Training Log Archive: AlistairH

Felt fairly tired today. Had entered Devilla but generally trashed and had to work so didn't go in the end. Did some general stuff later on.

Traprain Law hill race. 28/93 +21.5% (bridge crossing rather than ford due to high river). Good fun. Reasonable run out along path by river and gained a few places over the actual hill and on the way back. Didn't feel very fresh but better once actually started.

Just under 2 hours of running including run to the session, fastish warm-up, 10 decent hill intervals @ Craiglockhart and later four and a quarter miles home at 10.30 at night after beer on an empty stomach (well, with sausages this week, at Redford Barracks courtesy of WHB).... must be Trotters on Tour...

Starting on some leg strength work... getting use to the stepper again... seated leg press. 3 x 8 @ 75kg easy enough, build up gradually over a week or two.

Middle Distance, Inchmarnoch. M21E. Nearly last. Too many errors by far... lost 3'30 at the first control - a very easy run up a ride and it's 50m in on the right... I must have paced to just past it before diving in! 20" at each of 4 and 5 (control circle stuff), a whopping 8 mins at no. 14 which is totally unforgivable - it was 100m from a path junction and if I had just accepted I'd made a mistake and gone to relocate earlier I'd have binned a lot less time. (I did try one relocation after a few mins but not from a defined position - sort of 'OK I see the road bend there so I must be here...'). Then 1'20 at 16, going off in the wrong direction.

Even without the 3'30 and the 8'00 that would not have been very good. I suppose I haven't orienteered much of late and did lose the will to push myself once I made the mistakes. Oh well. Must try harder.


(Distance guess - didn't have GPS as strap fell off. Would have been interesting today.)

Proper warm up.

Jubilee 5 Sprint race @ Banchory. M21E 43/63 +40%. Great fun - pre-race quarantine lead at the last moment to a spectator filled field with a confusing first control... failed that test... although I did conclude that I should just calmly go a bit left of west I proceeded to do so from the final control not the start kite... like many others... memo to self: don't leave start kite before actually finding the start on the map again ever.

Binned 50" at first control, which meant I got caught by the person 1 min behind me, who was a junior who could run faster than me (CarlE) although he came 16th so must be good and he set the fastest second leg split closing the gap. Stayed with him (slightly ahead 5/6) control picking but got dropped on the proper running leg to 7, which I didn't actually do too badly, he just did it better.

Anyway, 50" error at 1, 10" at 9 (pulled up at 12th control), 10" at 16 (left control on path going west, but corrected smoothly), 10" at 26 (finish circle obscuring uncrossable fence). The other thing that is obvious from the splits is that I was terrible at the long uphill leg 14-15 +58% - a good 40" worse than I would have done were that flat... no such problems on the downhill leg later.

Fun. Without error at 1 I would have been happy with the result, just bemoaning my poor hill running.