Training Log Archive: immy

Just a brief warm up before the loops race.

Mass start loops race at Pines Beach. I was in a very black mood about this race, and had to wait a day or so before I could bring myself to write about it... This was yet another example of abysmal orienteering by me, which seems to have been quite a theme this weekend. In summary, I navigated poorly to probably around half the controls, and basically just ran off without a good plan half the time. This resulted in a good 13 minutes of mistakes... So anyway, on the postive side, there is plenty to learn from! Though I think half of it is stuff that I should most definitely know by now. But it appears I'm quite a slow learner.

Anyway, here are some of the problems I've discovered:
1. Bad mental approach to the race - I've had several good races lately, so this meant that I was hoping to do well, and so my goal for the race was "do well" without focussing on the process and actually using my navigation skills.
2. Still angry about yesterday.
3. Not coping well with the pressure of a mass start - getting stressed and again worrying about being slower than everyone else. I need to get over this already - it's not important! Navigation is. Weirdly I was coming first after the first loop (everyone was making mistakes), and obviously didn't deal well with this either because I lost over 7 minutes on the next loop... yeah...
4. Not pausing to recollect my thoughts when something went wrong. If I make a mistake, I need to think that this means I wasn't reading my map enough/didn't have a good enough plan, and try to do this better on the next leg! Not just rush off and try to regain lost time... never works.
5. Negative self talk... instead, when I made a mistake I mentally gave up and was telling myself I was hopeless at orienteering :(

I think the hardest lesson is probably the last one... even now I am struggling with it. I have to be positive and be confident that I can actually orienteer! But the self doubt really sets in when things start to go wrong.

So, things I can do better:
1. Work on my mental approach to each race. Have a positive attitude! I love orienteering after all, even on the bad days :)
2. Have process goals, e.g. I will have an excellent plan for each control, and take a few seconds to make one if necessary. (Not "I want to do well" - recipe for disaster that one.)
3. Stop and recollect my thoughts after a mistake, and start paying more attention to the map.

Sometimes I think I take this all way too seriously... but yeah, I want to do my best, and I want to improve, so hopefully some critical analysis will help! Nothing for it but to learn from this and move forward.

Warm down through the forest with the girls - saw some earthquake cracks!

Then in the afternoon before flying home we saw a crane demolishing a parking building and went to the container mall! :O