Training Log Archive: Kat

EVENT: CompassSport Cup Final
COURSE: Blue Trophy, 8.2 km, 75 m climb, 16 controls
MAP: Greenham & Crookham Common, 1:10000, 5m contours
TERRAIN: Lots of semi-open areas, with many marshes and small ponds. A bit of white woods on the southern edges of the map, with mostly muddy ground. Green was usually tall prickly bushes and green slashes, which were plentiful, were usually thorns.
MY RUN: Started off easy, then sped up once I got used to the scale and felt relatively comfortable with the map. I made a few mistakes along the course (usually no more than 1-2 minutes each), but I think I achieved my goal of less than 1 minute of mistakes per km. I think I could have run about 50 min if I was feeling competitive and had a clean run.
RESULTS: 15th out of about 90 people, mostly men.

C • Excellent! But I'm just curiou... 4

An easy morning run by myself, right before breakfast. It started out being very peaceful and relaxing - there was a thick fog over Christ Church meadow and I was one of the few people out there. But after I'd crossed the blue bridge, I saw eight fishermen in succession sitting along the river, which interrupted my thoughts. Then, when I touched the Port Meadow bridge and headed back, I saw a dead swan on the path. Since this was an out-and-back run, I'd passed this spot less than 15 minutes ago and didn't see the swan then. Of course, it is possible that because I was so busy looking at the fishermen up ahead I didn't notice the swan on the ground, but it's a pretty big bird and the path is quite narrow, so it would have been hard to miss. I wonder what happened to the poor bird...

C • Good! 2

A long run, incorporating Club Run. The club run went down south along the river. Everyone else went across at the lock, but Monica and I turned back around. When we reached the road, she went home and I kept going up north along the river to Port Meadow. I did a short loop there on the grass and then went back. It was getting dark as I was running home, so I figured Christ Church meadow gates must be closed and headed home on the pavement. My knees felt sore for the last half hour or so, but this was overshadowed by the tiredness of my quads. I'm still feeling the effects of Sunday's race.

C • spinning... 2

Warm-up running around the track.

Track intervals in the rain by myself. There were puddles all around the track and constant downpour, so I got completely soaked. Since I haven't done any intervals since June, I wanted to start out somewhat easy and only do 2x1200m, with 400m jog in between. I was aiming for 4:45 and hit it perfectly both times, running 95s for the first two laps and then going slightly faster (94) on the last lap of each 1200. I could have done a third one, but decided that two was enough for today because my legs are still somewhat sore from Sunday's race.

Time includes cool-down and jogging the recovery 400.

An easy kilometer of swimming right after the intervals.

Today is sort of a rest day from running and swimming, so I signed up to the Oxford Sports gym and did some cross-training in there. The gym is small and nowhere near as good as the Ekeby gym (in Sweden), but it's better than nothing.

Another nice session at the pool today.
warm-up: 4x100 free easy
main:
2x{8x25 free on 30 sec, 6x50 free on 60 sec, 3x100 free on 1:45, 50 easy}
2x{2x50 kick (build) on 70 sec, 2x50 fly/back on 70 sec)}
cool-down: 3x100 free
TOTAL: 2,800 meters

A "steady" run with the cross-country girls and some enthusiastic freshers. The cross-country girls were slightly too fast and the freshers (for the most part) were slightly too slow. So this run ended up being faster than I wanted it to be. In the future, I will probably do easy runs on my own.