Training Log Archive: roar

Getting ready to take the middle seriously. A good warm up and decent bit of dyanimcs. Feeling excellent considering the previous day.

Cool down up and down the road with Greg A.

To the start and a lot of the way back. Then some dynamics to the start again. Feeling nice before this long distance. Really feeling like I could handle it no problem.

POM day 1 Long

Plan was to take it easy at the start and see how I felt, try and build into it and not tire myself out for the rest of the weekend.

Started out handy enough for 1, wanted to take my time and learn what the map was like as I hadn't run on this stuff before. Kept close to the line and then around the hill to the left. I learned a lot here, go straight and hashings are rough. The next few controls I kept up the straight and was reading the map well and moving along nicely. 5 I decided to take the track option to avoid the darker green. Seems like it was the right one. Back on straight line mode then, even for 7. There was a bit of an elephant track here though it was a bit hard to follow in places. Decided to get over the hill early for 8 and had a small hesitation on the way into it but nothing major.

The next section of the course got much flatter and now I was trying to run faster. Compass work was good and still spiking controls, seeing all the features well. Little slip up on 14 where I didn't run along the road as far as I had intended but no major time loss here either. May have been better to just go straight! Saw Alasdair here too and he didn't seem to be going too much faster than me, though he still got away. 16 was the first time I really went off line and I started having to work harder to orienteer well. By not leaving the control perfectly I got pushed further and further right throughout the leg though I had no problem with the control. Lost a small bit of concentration on 17 and had to slow down to take the control, losing probably 15-20s. Hit 18 just ahead of Lucas Basset, saw him punch 19 but that was that. Ran hard enough through the spectator then with two guys just ahead of me.

Body then started to feel tired hitting 21 and I left without actually reading the map and kinda wandered towards 22 (post note: 22 was a bad one for me this trip wasn't it!). Didn't read the circle at all really and was looking for it on the spur when all I needed to do was go to the top of the hill. ~1 min gone. Went left to the ride for 23, not pushing too hard to save the legs for the middle. Novikov reached this with me and me messed around as we realised the SI box was broken and we had to manual punch. I then followed him through the green towards 24 which was a bad plan. Looked for it a bit early. Maybe 30-40s lost on this leg. Bit low for 25 too and easy run to the finish.

Overall pleased enough with this, the first race of the year though I took it handy enough. Need to work on my late concentration it would seem.

From the finish, up the road a bit and back to the car. Feeling alright actually.

Jog to the start. Got a little lost and had to ask where it was.

Jog to the car to get changed and go home as it was quite late.

Event: Portugal O Meeting
 

Warm up. Jogging up and down in the tiny area before the start trying to feel fresher after getting up at 4:30 am and travelling all day. Sitting in the rain didn't help. Managed to acquire some semblance of looseness before I started.

SI sprint. Got to use SI Air again, so nice.

Started off hard enough but very quickly realised that any kind of speed was out of the question and toned it back. Went right to 2 and the sandy hill really slowed me down, saw Jonny running at the top of the junction I was heading towards and had caught him before 3. Wrong route to 5 but then it seemed to flow pretty well. Was moving ok, if a bit sluggish. Saw Gina get barked at by a tiny dog, but then was picking routes well. Read the descriptions for 10 and saw inside corner so went to the inside but they had fooled me. (noted later that maybe it's a thing to only read the on map descriptions for sprints). Finished well then moving acceptably, if feeling a bit spent. It felt a lot shorter than I am used to sprints feeling for some reason.

A nice start, didn't kill myself and got around quite successfully. I thought it was a lovely area for a sprint.

Cool down with Jonny and Gina. Went out onto the map area and just jogged around.

Run in the park to keep the legs ticking over before the weekend.
Took it easy but I tried to keep the cadence close to 90 as had been mentioned in the talk yesterday. Felt really fast at the start but got used to it a bit. Still had to concentrate to make sure I kept it up. New shoes were fantastic.

HR monitor made a reappearance. The first 12 mins are nonsense but it seems to be alright after then.

Had a talk by Chris Jones (the AAI national endurance coach) after training today. He was extremely interesting.

The big things he was saying was that as an endurance athlete you need to first build up your distance times.

Then you can do more distance at this higher pace doing less damage.

I am probably more of a strong powerful runner than one who just keeps going. The impact of this is it is very easy to reduce my aerobic threshold. This means I need to be careful to not be training above aerobic threshold the whole time and make sure I do my slow runs slow.

Other things to note are keep fast cadence and do short hills and drills more often and I really really need to sort out my HR monitor.

Some laps and then drills and strides. Feeling pretty rough.

Pyramid session, only did half of it with POM coming and with me feeling tired so:
400m 60s 800m 75s 1200m 90s
The group seemed to take off very fast on the first 400. I sat there and let it happen. It was a bad idea it was too fast for me. Then the 800 came and I was already regretting it. Legs just didn't want to be going that fast. The 1200 I paced myself a bit better for but I still wasn't having a great time. Very glad I was leaving it at that.

1:19, 2:41, 4:17

Few laps with Gina. Feeling a bit better but still tired.

Was pretty knackered yesterday from the late night and lack of dinner. Want to take it a bit easy before POM but not crazy easy. Plan is something like:

Monday - some combination of running and climbing
Tuesday - intervals
Wednesday - Easy run ~ 40 mins
Thursday - easy run ~ 30 mins
Friday - POM sprint relay or training
Saturday - POM Long + NightO
Sunday - POM Middle