Training Log Archive: Ollie

Event: British Elite Middle Distance
 

British Middle Distance Championships at Hopwas Woods. Had a fairly good run, marred by one stupid error that cost me 3m 30 - any error over 1 minute is really bad news for a middle - especially a championship. Forest was quite branchy and brambly in places, and you really had to go direct through the green stuff to avoid wasting a lot of time, so I was a little cut up at the end. After 15 mainly short and flat legs, the last third of the course looped out over a hilly, less technical section, with some long and tiring legs.

Comparing my splits with Ian, I was beaten on every leg except the penultimate five. My run in was marred by the first incident in a traumatic weekend of EMIT, where it failed to punch at the finish, it was still scrolling from the previous control but I spotted that the split time didn't look right. Means I got a rubbish time for the Most Important Leg.

Finished a disappointing 43rd out of 61 runners.

Mistake analysis:
To 3: Paced wrong, stopped early: 20s
To 6: Poor route execution, failed to pick up path: 20s
To 8: Paced wrong, stopped early: 20s
To 11: Misread map, ran up and down wrong valley! 3m30
To 12: Misread map, feature was lower than expected: 30s
To 13: Poor navigation: 45s
To 17: Misread map, overshot: 1m

Men's Open (Course A) - Splits

Måsenstafetten - a traditional Swedish season opener, on the map "Särtryck från Bushhyttan öster" just south of Skavsta airport in Sweden. I was in the Men's Open, 4th leg out of 5. I ended up running in the mini-mass start along with the fifth leg runner (the one and only Ian). I had a great first half, to the spectator control, following the crowd for a bit and then finding a few of the intensely difficult controls on my own. l made a big mistake on the long leg leaving the spectator control though - frustratingly, I was only about 20m away from the control but had to run 400m away to relocate off an open marsh I had visited early. I did eventually find it, but also messed up the next one, and so abandoned my run - I had a plane to catch, and the car going there was leaving at 3pm, with or without me! So my time represents my time to No. 11, then skipping 12-17 and running straight back to the finish - which was being dismantled as I passed through - not a good sign. The other Oxford and Cambridge teams were also completely outclassed by the natives, and finished last, and fourth last, out of 55 teams. Still, Oxford did beat Cambridge, once more.

A slightly disappointing end to a 5-star week of orienteering in the most difficult of Scandinavian terrain.