Training Log Archive: Wyatt

A-meet following the US Champs. I did a bit better than yesterday technically, but I did find myself running out of gas on some hills near the end, and I still did some time-losing wobbles. The mix of "bail deliberately" and "follow the ridges" combined poorly in some cases. Running straight alone the lines would've been better in those cases.

Almost had a major error where, from 2-3, I thought I was running 8-9, and was having trouble matching things up. Finally when I realized what I was doing, I was able to piece things together quickly and I was less than 100m from the bag. What worked well, was using the compass to guide the route, s.t. I was going the right way (and the 2-3 and 8-9 lines being parallel certainly helped.)

I had to leave before the results were up, but I suspect I'm similarly far back today, likely 8-10 behind the winner. A bit more if Ross was clean.

Overall:
- Slippery hillsides are not a place where I'm strong physically - my tentativeness on side/downhills over a certain slope was significant.
- I did a lot worse technically in this terrain, vs. the winner (at least yesterday) than physically, which is unusual, esp. when there was no major error. Next time I go to a major event like this where I want to do well, I should study the pre-existing maps more than simply looking at them a bit, but rather do the additional step of designing some sample courses, and planning routes that I might execute, to have more time to generate a good feel for routes that seem to fit the terrain. I felt I was bumbling through the navigation a bit too much...

Happy to be heading home - missed the family on this trip as they'd decided not to come this far.

L-Upper Hamstring held up quite well this weekend. A little sore (light prickly burn) in the evenings and long CDW ->Greenbush & back drives, but much better than a typical weekday at the office. Running more and sitting less seems to help. So I think this may be more of a sitting injury than a running injury ;)

Edit 1: Just saw the results, they're even worse than I thought. Lot's of people got their act together at ran 63-68 minutes, and I was still a big gap back. Yuck. Looking at my course I can find maybe 7-8 minutes of imperfections, and I doubt everyone else was totally clean. It'll be enlightening to see the splits.

Edit 2: Just saw the splits. Looks like I was just 2nd tier today, running/orienteering much slower than the big boys... Not sure if my hamstring issue is contributing, or I just wasn't pushing mentally or physically hard enough.

C • Sitting insury... 1

Blue Day 2 - Splits

Around the parking lot & up & down the hill to start. Chilly day, but at least not raining.

7th in US Champs 2009. A little wobblier than I'd have liked to have been. And a little disappointing that I wasn't mentally focussed on pushing effectively. At 11, I thought I'd seen Will just go by (he'd actually passed me earlier), so I did focus on solid legs to 12, 13 and 14 in hopes of catching him, and was basically running Will's speed for those legs. HR wasn't even much higher than normal during that section, just more consistent.

A number of 30 second wobbles, and a 2 minute 'where am I' confusion event leaving 15 hurt the time. 4 minutes faster would've been nice, in 4th. I've got a lot more work to do - and a surprisingly large amount of it is mental - to get back on a US Champs podium.

Blue Day 1 US Champs - Splits

Event: US Individual Champs 2009
 

Tom did a great job leading a team meeting today. The first that he 'chaired' while I've been around. Well organized and kept things moving.

On coaching, now that we've lost coach Waddington, there's a revived emphasis on inter-team-member 'coaching', where coaching may be less technical/physical directive, and more toward the cross-checking that we're meeting our individual training goals. I need to repost my training plan, and get someone (Clem or ?) to bug me about it... Maybe even a non-Team member could take on that role?

There was also talk about fundraising and other 'contributions' to the Team, and the topic of 'requirement' vs 'encouragment' was raised. If requirement means if you don't do it, you're off the team, there were a few people with strong resistance (e.g. myself), but a novel middle idea was proposed that if you don't meet some standard of 'contribution' to the team, and/or some standard of coaching/training/logging or whatever the 'requirements' are, that you'd be an 'unfunded' member of the Team, meaning e.g. you couldn't ask for funding for WREs, WCup's, Training Camps or even WOC. WOC teams and even overall team membership would still be selected based upon current measures of O' performance only (with little regard to volunteering/contribution/training effort), but even if you won the Trials, if you were an un-funded Team member, you'd have to pay your own expenses. Or something like that. Nothing was firmly concluded, but it was discussed. If implemented, this might also help with the coming crisis of running out of money for traditional levels of WOC funding (all but airfare...)

'Easy' pace training loop of the 5k pre-US-Champs course. Did okay, felt I had a feel for the map, figured out hill tops were good, but didn't use the map to practice efficient route planning, which would've been helpful.

With Angelica, short loop to & around Wilson Park. Angelica was very slow for first 2 k, and I'm just resting my hamstring...

Running with Angelica & Tom. Angelica used the HR monitor for the 1st time, and her HR oscillated between 130 and 150 as she'd push up hill, then relax, then push, etc... Not so much on purpose as on habit from running with two friends (Tom & Jackie) that do the same.

With Angelica, who was quite surprised to run 11 miles in 99:30.

Hamstring definitely less sore than yesterday. Yesterday being worse than Sunday, presumably as I was sitting at work more?

PM run on treadmill. L-hamstring still pretty sore after this day at work. Was better on the weekend with less continuous sitting.

AM run, resting R-ham taking it pretty easy