 'em. | ||
| C • US Champ! Cool! 3 | ||
Red - Splits | ||
Thursday Aug 9 | ||
| Note | |
| Played some StepMania this morning with my mom. I'm not sure that that will ever not be entertaining to watch.
Back to CO tonight. Wonder if I'll be able to run at all up there in the land of low density air. Goal is to recreate the good feel from Sunday's run. Oh yeah, and e-punch stick dibbler doohickey was located. Wrong coast, though at least it made it to this side of the Atlantic. | ||
| C • doohickey 3 | ||
Wednesday Aug 8 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| In to work.
Parents are in town. Haven't been able to convince them to "run" with me in that place where I keep seeing dangerous critters. | ||
| C • lost and found 6 | ||
| Cycling (road) 20:00 [2] | |
| Home. | ||
Sunday Aug 5 | ||
| Note | |
| This is why I don't like running in the mountains with storms in the area... and haven't run at Sabino at all during the monsoon season. | ||
| Orienteering race 1:22:47 | |
| ahr:184 max:198 spiked:16/17c slept:8.0 shoes: Integrators (orange) | ||
| Much better today. Almost clean. Almost.
I felt a lot better. Full night of sleep, no cramps, it was cloudy, and I guess a day of acclimation really helps with the altitude. I felt like I could actually run decently today. Not that running uphill was easy, but at least I wasn't bent in half, huffing my way up at a slow walk. Lost ~30 seconds, maybe less, on 13 when I re-folded my map for the next leg a bit prematurely and sort of lost track of where I was on the flat ridge-top. Other than that it was really quite nice orienteering - not terribly technical terrain, but neither was yesterday and I managed to goof that up for several minutes of errors. As usual, I feel like I can see where to improve much more from today's run than from yesterday's. The course was nice, definitely fun to run, but there weren't any of those major "holy crap" route choice decisions to make - probably explains why I didn't have any bigger issues. ;-) Obviously, on a course like this that allows for super fast running, I really feel out of shape. I've gained a bit of mass and haven't been running much over the summer. The latter is sort of on purpose but the former is entirely unacceptable. So, that hasn't changed - I need to get faster. WOG starts up again soon, maybe I can get the schedulers to keep from flying me every Tues and Thurs night! (ha! yeah right) The next observation is the difference in flow and concentration, both between yesterday and today (dramatic difference!) and between the great controls and the adequate ones today. I'll have to write up my leg comments to figure out why some felt really good and others were just satisfactory. First on F-21+ again. That doesn't happen very often. | ||
| C • Nice work! 3 | ||
Day 2 Red - Splits | ||