Training Log Archive: rcro

Lacking inspiration, and as it was raining, short run from home. Despite the rain - very, very humid and not so nice conditions for running.

Pace fairly quick, and trying hard in second half. All hill climbing felt like very hard work - but nearly a clean sweep of segment PBs so maybe not quite so bad. 2s off best time for full Risca Road - and sure would have bettered it if not for the 3 vans parked blocking the pavement in the last section.

No pain with knee during run, but feeling worked quite quickly afterward so need to give it more stretching.

Hoping to actually find something to do with rest of weekend now. No parkrun as don't want to do another hard and fast run after today's.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1017313446

Event: Evening Urban Event
 

Street race around Lydney. Hot day. Started right at the end as helping beginners. Gave Chris/Dec 5-10 mins head start so had some people to chase down - got both of them on 6.

Some quite long legs, and mostly road as Bathhurst Park is shut at the moment. Going quite well and finished without knee being in pain which is first time in over a month now.

2nd behind Chris McCartney.

Wildlife count - 1 adder and 1 slow worm at New Fancy in afternoon; x million rabbits on the M48 on way home.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1016486107

MDC run from near the Whistle by Blaenavon.

Rather than running the Coity race route instead went somewhere different. Marcus lost the footpath and it was the footpath's fault so was pretty slow. Right at the back with Andy Stott most of the way. Tired from weekend and in need of a rest day.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1013304376

Huge amount of food in the Rifleman's after. Too much.

(very) short warm up jog around the park.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1011071080

Sprint orienteering in West Cross, planned by Ben on a Ben map. Being chased by Clare.

Fantastic little area and perfect place to test planning ahead and making quick decisions. Went the long way to 3 as didn't appreciate scale and hadn't picked out the best route to 12 until after I had started out from 11.

More mistakes made on side 2 - going back over where we started. Hadn't spotted uncrossable wall before 3 until just before and went a little bit funny before 6.

Great course and good fun.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1011071134

Afternoon training on Broughton Burrows.

1. Control pick in reverse. Mostly ok but went pretty bad at around 13 (first one was 15!) - overshot pretty badly and alarm bells starting going off as nothing fitted, and had then bumped into Brendan who was going the other way and into 5. In my defence, Ben was also standing around here looking pretty lost, apparently doing the same exercise. Managed to relocate, which is some achievement. Must have been in the wrong place on another (as it had a tag in for a later exercise) but found the next site OK despite coming from wrong direction.
https://www.strava.com/activities/1011689362
19:32, 1.74km, 70m

2. Corridor exercise is rougher terrain to north. This went fairly well and stayed well in line for c.95% distance - but started to go wrong near the end when there was no positive feature to work with. Spent a little bit of time exploring interesting features off the corridor before getting back on about 100 yards later. Tough going and tiring. Took a little detour at top to link up to the coast path as Ben wouldn't let me join it up back in October.
https://www.strava.com/activities/1011689345
30:07, 2.63km, 95m

3. Windows in reverse, and the windows were not very big. Definitely easier in reverse and without good (read "any") pacing strategy had to rely on good compass and to calibrate distance estimates as I left 8 (the first control). This turned out to be remarkably successful getting 7, 6, and 5 all fine, on a good line for 4 but stopped a little early (checked map and decided was too early). Poor bearing on 3 but only one area where contours would fit. Good line to 2 but doubted and stopped way too early, carried on checking all holes and found it where it would have been if I kept straight on. 1 was the hardest to find, stuck on the bearing and aimed to start looking around for features when it looked familiar (as this was where I came to on first exercise). Stumbled upon Oscar, Clare and the tag on my line before I knew to pay attention.
https://www.strava.com/activities/1011689139
24:20, 2.58km, 60m

Collected the windows tags in after - by walking. Started feeling very faint at the far end and kept feeling like I would collapse at every step. Walk slowed to a stumble - kept going only by the thought of the orange cake waiting in the car. It's the most faint I've felt - more so than just before when I actually did faint at work last summer.

Pretty tired.

Warm up jog with Patrick (Australian) around Keepers Pond, then a track up to the masts car park that I'd not been down before, and straight over on L-B route. May have turned short a little too early for the footpath (it is a lot further down than I remember every time) which meant a little bit of terrain through the heather. Warm.

https://www.strava.com/activities/1010133856

Mark and Alice training session on Pwll Du - with Patrick, Ben, Oscar and Brendan.

Good training and knee was ok for first half despite very rough terrain.

1. Each put a control out, then ran clockwise around all the other controls, collected in the last. Fairly hesitant to start and my feature wasn't so obvious but got into it more as it went on. Was quite a pull up the road. Hot now.
https://www.strava.com/activities/1010134124
35:23, 4.4km, 125m

2. Corridors exercise. Mostly went quite well and map was good for it. But made quite a meal of it about 500m in after a little pond where crossed the paths and nothing matched up! Spent a few minutes working it out and corrected. Stuck in the line pretty well otherwise.
https://www.strava.com/activities/1010130467
37:01, 3.42km, 150m

3. Control pick - and collecting the tags. Set out to do the first 18 only, to take in all the bits we hadn't around already. Found all but 17. Getting to the feature ok but often taking a while to spot the tag - and doubting myself when I didn't find it straight away. Not much flow due to collecting the tags, and tiredness. The area down by the road was incredibly rough - very deep heather and was a real struggle.
https://www.strava.com/activities/1010134230
42:39, 3.86km, 155m

See 1 red kite, 1 dragonfly, 3 MTBOers - one of which was Nick.

Afternoon on Clydach. Fantastic area. Not a fantastic map.

4. Triangles with Alice and Brendan. This didn't go very well. At all. Of 7 sites I went to, think I was happy I was in the right place on 3. Not able to fit the contours to the ground so was unable to relocate effectively either. From GPS doesn't look like even close to the right place on two of them - but seems to be one of those maps where it would be no harder if running with a blank sheet of paper. I said similar the last time I ran here.
https://www.strava.com/activities/1010134071
31:46, 2.72km, 40m

5. Lines. Followed the line quite well for most of the way and going slow enough (and with larger scale map) to confirm a few features. Did a lot of asking "why the hell is it doing this on the map?" as seemed to be a lot of things that didn't make any sense compared to on the ground - like re-entrants that didn't exist, a big valley on the ground shown as a big form line hill on the map etc. etc. About 1.4km couldn't fit the map at all again so took a short detour off before rejoining again ahead of the pond. Great area - just really needs a map where contours reflect shape of the ground. Completing this exercise at least gives me some confidence that my problems here aren't *all* my own fault!
https://www.strava.com/activities/1010133747
17:11, 1.77km, 50m