Training Log Archive: Kat

Morning jog by myself. It was sunny and wonderful outside. I ran around the left side of Christ Church Meadow and up the river to the blue bridge and back. 17:40 out, 17:29 back.

Average HR for 5.5 hours last night was 45.
I have exams in a few weeks so I really need to start spending solid hours doing maths. Thus, I've decided to take this weekend off and focus on my work.

C • off 1

An easy run by myself. I went up Marston Road and cut across to University Parks. I ran around there aimlessly, observing people and birds.I felt really slow when I started out (legs are sore), but warmed up after 25 minutes or so and felt like I was cruising at the end.

This is the most running I've ever done in a week. I have 41 miles recorded, but this is not including about 70 minutes of running that I did this week which I didn't record distance for (this is over 7 miles, probably closer to 8). Plus, I run much more distance when orienteering than the figures I put down, which are the straight-line distances. Thus, this week I've probably done around 50 miles all in all. Pretty cool.

A long run with Scott, incorporating Club Run. We ran around the right side of Christ Church meadow, up the river all the way to Port Meadow, around the right side of that, a loop around the Nature Reserve, then through the city streets to the Rad Cam to meet others for Club Run. Only SGB and Alex Goodwin showed up. We waited 15 minutes for Joe, then gave up and started the run without him. I think I would have felt stronger had I not had this short break. When Scott and I resumed running, we both felt a bit stiff and my quads felt sore. Also, I realized how hungry and dehydrated I was. So for the next 40 minutes of running, all I could think about was eating oranges. We ran through University Parks and did a loop around the meadows across the bridge there. To make it easier on myself, I ran ahead of the guys for the second half, even though it felt antisocial. (When I'm tired, it's mentally easier for me to run ahead and even speed up a bit rather than slow down, whereas trying to keep a group's pace wears me down.)

This just might be the most mileage I've ever done in a day. I've certainly gone on longer runs (in terms of time), but those were usually in the woods and therefore the actual distance I went was considerably less than it would be on flats.

I'm quite pleased with the average speed of 8 min/mile. Some parts of the run were quite quick (on paths and roads) but the majority of it was on muddy paths and even muddier fields where there was several inches of water on the ground. By the time I got to my room, I had mud all over my legs and clothes. My pretty, new white-and-orange Asics are now brown.

Hip and ankle exercises while doing Outreach. I was standing by control 5 so there was lots of time to kill until the kids came around. I'm ashamed to say that the kids orienteered sort of like I did yesterday. They would run to the control, punch, immediately run off, then stop a few meters away when they realized they didn't know where they were going. Then they would spot another control, run to it, discover it wasn't their control, and run around in circles.

I did a Christ Church meadow loop by myself, then headed over to South Park for the OUOC hilly session. SGB, Joe, Timmeo, Scott, and Chris M all came and we did several short zigzag courses up the hill, meant to be long intervals. It was very unstructured - nothing was timed, we drew our own (different) courses, and the map is very dodgy so I only aimed to go in the right direction and not even necessarily get to the exact feature (which half the time wasn't mapped as it should be anyway). I did three such short courses, using the downhills as recovery. My legs felt tired from yesterday so even though I tried to push as much as possible, my heart rate wasn't getting very high and this felt more like a tempo run with breaks than an interval session. After I did these courses, I attempted to do a short rep uphill just to see if I could get my heart rate up. No luck. I ran uphill for about a minute or two easy, with my HR at 150/160. Then I pushed for 50 seconds all out and could only get my HR up to 172 (average of 170 for those 50 seconds). Hmm. I can get my HR higher on flats, but it doesn't seem to happen on hills.
After this, I jogged down the hill again, did a loop around the park with the others collecting the tapes Joe had put out, then jogged home with Scott. My hands were freezing when I got home - it has been rain and chill all week.

C • Monitors 1

C • Around on 7/22-7/23 9

About 16 minutes warm-up, 7 minutes cool-down.

EVENT: The third sprint in the TVOC Summer Series, at Brill Common
COURSE: ZX2Y
TERRAIN: Mostly rough open with lots of contour detail. Although there are no huge sequences of contour lines, there are constant ups and downs, hills and depressions of only 5 meters, but *everywhere.*
MY RUN: I started off quite well and was even ahead of Chris Millard through control 7. I felt I was moving fast and navigating well. But then when trying to get out onto the road, I got caught up in brambles right by the pavement! I tried stamping them down, but they were really thick and over my head. Eventually I managed to get through (30+ seconds), but by this point everybody who had the same first loop as I did was well ahead. I had thorns in my hair and digging into my hands when I finally managed to untangle myself from there. As soon as I got out onto the road, I tried speeding up, but suddenly felt quite tired. As Boris was just telling me the other day, it is possible to feel like you are flying, but then trip or something and totally lose that wonderful feeling. It was like this for me today. After getting tangled, I tried to pull myself together and keep focusing and managed to make it back to the start/finish without any further big mistakes, but then I didn't look at the next map properly before running off and took a terrible route choice to the first control. To make matters worse, I had trouble finding it (I couldn't see it because of the tall grass). I got the next few ok, but none were smooth. This was partly because there were areas of totally impossible brambles not mapped as green which I had to go around (such as on #4) and partly because I wasn't concentrating well. The ultimate mistake of the day was the first control of course Y, which I believe I spent almost 10 minutes looking for. I went to the right area right from the start, but I was expecting a pit in the open grassy bits. Actually, the pit was hidden beneath a tree which I personally would have mapped as distinct. Thus, because I was expecting something other than what was on the terrain, I ended up relocating for a long time, even going from the third control once. After that, another minor slip on the route choice from 4-5 (where I misinterpreted which buildings were which on the map), but ok otherwise.
RESULTS: 18th on the A course (all three loops). Time is an estimate - may be off by a few minutes.
THOUGHTS: Brill is lovely and despite the nettles and brambles (which I experienced a *lot* of), it's quite a fun place to orienteer in. As for my navigation there, I can honestly say that tonight it was lack of concentration rather than lack of experience which caused my mistakes. On Saturday I had a bad sprint because that particular type of area was so different from what I was used to. Tonight I just couldn't focus. Nonetheless, I had fun and got a good mini-hill workout :)

Ran around South Park with an old map of the place, then ran around the small park across the road. Then I headed back to Rose Lane and did a Christ Church meadow loop, followed by two strides (about 30 seconds each, with jogging in between). By this point it was raining really hard and I was totally soaked. It was fun.