Training Archive: WyattIn the 7 days ending 2008-07-20:
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Sunday Jul 20 | ||
| Running 10:00 [1] 1.0 mi (10:00 / mi) | |
| shoes: R-NB 891's | ||
| Misc. running around a beautiful sunny day of spectating at the WOC relay. Awesome to see the British men win a relay Gold, and very nice to see Eric & Sam pull off some impressive first legs, generally in some of the later stages of the slowly breaking train, including Eric 1st of a train of 4 only about 25% back, and Sam only 15% back. Our latter legs weren't quite as good, but I think we still managed to beat Canada by the scoring of 1-1 (Men/Women) with the total-time tie-breaker going, by about 6 minutes out of 6 hours, to the US. | ||
Saturday Jul 19 | ||
| Orienteering race 43:50 [4] 5.4 km (8:07 / km) +150m 7:08 / km | |
| shoes: O-VJ Integrator Spikes | ||
| After the Long Final, I went out on another OFest course and again had a decent run. More or less nailed the 'hard' first 4 controls (like the Middle Qual. veg. in medium green), then proceed to lose 2 minutes on an easy control (5) by exitting 4 poorly, then enjoying the fast woods so much that I missed a bag. Made another 2 minutes of mistakes in smaller pieces. Not spectacular, but <10% errors in some fairly new terrain isn't that bad. Again, a day I'd trade for the Middle Qual. I think I should stop thinking about trading days for that. Either way wouldn't get me into a final... | ||
| Orienteering warm up/down 20:00 [2] 3 km (6:40 / km) +30m 6:21 / km | |
| shoes: O-VJ Integrator Spikes | ||
| warmup & parts of AJ's course which he did reasonably well on | ||
Friday Jul 18 | ||
| Orienteering race 50:34 [4] 6.1 km (8:17 / km) +250m 6:53 / km | |
| shoes: O-VJ Integrator Spikes | ||
| A much better run today in the day-of-event registration "P8" class at the WOC Public races 'OFest'. Largest mistake was under 1 minute, and total (incl. 5-10 sec. hesitations) was probably about 3 minutes. Clem was 56. Winner was 35 (as of when I left...) | ||
Thursday Jul 17 | ||
| Orienteering race (WOC Middle Qualifier) 44:30 [4] ***** 4.8 km (9:16 / km) +125m 8:12 / km | |
| spiked:10/18c shoes: O-VJ Integrator Spikes | ||
| So I ran my first WOC race today. Unfortunately, while the course was very hard, as I was hoping it would be so I could have a chance to out-navigate some people, my navigation was pretty sloppy. I couldn't place in most US A-meets with a run like I had today. Many of the controls required map reading skills that I'm weak at: precise vegetation reading, plus marshes, minor streams and rides, so any chance to out-navigate folks got beaten by that..
Here's the map. For me, there were 6 really hard controls (usually a vegetation feature inside medium green) and another 4 or so which I'd call hard. Controls where generally well 'tucked' into the feature. If you were spot on the feature, and correct side/edge-of, the control was visible, but if you were just running near the center of the circle looking for orange, you were often out of luck, even from 10-20 meters away. Of the 18 controls, I spiked about 10 of them, but lost up to 2 minutes on the other 8, for about 8 minutes of total time lost. As a measure of how hard this course was, even the winner of this Qualification heat had almost 3 minutes of mistakes, and I'd guess most of the top 15 (qualifiers) had 4-6 minutes of mistakes. I'd chalk up my difference vs. the best as: (a) slow in general (e.g. on a track 10k) 30%, (b) esp. slow in the rain 5-10%, (c) esp. slow in green 5-10%, (d) slower navigational skills esp. vegetation, marshes, tiny streams & rides 5% (e) mistakes: 20% ( 8 - 3 = 5 minutes more than the winner) for a whopping total of 60% behind the winner. Qualifying was 15% behind the winner (and is sometimes closer to 10%.) So to qualify, you've got to have your sum of (a)-(e) in the 15% range, something I'm quite far from. There are days where my (e) is close to 0% (e.g. one race at World Cup Latvia.) (b), (c) & (d) would need substantial practice to improve to broader my terrain skills for a day like today. Depending on weather and terrain, however, those can also sometimes go close to 0%. (a) is a big problem. What I don't know is how low this can go - e.g. am I already close to my 'genetic limit', or perhaps I don't train enough, specifically-enough, and/or with good coaching/team-mate/motivation whatever. What I do know is I only have a few more years to push this down. Can I get it to the 10-15% range, which would make it possible (although still quite hard) to make a WOC final? I'm not sure when I?ll have that answered, or even planned one way or another. Not in this post?. Looking at the US Men,s WOC team overall, I managed to be 4 people in my heat. Clem beat 5, and Eddie 6, with a much better time of 35 vs. my 44, and the one US man to 'beat Canada' today. Eddie has had several very solid races in tricky terrain in the past few years, this WOC Qualifier and the Team Trials Middle included - he thinks the difference may just be concentrating more. It seems to work. Physically, the good news is my hips were back to normal, just in time. My L-hip didn't hurt me at all today, not on the warmup, during the race, or afterwards (my R-IT-at-the-knee started hurting again in the evening - another sign that alignment is back to normal.) That's very good news for the general fun of enjoying orienteering, and being able to train for it. Being able to run healthy is a far more important goal to me than how I do at WOC. Perhaps it's a pre-requisite, and thus not a fair comparison, but generally, I suffer far more greatly when I'm injured and unable to compete, than I do by competing slowly instead of quickly. Running in the middle of the pack on the 1st leg of the US relay champs (slowly, just off a knee injury) was pretty fun. Put a little differently, if I could flip a coin where heads would instantly enhance my fitness to let me run a 29 minute 10k for the next 5 years, and tails would result in me being too injured to run at all for the next 5 years, I wouldn't flip the coin. Even if it were biased 80/20 toward the positive outcome. ? as I?ve diverged into philosophical probabilities, I think I should end this post? Good night readers? | ||
| Orienteering tempo 15:00 [3] 2.2 km (6:49 / km) +60m 6:00 / km | |
| shoes: O-VJ Integrator Spikes | ||
| Warmup on the 'warmup area' section of the WOC middle map. Much happier with the quality of this little section of map, and it was notably more accurate that the middle model map across the street. | ||
Wednesday Jul 16 | ||
| Orienteering 10:00 [1] 1.0 mi (10:00 / mi) | |
| shoes: R-NB 891's | ||
| 10 minutes of jogging and an hour of walking on the WOC Middle Model map. Disheartened again by the quality of the map. Fortunately, the real map turned out to be much better. | ||
Tuesday Jul 15 | ||
| Note | |
| Spectating at the Long Qualifier. Another disappointing day for the US, but happy to see Louise Oram (CAN) qualify - she was Angelica's rival in WyCo a few years ago.
I was cheering for Clem for a long time and he was about 90 minutes to the winner's 60 so I cheered for a lot of other people shaking the bushes before the glimpse I saw was actually Clem. I wasn't really cheering until 73 minutes, and excitement started to fade at about 85 minutes, as that was the range where I'd hoped to see a very-happy to reasonably-happy Clem finish. Looking at the map and running a bit in the terrain later in the day, I'm not at all surprised at the trouble he had, and wouldn't have expected to do much better myself (just another roll of the dice...) I did learn from him that the vegetation detail and precision of the control location were both very tiny, but based on the results, others were expecting and ready for that. Controls could basically be hidden in a tight gap between evergreen trees as long as the map and description (e.g. 10m marsh, SW edge) was precise enough to get you into the right clump of vegetation. Knowing this helped in the Middle, as I was carefully looking at the correct side of whatever micro-vegetation feature I was on before decided I wasn't (or was) at the right feature. | ||
| Orienteering 50:00 | |
| shoes: R-NB 891's | ||
| Part of the OFest P8 course - parts hard, some very slow/walking as I rest for the Middle. In retrospect, running this whole thing hard, and carefully analyzing mistakes would probably have been better for Middle training. As it was, I still could have used it better by analyzing my mistakes better, but I just did some cursory planning like better angle through green (which was helpful) and general plan for care in reading rides (which wasn't helpful).
One thing I could certainly have benefited more from my Team-mates would have been a detailed talk-through of issues people had and what they did wrong and could have done better, on their trainings during the week as well as their races (e.g. the WOC Final.) When I did seek out such discussion, it was often forthcoming, e.g. from Clem, Eric & Eddie, thanks! - but it didn't seem very common, which I was a bit disappointed at. I think we were all underperforming* our peers and even our hopes of making some A-finals, or at least getting close, so maybe people were shy to talk to each other, because we didn't want to get each other upset or something? Regardless of the cause I'd have liked to have seen more technical discussion and race planning. I suspect having an active coach or two (or more) present, as many teams had, would have helped in that technical preparation and planning. *In the grand scheme of things, almost everybody at WOC is underperforming their goals - several athletes have a strong goal of Gold, well over 3 have a goal of a Medal, and nearly everyone there is hoping for an especially clean run, and very few of those goals are fully realized. Striving for a hard goal is what gets us all motivated, and we should continue to do so even when that goal is hard and even when it's a rare then to accomplish. That makes it both especially great when a goal is met, and also makes a near miss a reasonable success. Hopefully we can all continue to work toward those goals, and help each other toward them, with the understanding that we won't always make our goals. I'm sure Minna was very disappointed by her Long result, yet she studied what she did wrong, refocussed, and had a stunning result on the next day's relay. At her level, disappointment and great success are a different level than what we're aiming for, but the active technical refocussing process is valid at any level... | ||
Monday Jul 14 | ||
| Orienteering 45:00 [2] ** 4 km (11:15 / km) +250m 8:34 / km | |
| shoes: R-NB 891's | ||
| WOC Public "O-Fest" races. As a WOC runner, I was allowed day-of-event entry to the P8 category, which I decided to take. We got there a bit late, and event logistics were quite crowded, with rain threatening and no one to leave the kids with, so we decided on split starts. However it was a 2 km uphill walk/run from the finish to the start, and Angelica's assigned F21E start was in the middle of the window. So we decided she'd run and I'd take the kids on White. Unfortunately, taking the kids on White took a long time and it wasn't looking like I'd make it back in time for a course.
Then to make matters much worse, after AJ got bored walked at Oriana speed, I sent him ahead to go get 3 and 4 and I'd meet him at 5. Oriana & I shortcut to 5, without a map but successfully. And waited there for 30 minutes, after which point we hoped AJ had gotten 2-3-4-5 faster than Oriana & I had gotten 2-5 - possible but unlikely - and we headed back to the finish. Despite our lack of a map, we made it - following the hordes back was pretty easy. Getting there we found Angelica, and learned AJ hadn't yet finished, so I took off back up the hill to 5 to look for AJ. I ran what I thought was the course backwards to before 2 (without finding 4), calling out of AJ, then bailed back to the finish, and there was still no sign of AJ. There were a number of trails out there that were grassy and hard to see, as well as 'elephant tracks' from the 1000+ orienteers our there which looked like trails, so I imagine it was easy for AJ to get lost. Anyway, I got back after my unsuccessful search, found someone with an H10 map from which I planned another loop to go search for him, and then I was about to go run another loop when AJ showed up. Apparently he'd gotten to 4, then gotten lost, then backtracked all the way to the start, and found an organizer to help him get back to the finish, from which he found his way through the 1000 camped orienteers to our pile of stuff at which Angelica was nervously waiting. And AJ's first words to her were to ask her help to find # 5 on White so he could go find Wyatt & Oriana who were waiting there for him! Very nice to see his concern for us, even in his own crisis of getting lost, and getting unknown official-looking adult help (in Czech) to find us again. Phew... | ||
| C • missed this story 2 | ||
