Training Log Archive: MRodrig

Today I felt good overall, but had way way too many small to medium mistakes. Most of these were due to confusion with vegetation and rock features. Being from West Point and Andersons training helped me understand that not all the rocks would be mapped, but I still made mistakes thinking some rocks would be mapped that weren?t. Vegetation on the other hand I was not prepared to be so confusing. I eventually just had to ignore it unless it was really thick or around a swamp, because it just didn?t match up most of the time on this older map. The flatter terrain also caused me trouble since that caused contours to be hidden better. Anyone who knows me knows I use contours quite a bit, so I had to go away from that at some points when I usually would. Lastly, I made the very basic mistake of getting distracted by other runners, which didn?t ever help things, so not going to do that again.

P.S. I got stung by a bee again; gosh I love those little things.

So today I decided to go back to my old self, and get beat by my own mind. In doing so I had a fantastic start of the race, and got all the way to point 8 before I decided to go into a mental shut down and screw it all up.

Before point 8 the things I did well were catching features/ hand railing which were all over, and I used them to my advantage. Along with that came aiming off, which I did scary well, especially considering my problems drifting the past few months. I also did much better at attack points; most times I would actually point at it, and follow it with some sort of comment like ?Gottcha?. The extra focus on the attack points definitely helped me hit each control well.

After point 8 my main problem was route choice, and with my mental shut down every mistake compounded. After the race concluded I was able to look at the map, see what I planned and did, and follow it with a ?what was I thinking???? Since I have many past experiences with this same problem I have already given myself the mental pep talk about slowing down when that happens and refocusing.

C • Mental Pep talk 1

Today we had a good interval workout
4 x 400; rest for 400
3 x .5 mile hill; rest back down
1 x 800

It felt really good, i had to push myself.

P.S. Sorry I havnt been keeping up with updates.

C • It worked! 3