Training Log Archive: blegg

Red course at Briones scout-o. Mixed bag of results.
There were a few legs that I executed really nicely.

At times though it felt like a navigational disaster. I just couldn't concentrate. The navigation should have been super easy, but I was really sloppy. Besides dehydration, I have a couple of things I think I did wrong:
1) depending on too little, locking in on major features, without getting the big picture very well.
2) I think the easiness, combined with my sloppiness, actually made things tougher - I could go several hundred meters between collecting features and more or less forget what I was doing.
3) I would crest a hill or come out of woods and everything I saw would be new. My split decisions of evaluating the new info was really poor.
4) Was pretty bad at distance and height judgement.
5) I ran without a compass - I wonder how much time I would save if I had one?

Ok, so it did feel like a disaster, but I need to list a few good things.
-I was contouring pretty well.
-Coming into Control 13, I absolutely nailed it, based on height and position on hillside.

C • I had a compass, but didn't... 2

Nice fast run with the runninc club, out and back on college, with broadway-keith loop.

across campus

Indian rock with the RC.

Las trampas course designing.

Planned to do a bike ride this morning. Woke up to the sound of rain and decided against it. It was actaully really pleasant, but this is california and the rain stopped within an hour.
Tommorrow though I will head out to Las Trampas to try out some course setting ideas on the south bit of the map, rain or shine.

Bike ride home

Short jog, Campus-Queens

Excercise bike, followed by some strength training.

Spring Lake sprint. Very interesting terrain, but lots of rocks made trail options preferable. I had fun.

Looking back, I see some room to improve. The control bags were often tucked into little corners behind bushes and rocks, which means you had to look closely for them. Seems to me, that to attack these controls with confidence, you needed to be over 90% sure of where you where, and even though I was usually correct I was more like 70% sure. As a result, I wasted time in the circle. My navigation quality was reduced by the rocks and vegetation, which made it hard to take glances at the map. As a secondary consequence, when I stumble around control sites, I generally tend to leave the control in the wrong direction, without a good plan.

In the future, I need to focus on these things: Have a total plan for each leg in advance, know what the control site will look like, and know how I will leave the control.

Saturday morning ride with the cal cycling club. It was a really mild pace, toughest bit was the climb back up home.

Went to the gym, hoping to work out. I really had no energy though. Wound up running a couple mile on the track, then came in and did some lifting.

Slide run with the RC. Short and easy.

Red course at calero. Stepped down from blue to reduce climb and make things easier on my ankle. Had a remarkably good run. I only had to pull back the intensity a little, and the ankle didn't bother me at all.

25 minutes bike.
10 minutes treadmill.
Followed with some core strength stuff.

Recumbant bike