Training Log Archive: Kat

Feel slightly better today.

C • welcome back to Sweden... 2

Lots of hot tea and Prison Break episodes needed. For training, perhaps I'll play some Catching Features.

Travel day to Sweden. I am pretty sick now, after a week of being cold and wet. Will take the next few days off. It's been a good week, but now I need some rest!

For the last day of the training camp, we did two courses at Great Tower. This time we even got maps with the courses already printed on them! (Although the punching system was still "touch the flag.") The idea was to have everyone run the first race and then use the result to decide on starting times for the second race. The slowest person would go first and the fastest would go last (sort of like a chasing sprint, but in reverse.) I started off very slowly on the first course and kept going very slowly, so my finishing time was way off Joe's winning time. Out of nine controls I only spiked two. This was because (1) it was tough, physical, technical terrain, (2) I wasn't concentrating well.

The second course of the day. Since the people who were slower than me either didn't finish or decided to not do the second course, I was the first starter. But this time, I did not go slow. This time I actually decided to focus and hit the controls right on. I'd learned a number of things about the map during the first course which I used to be more technically accurate in the second course. As a result, I had an awesome run all the way through #7, going fast and doing well technically. Then I made 4+ minute mistakes on #8 and #9 each, partly because the line to #9 obscured a cliff and the area around #9 has changed since the last time this map has been updated. I wound up finishing first anyway. Definitely not a glorious victory and I'm happy nobody took it seriously :)

Today we trained on the Yewdale map, which was close enough to our youth hostel that we didn't need to drive. Instead, we hiked up 250 vertical meters to the start. A good warm-up.

The first exercise of the day was relocation, which I did with Ollie Hughes. There was a box drawn near each control and we took turns relocating within the boxes. I started off, by taking Ollie's map away from him and leading him to a hill near a stream junction in the box near the first control. Then I gave him his map back and he had to figure out where he was and then find the control. Then we switched. It worked pretty well and I was happy that I relocated fairly quickly! It helped that the terrain was incredibly open, with just grass, marsh, and a few rocks here and there. There were areas of bracken, but it was not as widespread as on Holme Fell.

Second exercise today was a line-O. It was technical enough that I walked it, making sure to read all of the features and go exactly on the line.

We were meant to do a star relay as the last training for the day, but it began to hail pretty hard after I finished the line-O so we went back down to the youth hostel for lunch. Afterward, we didn't have enough people willing to hike back up to the map, so the idea was abandoned.

A bunch of us decided to climb up a mountain in the early morning to see the sunrise. We left the youth hostel at exactly 7AM and ran up the road. We had to cross the river almost immediately and since the rocks were slippery and the current was reasonably strong, I wound up getting my hands and legs wet. It was completely dark and only a couple of us had flashlights (Boris had my bike light). Within the first few minutes, it began to rain. About half of my group was wearing trainers (sneakers) which were absolutely unsuitable for the steep marshy ground covered with rocks and bracken. The higher up we got, the more windy it became. In some cases, the wind was so strong that I felt I couldn't breathe because all of the air was being rushed past me too quickly. We made it to some top of the fell and looked out on the view. There was no sunrise, but at least it wasn't completely foggy, so when it went from black to gray, we could see the lake below. We ran around on the top for a while, then decided to go back down. It was either raining or hailing by that point - whatever it was, it was hurting me. We ran down the hillside at a crazy speed. My feet and hands were completely numb and I was thinking only of getting down without tripping over a rock. Amazingly, I got down without injury, but Elspeth wound up getting a deep cut on her leg and Boris hurt his knee. I was very grateful when I could see the youth hostel again!

Despite all of the physical pain and the very real danger we put ourselves in, I don't regret doing this. I just wish we had been better prepared! On the bright side, the rest of the week's weather seemed mild in comparison.

Running around on trails to get to/from the start.

About an hour after we got back to the hostel, we headed out the door again to go orienteering at High Dam. The first exercise involved groups of controls separated by a long leg. I did loops A and B, but ended up hurting my left knee quite badly on a rock and came back in early.

The second exercise of the day was a talk-O (a 17-control course which we were supposed to do in pairs, talking about our strategies). I did this with Ollie Hughes and had a great time. We switched off at each control, first one taking the lead, then the other. It went really well and since I wore my Sarvas instead of my orange O-shoes, I had better grip and therefore managed to not hurt myself this time. I did, however, fall into a deep marsh towards the beginning, so I was entirely soaked by control #8. Then it began to hail by control #13, which made us speed up a bit. Very fun course!

Collecting control #10. It was an interesting exercise - from where I was, I could basically follow a stone wall almost the entire way. However, this meant going up and down over bracken hills, whereas going around a bit, I could run on flatter ground but would have to actually navigate to keep track of where I was. On the way to #10, I went along the stone wall and on the way back I went around. The way back was definitely better, although it involved more mental effort.

Various bits of running in between courses.

The first day of the CUOC-OUOC Lakes District training camp. Today's training took place at Holme Fell. The first exercise was a short 12-control course. I took it easy, getting used to the map and trying to read all of the technical detail. There was a lot of bracken and it was quite wet and windy again. Felt tired by the end.

A line-O with Boris. Focused on reading all of the features we passed. I noted that sometimes the half-contour hills seemed made entirely by bracken - so that if the bracken was dead, the ground would be flat there. On the other hand, some hills seemed smaller than I expected them to be from the map because when bracken grows on the hill and also all around it, it sort of levels out the hill, making it seem lower.

The last exercise of the day, a mini-race. Everybody started from the same start, but we all had different first controls, depending on how fast we were. Boris had the one furthest away while I had one of the middle ones and some of the less experienced orienteers had a close one. The terrain was quite tricky - contours were hard to read because of bracken and heather in the open areas. I also had trouble figuring out which rocks were mapped sometimes. Very good technical training!