Training Log Archive: TimM

Pre brekkie shake out along a canal with the guys.

To the start.

Bentley Woods Middle Selection Race.

Again, legs felt good on the pre brekkie run. Again, felt pretty nervous but had an extra feeling of tiredness and felt a bit sleepy beforehand in the assembly area. Confidence was also a little low but tried to think about being solid through the first few controls to settle into a rythmn.

Spent the majority of call up trying to get the bloody emit tag tight enough, leaning strategy not helping here. Started nice and steady, not a hard number one so got a good look at the course, surprised to see so much on the flat stuff at the far end. Perhaps my line into the control wasn't great but nothing major. Across the open nicely, settling into a good tempo. Had noticed that 4 looked like a danger control so was focusing on that and nearly started to navigating to it but realised and headed to 3. Was nervous the tiny rootstock I was heading to wasn't going to have a control on the other side of it but thankfullly there it was.

So at this very early stage things seemed good, had a strong level of focus. Plan for 4 was straightforward; south of the lake, up the open, down to the ride and in. But then going up to the open seemed pointless so I just ploughed into the light green and obviously this didn't go well. Got lost, kinda relocated and headed back in. Saw Ali headed on his way to 5 but too far away to run together. Splits say I lost over two and a half minutes here, my response to this wasn't great.

Hit the next few alright and didn't lose as much time as was definitely possible on the rather well hidden 8. Questionable line coming out of 8 and then some faffage in the circle of 9 but seemed to have gotten back into some kind of focus even if my mindset was very negative. Thought I was nailing 10 but overshot it quite badly and had to go back. Didn't even consider going through the green to 11, seems as though it may have been quicker. Bearing wasn't good enough to 12. Then got caught up badly in the veg going to 13 and it really pissed me off, felt like one of those days where the sooner the finish came the better. Didn't really feel like I was racing as hard as I should be and this feeling continued for the whole course. In fact that was the main thing I was thinking about all the time, and the actual orienteering was overshadowed by this. Need to really think about how to cope better with races where I'm not performing as well technically or physically as I feel I should be because I think this affected me in both races.

Lost a lot of time on 17 by somehow missing the path and then coming out onto the field, then checked it was in bounds and ran along and came into the control from the west. The next few went alright but just could not get the legs going. Found 22 hard to spot and that felt like some more time binned but in reality barely anything probably.

Pretty demoralised when I finished, not the weekend I had planned by any means. The fact that everyone else cocked up so the result could have been much worse doesn't really make any difference so yeah not happy. I do think that if I can keep an uninterupted phase for the whole race and have a level of focus like the beginning then I'll get a result that I'm aiming for. Just need to let it happen rather than try and force it.

http://obasen.orientering.se/winsplits/online/en/d...

Back to the arena with Nathan.