Training Log Archive: Kat

I was hoping to re-run all three of the legs where I made mistakes this morning, but since people wanted to leave shortly after prize-giving, I didn't have enough time for everything. So I reran legs 4-5 and 5-6. Wow, this is so much easier during the day! Being able to see far off into the distance and pick off big features really helps, as does being able to see the control flags. I am convinced that although I might have possibly lost a few minutes doing this course in the daylight, I could never have made the gigantic mistakes I made at night. It's just a whole different type of orienteering...

Running on trails/roads to #4 and then back to the minibus after #6. I was feeling very tired after getting three hours of sleep on a torn thermarest and not having eaten any breakfast (because Scott left my food outside and the birds ate it).

After something like six hours driving in the minibus, OUOC finally arrived at Penhale Sands (Cornwall). There were two sprint courses available that afternoon (one short, one long) around the camper vans. I jogged the long one first. Some hesitation, but no disasters. It was a nice warm-up run for the short course.

C • Penhale 1

The short sprint course. I raced this one and was having a very good run (as I should, since I'd been to all but one of the controls already!) until I somehow managed to screw up the penultimate one by over a minute. These were very fun courses and also gave me an idea of what it would be like to run on Penhale later that evening. I made a mental note to myself to *definitely* wear gaiters. The spiked grass hurts!

Cool-down. I re-ran the leg where I made a mistake and figured out what I'd done before to wind up near a fence. Then I re-ran it again and everything made sense. Good!

Warm-up before my relay leg. I realized after running around a bit that it was actually not that cold and I would be hot in two layers. So I took off the lamp and then the long-sleeve thermal. By the time I was putting the lamp on again, people were getting excited because Helen (who had run the first leg for our relay team) had punched the penultimate control in first position! So now I was frantically trying to get my lamp on and head out to the changeover area. Someone kindly switched on his lamp so I could see what I was doing and I managed to make it out to the start in time just to see Helen run down the finish chute.

EVENT: Harvester Relay 2007
COURSE: I ran the second leg for OUOC, a 5.1 km night leg with 11 controls. I started at 1:12 AM on Sunday.
MAP: Penhale Sands, 1:10,000, 5m contours
TERRAIN: Complex sand dunes. Lots of technical contour detail with depressions and short but steep hills.
MY RUN: After Helen passed off to me, I started off quickly but carefully. I spiked the first control and then continued to keep up our lead till #4 (the radio control). Then trouble started. I knew where I was three-quarters of the way to #5 and I continued going in the right direction, but when I got to the right place, I didn't see the control! So I spent over ten minutes trying to search for it and relocate and figure out what had gone wrong, only to finally find it in the exact spot I had come to originally. I just hadn't seen the flag in the reentrant because there were no reflectors out. I was quite pissed off about this and wasn't careful enough to the next control, losing some time there as well. I spiked the next two, being very careful and reading all of the contour detail along the way. All I had to do now was find the 9th control (the last real control on the course), but I screwed it up big time. I was getting very tired of running through the tall grass and was not careful enough with my bearing. I dove off into the grass without an attackpoint, just hoping to hit the trail and follow it. But, of course, I found the wrong trail and spent ages running up and down it trying to figure out what was going on. I was not the only one to make that mistake, but I wish I hadn't! In daylight this leg would have been easy. In fact, all the controls that I spiked all look much harder to find on the map than this one. But the problem was this control was in a flattish area with many grass trails, some mapped and some not. Once I was in there, it was extremely difficult to relocate. It didn't help that my light went out (I had it on high beam for an hour) and I only had a dying low beam for the rest of my search. When I finally figured out what happened and found the control, I was beyond caring about anything other than finishing. Two more short legs and I handed over to Joe.
RESULTS: We finished 4th overall. The top three teams were all close together and we were about an hour down from them, so even if I'd had an amazing run, it was still very unlikely that we could have beaten them.
THOUGHTS: Despite the fact that I had a 20+ minute mistake on #9 and made two other big mistakes as well, I was actually quite pleased with my orienteering. This was a night leg in very complex terrain on a course without reflectors and I managed to spike most of the controls. Of course I wish I hadn't had those big slips, but I did the best I could.

My package finally arrived today so I went to the pool to try out my new aquajogging belt. Legs were starting to feel heavy by the end.

C • Where do you order an aqua-jog... 4

It felt so nice to be gliding through the water! The feeling wasn't as foreign as I thought it would be.
4x100 free/back
8x50 free on 60"
100 easy
1x50 fly/back
150 free/back
3x50 flutter kick (hard)
TOTAL: 1.25 km

C • swimming 1

More math definitions.

The usual. Quads didn't feel as tired today as on Monday, which seems a bit strange because I haven't been taking it easy since then.

Did one loop around the bigger "clump" (hill). It was gorgeous weather and even though my quads were sore, I felt really energetic.

TVOC Summer Series event at Wittenham Clumps. I was having a lot of fun and my navigation was good, but I felt blisters forming on my left heel again and decided to skip the third loop. There is a sizable chunk of my heel without skin now. So disappointing!

Jogging back to the car.

Warm-up around the bottom of South Parks and then one long loop around the perimeter.

A tempo run in South Parks. I did three shortened perimeter loops (shortened because the ground at the very bottom was marshy due to recent rain) and then spent the last five minutes running around on the flat section on top. My stomach felt a bit weird for the first half, but after that I felt great. Fast and strong, just the way it should be. This was good practice for going steadily up the hill and then maintaining fast turnover while going back down.

Cool-down, including one more loop around the park with Olli. Nice to have company and *very* nice to be running in sunny weather again, even if the ground was still wet. :)

50 minutes spinning, then 10 on the elliptical. Time passed pretty quickly because I was reviewing some math definitions. It was a very productive hour!