Training Log Archive: Canadian

Day 1 of the Scottish 6 Days. After feeling pushed around by various volunteers who didn't know what to do with me as a potential WOC athlete that didn't sign up for the 6 Days in the hopes of racing WOC I eventually got a start time (after standing in line for an hour and missing the first start time I was assigned but didn't know).

Parts of the race went really well but I made a bunch of quite stupid mistakes. Big mistake to 2 (ended up at 3) because I didn't visualise the terrain from the trail to the control (basically just thought, 'oh yeah, over the ridge and down by the lake'). Totally missed a dead obvious route down the road on the transport leg 14-15 and hopped the fence and whacked my way through the veg instead of going right out to and along the road. so lost 1:45 ish there. Then screwed up the end of the 1st long leg because the little ponds I was looking for to my left weren't visible and I didn't have any other reference features. Took a poor route on the second long leg because I was tired and afraid of the heather and marshes even though straight really had no less of it than going around.

Where I was going well I was planning legs, reading ahead, and visualising well. Need to work on doing that more consistently. Far more armchair orienteering and visualisation practice should go a long way for that. Can also always use more fitness. Tired out there today and faded at the end. 10.6 km without water on a warm day is rough!

S6D - Day 1 Achagour - C41 - Splits

Bit of an exploratory run after a couple of nice days off. Ran from the house and through some fields to get into the woods before turning around because I didn't want to face the bracken. Went into Kincraig instead and then ended up going down a very nice path that didn't lead me back like I thought it would so my 30 minutes ended up being not 30 minutes.

Event: WOC 2015 & Scottish 6 days
 

Back was a little sore this morning so went for a walk then stretched before breakfast.

Half running, half walking up to the top.

Mentally tired for this one. Goal was to focus through that and have a plan and map read / focus twice as often / hard when getting tired. First couple of controls were easy and then on the third control (also easy) I ran along the marsh for a ways thinking the end of it would be obvious and it wasn't at all and failed to line everything else up and way overran the control.
Ultimately I didn't have a good plan for the leg and didn't know what I was looking for. Struggled with the next few controls because I couldn't make sense of the rock features.

Warming up for the prologue.

Failed to warm up / prepare mentally and never got into the groove until the around the 6th control.

The course was 1.7 km with 10 controls so it was a bit of a control picking exercise and combined with the thicker vegetation to the first control I was on edge from the start and couldn't take time to get mentally into it like I should have during the warm up. Way missed the 4th control and lost a ton of time there but also circled some of the control locations most notably the 2nd where I was on the right hill but the flag wasn't quite on the side I expected it to be. Was off to the right of 8 as well.

Need to always be mentally ready before I start!

This went much better than the prologue. Started 45 seconds after Robbie and ~1:30 after Damian and Will.

Was actually planning and reading ahead on this one. The terrain was a bit easier than for the prologue but nonetheless I was orienteering way better than this morning. Saw the ribbon at 6 from a ways off but then got to the control location and couldn't see the ribbon so wasn't as well focused on the way to 7 and drifted off my compass bearing but corrected well at the end.
Need to take time to get back ahead of the game when I make a mistake.

Picked out the wrong hill at 11 and ran way past the control. Got to the hill before realising what happened. Pretty obvious mistake and shouldn't have happened but I was getting tired and got sloppy. Need to realise when I'm getting tired and redouble my focus.

'Perfect focus' training at Loch Vaa. Generally speaking went very well. Not perfectly clean but I'm happy with it. Focus was good and was reading the contours well before I got to the previous feature. Started slipping at the end and was having trouble reading and interpreting the contours so quit at 15 (right before the end) when I totally misunderstood the topography.