Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Event: BUSA Championships
 

Warm-up and cool-down for BUSA with Per.

BUSA Individual Race (in other words, British intercollegiate champs.) As a non-official competitor, I started very early and got to hang out at the finish and cheer for Oxford people coming in for hours after finishing myself. I wanted to treat this as a "training race" - run hard, but controlled, not taking any risks I might take in a race that mattered, but not slacking off, either. The result was underwhelming. The course consisted of three parts: first, a steep hillside with a mix of green and white woods, trails contouring along, and some rock detail, then a flattish open moor on top with great visibility, pretty good runnability, and lots of sheep and cows, and finally, back down to the hillside for the last couple of km. The change of pace was a lot of fun, but the steep hillside was not. I made a few mistakes (about 5 minutes total), including two that made me particularly angry at myself. In both cases, it was a textbook leg of "drop down to the trail, run along the trail, and attack into the woods." The only tricky part is knowing when to leave the trail, and I blew it both times. This is the kind of skill I almost never get to practice in Sweden, since there is always plenty of detail to read, and it showed here.
In the end, I finished 14th, a whopping 15 minutes behind the imrpessive Oli Johnson:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/orienteering.club/busa/indivi...

C • knowing when to leave the trail 1