Training Log Archive: jennycas

Feeling a little more sprightly today although the nearly-3km with nearly-200m climb, to the start, soon took care of that. Today we were running on the WOC long map from yesterday, on the north slopes of the valley - which were generally more open and less soggy than the previous day, on the south side of the valley (I have noticed here that north-facing slopes are always much wetter) and the contours reminded me a little of Sweden, as did the ground being soft & mossy underfoot, so I was happier. Plus it was possible to pick a route and execute it without getting pushed around by the vegetation or by paths which other people had made (I started comparatively early today). Should have stayed low on 1, because along the hillside was not fast. Then there was a big grunt up to 2, which I figured everyone else was walking anyway. Through this and the next few controls I was seeing a possibly M55, who I didn't totally lose sight of until no.8, so that kept me motivated. Only real error was on 11 where I crossed the hillside too high and came into the gully way above the control, partly because I didn't recognise a vegetation boundary between 2 different types of pine tree! Last few controls were in the open area along the river, with lots of little lumps & bumps, and I was feeling strong through this, even overtook someone in the finish chute. 18th today which was nice after 29th yesterday.

Now, some thoughts on the Scottish 6-Days. I hadn't realised this is such a big event - even in a usual year, about 3000 people and with WOC & associated spectators they nearly doubled this. No wonder parking was such a nightmare, especially as this has apparently been a rather wet summer. In general the races were really well organised but I wonder what it is that makes people say "gee, I want to go and get pushed around by Scottish hillsides 6 days in a row" and I still don't think it's ok to have no drinking water whatsoever at any events.

And now I've watched a WOC - box ticked. Again, very well organised and the home crowd's excitement was a nice touch which made it better than watching online from the other side of the world, as did getting to run in some of the same forests (definitely my pick was the relay terrain at Darnaway, just wish I'd been able to run a bit faster myself through the beautiful beech basins). Still sad to have missed watching the sprint relay, but really can't complain since on a personal level my favourite race of this trip was the WMOC final :)

S6D - Day 6 Glen Affric - C30 - Splits

Hmm, starting in a bog on a hillside full of Scots pine trees. A bog made by thousands of people waiting around before their starts. First leg through blueberries and heather had a big uphill - apart from the going down into a steep ravine to cross a rushing stream, and then of course to clamber up the other side. So I was pretty much walking from the beginning. And those pine trees are bloody prickly when you push through green patches of them, as I found myself doing having overshot 3 only slightly, but the green extended further than mapped. From 4 I dropped to the track and was surprised to see a finish banner before I got there - guess this was for the shorter courses. Probably should have taken the wide track route around to the right, but didn't see it, and was too focused on how to navigate my way through this 1.5km leg.

2 more stream/ravine crossings, and then it should have been easier going through a flatter section but this turned out to be the "windblow" that we had been told about, with fallen trees everywhere making 5-m high rootmounds and requiring a lot of clambering over/under. So I ended up approaching 5 from the north - in which case I might as well have gone around by the road. Got through the green ok on the way to 6 but going uphill through the bracken took forever. And then at the end of the leg I found the right knoll but couldn't see the rockfaces/control hidden below me (should have stayed low) so went too far. From 7 there was a steep downhill but also a singletrack had been created by mountain goats, I mean orienteers, many of whom I had to step aside for because they were going downhill way faster than me.

After 9 there was another stream crossing, on rocks between cliffs, and it looked daunting at first but once I was in the water up to my knees it wasn't flowing too strongly. I demonstrated my technique to another lady but she still looked very apprehensive so I went back and helped her across. I should have taken a wide track route to 10, or else stayed on my bearing, because the mishmash of routes I took involved yet another steep down & up a muddy gully, as did my exit route. Just so hard to know how much time I lost on bad routes or poor execution of them. In the control circle it was probably about 3-4 min only, but my time was woefuly slow. I mean, Thierry Gueorgiou ran 2.5x the distance in the same time, and he got a gold medal. At least I was back in time to see that (and the last hour of the men's WOC race; I completely missed seeing the women's race).

C • Tough forest 5

S6D - Day 5 Glen Affric - C30 - Splits

Oh boy, more traffic queues. 20 min just to get through the town of Nairn (where the sprint relay was held on Sat; we checked out the beach and empty funfair last night and tried to imagine it populated with athletes & spectators) then after leaving the highway another 45 minutes to travel 3km to the parking - during which time I managed to put my O gear on and make/eat a sandwich, all without leaving the drivers' seat, but I decided it was too difficult to put ankle tape on just yet...and then, on the way home, over half an hour just to get from one side of Inverness to the other because of all the traffic headed for the Belladrum festival at Beauly. Apparently The Proclaimers are performing there tonight. If they get caught up in traffic they may have to Walk 500 Miles?

Anyway, the orienteering was definitely worth coming out for today - on the same area as yesterday's WOC relay, generally more open than the middle area, and which had looked really nice on the TV cameras. My hip flexors were pretty tight from a couple of days of standing & spectating so I didn't start out very fast, plus I wasn't paying enough attention to the map and hesitated coming in to 1, then lost a couple of minutes on 2 because I expected the knoll to be in a line between basins but it was off to one side a little. After this I started navigating proactively rather than reactively and actually thinking about the end of the legs a bit more. I wanted safe approaches/attack points even if a wider route would have been faster, and apart from briefly running the wrong way when I hit a track, was happy with my navigating although suspect I climbed up & over a few ridges between basins which could have been avoided. Towards the end the beech forest had nothing underfoot so I tried to run a bit harder (should have done so from the beginning, because my guess is the next couple of days will be slower terrain - if we ever manage to get into the carpark, that is. The organisers are seriously concerned due to recent rains!). 20th today and guess I lost about 3 min in navigation, but finally cracked 10 min/km.

C • queues 2

S6D - Day 4 Darnaway - C30 - Splits

Wasn't feeling particularly lively this morning - cold still hanging around and dehydrated from yesterday's spectating. Plus I am getting so sick of queues: half an hour just to drive out of the arena car park yesterday, similar time waiting to pass a road accident on the highway today (that makes at least 3 that I'm aware of this week; too many orienteers around?) and then the toilet queue at the event which meant that I had to rush to the start thereafter, heeding the "do not pee on the hedges" signs. One of the many nice things about WMOC was the number of portaloos provided!

The course was in the same area as yesterday's WOC middle final and had quite a lot of basins and knolls, mostly in beech forest or pine plantation although there was a section in the middle with rough open, and rough it was - this being the part where the TV cameras showed even WOC competitors walking. I congratulated myself on a good bearing to the first control and then totally failed to stay on compass to the second control, which little depression I navigated to perfectly only the flag wasn't there, it was (in hindsight) 200m further west. Not that I worked this out, because I thought I must be too far west and headed further east. Nothing fit, so I decided to bail to the track I'd crossed halfway along the leg, and it took me a long time to get there (probably passed within 50m of the control!) and then I took a very safe approach to the control. 7 minutes and about a dozen places lost here. Some consolation that it's the same area of forest where Ida Bobach (today's relay gold medallist) lost time yesterday.

Also a smaller loss on 4 where I swear that the depression is drawn as being on top of a spur, but in fact it turned out to be in a basin (depends how you read the formlines). The rest of the course was fairly clean, rather slow, and towards the end a little too straightforward and I ended up in 35th place - but it meant that I was back in plenty of time to watch the WOC relay. Which had a great atmosphere, and the big screen TV worked well, as did the forking on courses, and there weren't too many major blowouts by teams, and there was World Domination by Denmark in the women's (sprint finish for 3rd between Sweden and Finland was interesting, as were some other sprint finishes further down the fields). The result which I was most pleased with was Estonia's 6th in the men's, because Timo's an honorary Arrow!

S6D - Day 3 Darnaway - C30 - Splits

Discovered that there is oatmeal in the cupboard at our accommodation, among the random stuff left behind by previous guests, and so consumed a hearty breakfast of Scottish porridge (though I'm fairly sure dates & ginger aren't traditional inclusions) to fortify me against an afternoon of WOC middle race watching. Slight sense of unreality to actually be at a WOC! The arena - same as for the relay tomorrow - was excellent for spectators, with a castle behind the finish chute. And the weather, according to local MFR radio, "a warm 18 degrees". Forest looked fairly tough underfoot and obviously held some traps for even the best in the world (reassuring to note that I'm not the only one who does things like running down the wrong track). Women's race was good to watch (go Cat Taylor!) but the men's unfortunately was marred by the video screen going black partway through and the resultant absence of video feed & GPS tracking visibility made it nearly impossible to follow the race, given that there were no spectator controls and the commentary became hard to hear.

Short but slightly-epic course, made longer by my hasty 3km warmup to the start when the carpark-entry queue was seriously epic and I bailed out of the car without waiting to see where it was parked (think we took the best part of an hour to travel about 2km but later, the queue was 4km long, on a single-lane road; 5000 people at these events approximates about 2000 cars). Really steep from the start and the tracks which had formed through the head-high bracken fairly muddy. The Mudclaws turned out to be a poor choice of shoe because not only do they grip mud, they also slide sideways through it. So I walked much of the first few legs, my own legs being rather buggered anyway. Clambering up the hillside trying to work out where best to cross a rushing mountain stream, I encountered a young guy who asked me where he was and then said "oh fuck" in a tone of utter despair when I explained that he was at least 1km away from where he fondly hoped to be. Once I'd clambered up above the treeline to the hilltops of heather, I could see how easily he'd managed to go down the wrong spur though!

Heather may be spongey but it's too deep for me to lift my legs over; I saw others following the spur lines so think I'll try that later in the week. Down the hill to cross the river, where the army engineers had kindly built a bridge just for the orienteers, and then along some open hillsides with small knolls and intervening marshy bits, trying not to hold anyone behind me up on the boggy singletrails which had formed. Finish chute run-in was nice, it had even been mown for us. And then there was another pontoon bridge across the river. And then no water at the finish, just as there had been none at the start or on the course - a little annoying as I'd brought nothing with me from the car, which was parked 2km back down the road...

Think I was 33rd today. Was definitely stuffed and cancelled all social engagements for the afternoon. After spending the best part of an hour removing marsh-tannins from O gear in order to render it fit for washing machine insertion, took a nap while the washing was on.

S6D - Day 2 Strathfarrar - C30 - Splits

So, we're in Scotland now. Signs are in English, distances & speed limits are in miles. And it's necessary to drive on the left (around each roundabout). Or straight down the middle of a winding lane for 7 miles towards the event, in a chain of cars, with no chance of remembering the way you got there, which makes for some complications upon leaving (hey, it was a scenic drive, and with a little navigational assistance from Simon Rouse to whom I'd offered a lift, I still made it to Forres in time to watch the WOC sprint final).

First part of the course was nice open birch forest with little knolls and gullies and not too difficult to read although inevitably I expected the control to be further down the knoll than it was and so approached from the bottom, losing small amounts of time each time. The event info said to avoid the marshes where possible but there were a couple of legs straight across. I found myself thinking "huh, these aren't wet compared to Swedish marshes" and then saw the person who was up to his thighs in the black bog, trying to extricate both legs at once and with nowhere to put his hands for leverage. I tiptoed very carefully around that patch!

Next section was rather greener with gorse bushes and creeks and a compulsory road crossing which I overshot, and archery butts hidden among a network of tiny paths, then a longer leg out into the moorland hillside section. I intended to go around by larger tracks but ended up doing a mishmash of routes (where a track crosses a waterhole, there is in fact no bridge) and although I left the track at the correct point by my chosen gorse thicket, I managed to go NW instead of north and was too far uphill and lost a couple of minutes there. Getting really tired by now and tripping over everything underfoot though only actually stacked it twice in the heather. Final section of the course was through low pine plantation with deep ruts between the rows and the small rides were almost impossible to find. Reminded me a bit of the bluegum plantation section on Diddleum (Tas) - and actually the moorland section seemed familiar too.

About 60 W40s entered although I don't think all of them ran, and I ended up 21st. Also ended up getting back to the house, completely exhausted and desperate for a shower (had been a while since the open-air shower at WMOC), about 12 hours after I'd left it but that was better going than Blair who was still in an IOF meeting until after 11pm.

S6D - Day 1 Achagour - C30 - Splits