Training Log Archive: TimM

Easy pre gym miles with Will and Bash. Feeling a bit dead.

Jumps and weights both feeling harder this morning.

Crawl home.

To the meadows.

Drills.

Had a session planned but felt terrible warm g up (and this morning) so spent drills deliberating wether to do it or not. After a lot of persuasion I managed to ignore that little voice telling me if I moved it tomorrow it would ruin all training I've done, so didn't do it. No harm in postponing and then swapping the weekend around I don't think. Still, bit pissed off but probably less so than if I had ground it out at shite quality. Also think it's best to listen to legs a little these coming weeks, rather than stubbornness.

C • session 2

Weekend updated.

Long with Carcas and Stanwix. Had a good chat, and explored a new bit of Mortonhall for me which was nice. Legs a little heavy but can deal with that. Gland still pretty sore but no worse than yesterday.

C • Stanwix 3

Easy lap of the meadows. Legs feeling fine but sore throat has turned into one gland in my neck being really quite swollen and has a constant throbbing that is painful whenever I swallow. Don't feel ill other than that so just going to ignore.

Drills on the meadows.

Home.

To DVC then a lap.

Farming conveniently died after this and seems to have erased data.
3 x 1km (3mins), 3 x 800 (2mins) although the 800 was a little short. Not many people about so felt like a solo session at times and so I kinda struggled to get that extra gear out tonight.
K's all a second or two either side of 3:05, "800" more like 2:22. All felt pretty comfortable but could have done with pushing a little harder.

C • RIP farming 3

Home. Exactly the same as warm up so I've just copied that.

To gym.

Post gym with Tess, had a good chat about certain aspects of o.

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.

Event: Warwickshire Orienteering Weekend
 

Event: Junior Sprint selection race (open to M/W16-20 juniors only)
 

Pre brekkie shakeout along the canal with the guys.

Warm up map and more.

Warwick Uni Sprint Selection Race.

When I woke up on Wednesday with a pretty bad sore throat, headache and feeling a bit knackered I couldn't believe that I had put together an almost uninterrupted preperation to then be struck down the week before the race. Thankfully it mostly cleared so that I only had a slight sore throat on the day. Legs felt good on the pre brekkie race so was nervously looking forward to getting the first race done. A little bit of doubt started to creep in during the warm up but tried to focus on having a solid race (mainly always knowing what I had to do in the next section, whether that be a whole leg, or exit or whatever) on a nice sunny day.

Felt like much faffage before getting the map folded, plan made etc on the rather short run out to the kite. Went with the left option to the first to save trying to spot the little passageway but perhaps this was a second or two slow. Anyway the first and then the second (left) were nice nerve settlers. Took quite a lot of map looks to decide on a route to 4. Decided to go right and executed this well.

Seemed to be in a good groove at this point of just focusing on what was next but also pushing quite hard. Spotted the cut through to 5 so went with that but kept to the road which involved weaving around a barrier so perhaps a couple of seconds lost here. Had trouble deciding on a route to 6, right seemed good but felt uneasy with something about it so headed back out the same way (splits suggest this was a little slower). The next leg felt good, knew exactly what was coming up well in advance so could just push on. Went right on 8 but then fully left to 9 which I think was a little slower than optimum. Didn't help that I ran past the control, probably losing almost five seconds in doing so.

I think my focus started to drop off a little at this point and my attention started to turn towards 'my legs feel shit'. This perhaps contributed to taking ages to decide which route to 11. Went right, think that's alright. Then I made a bad decision by going right to 12. Hadn't spent long enough considering the choices, and the leg itself felt bloody slow. This seemed to set the tone for the rest of the race, mainly focusing on feeling terrible and not enough time on actually orienteering. My exit out of 14 and entrance to 15 were terrible and I spent a fair while at 15 finalising my route to 16 even though I had fully decided left was best. Then went right to 17 which I think was slower due to weaving and the fact that the control was at the top of the steps. The rest of the course didn't provide much technical challenge, I missed the ramp to 21 so had to use the steps but other than that it was about grinding it out to the finish.

Splits suggest a strong first section but then lost some time through the twist 50/50 section. Seem to have picked it up again a little on 11 and 12 before fading and consistently being a bit down on each split.

Felt pretty bad at the end, knew I'd lost some time on technical performance but felt like I hadn't shown my best physical form either and lt this affect me mentally whilst on the course. This was pretty gutting because inevtiably I fell down the results list. Don't think this race was a true reflection of how I could perform but 5th isn't completely the end of the world just yet, looking forward to doing better at the JK.

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

Some jogging around some fields.