Training Log Archive: Wyatt

Ingress-exploring Cortina d/Ampezzo in the AM. Saw a parade in the main square while the family slept in.

A very steep M40 course, re-using some of the WOC Middle terrain, where I managed to do fairly well, physically & navigationally - better than the day before (unfortunately - I'd have traded :)

Good enough for 9th of 50 in M40 - only 3 minutes out of 3rd. More than 7 minutes out of 1st - but then Tore Sandvik's got a decent resume...

http://www.5daysofitaly2014.it/uploads/day5_result...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tore_Sandvik

WOC Middle Distance Final - the 1 US Men's Entry

Not a great race for me:
- felt physically off (stomach pain on warmup to start, then 50% behind leaders on pure running legs, vs. ~30% expected)
- a bit sloppy - not terrible given the complexity (World Champ almost 10% behind super-man), but definitely something the other competitors were better prepared for, and an area I usually do better in
- 300 WRE points earned - vs. ~800 typically

On the physical side, not quite sure what I did wrong. My best guess is:
- 5% - 3 hours in quarantine, in 2 layers of new-tight-elastic pants (it was cold in quarantine) screwed up my breakfast/lunch digestion a bit - this is something I could avoid in the future.
- 5% - my fitness gap vs. the experts in rugged, and green terrain is perhaps an extra 10-20% slower than in more open terrain (but this was only part of the course, hence 5% overall impact)
- 5% - tiredness from lots of other bumpy racing/training that week (incl. a hard push 2 days prior for the Relay trials) - this was intentional - for technical training w/o earlier travel, and the Relay Trials.

On the technical side, it was really hard terrain, with variety - http://news.worldofo.com/2014/07/12/woc-middle-men... covers it well.
- Probably 2-3 minutes of total loss on route choice, where I missed less rocky footing (in some reentrants, and some parts of the hillsides) and where I failed to contour well. In similar terrain, better inferences about the likely runnability of routes would be useful.
- Probably 3-5 minutes of in-the-circle small-errors and hestitation - really didn't have great flow into the circles - had to read carefully guessing between many features and trying a few hypotheses of terrain matching to get to the right hole... Better map reading skills in this type of terrain (from more practice), and better compass bearing hold esp. in the green, and/or rocky stuff - from practice and discipline) would help.
- A nearly 2 minute error on #5, where I was a bit low, and though so, but really couldn't understand why so many 10-15m clearings in the medium green weren't mapped, with me looking for a 20m mapped clearing. My veg. reading/interpretation skills are pretty bad - as Marc Lauenstien once put it, because we (in the US) often learn to ignore vegetation detail because the average age of the maps we regularly race on is so high.

Superman @ 34 + 50% fitness-on-the-day -> 51 minutes pefect nav. time + perhaps even a bit more time on navigation/hesitation in addition to my analysis above, brought the total to 63.

1) Route (should've gone over) :20, Sloppy/Hes. Attack: 30
2) Hesitation 30 (thought this was cleanly nailed, but I was nearly double the winners time, apparently reading my way down too carefully :|)
3) Route : 30 (should've contoured, attack: 20)
4) Hes. :30 (picking my way down)
5) Lost in unmapped small clearings in green, along cliffs, not turning quite far enough 1:45
6) Drifted way left, while battling green :30
7) Hes :10 (picking my way down)
8) Exit wrong direction :15, bad attack angle :25
9) Hes./confused on attack :25
10) Dropped too far mid-route :30, hes. downhill attack :15
11-13) Clean (relatively easy legs w/TV arena passage)
14) More or less nailed this, but apparently hesitantly as I was :30 back from my fitness 50% back...
15) :30 route (too high), :30 attack confused in stony stuff incl. trenches at end
16) :20 miss left, quick recovery
17) :10 hes. bumping my way in (Eric followed me in, missing a bit too)
18, 19, F) Clean (following Eric hard on 18, was my best % back at 35% - incl. a big portion slightly downhill on dirt road...)

A little bit of getting to & from places, slowly.

A very light jog on AJ's M14 course. On the forest legs where he was very clean, we almost tied. So his forest mistakes of 1-2 minutes were quite vivid. In the easier mixed field/trail controls at the end, he was 20% faster. Suggesting his 'clean' pace in the forest has some navigational time included - not unexpected (by me) at his age, in newish terrain. Even I likely have more navigational time on clean legs than more expert orienteers.

WOC Relay Team Trials - Ethan, Giacomo, Ross & I ran the Open-Long course at the spectator event. Giacomo, followed close by Ethan, had the fastest times, so were the Relay picks. Then two Japanese guys, followed by me (2.5 minutes back from Ethan), were next on the course, then Ross, who had one big error, plus some small mistakes. I had a 1 min. route choice error (that only Ethan got right among the 4 of us), and a 40 sec. route choice error (missed a trail and gradual descent, and too a more around, bumpy and steep decent) as my main mistakes, and wasn't running quite as fast.

Overall a solid run for me, but Ethan & Giacomo did significantly better.

Long warmup, and some cooldown - enforced by remote start & finish - though only 'remote' from our hotel, where we left the car. :)

Folgaria Sprint with the family. Fun exploration. Bad shoes - didn't anticipate that O-shoes & tape would be appropriate for this partial-city, partial grass/wooded steep hillsides run in the race... So took it esp. carefully.

Some hiking, and light jogging around the WOC Middle Model map. In retrospect this was reasonably relevant, except to the middle light-green portion, which was not represented at all on this map. A few map errors (missing cliffs/rocks) wasn't re-assuring - but they did better on the Final map.

Skipped the WOC M40 Day 2, for a partial re-run of the Day 1 course which was much more WOC Middle relevant. With better strategies now in mind, hitting the controls (even now that they were just small wooden stakes with an orange top), and reading the terrain on approach to the circles, was much easier. Even did some out of sequence to test different approaches, and those worked well too. Gained some confidence back..