Training Log Archive: nmulder

1030 - Ran the 6th Stage of the Hungaria Cup, Open 3 (longest).

The race took place on the Hungarian / Slovakian border, with 3 controls in HUN and the rest in SVK. I had a good run, beautiful forest, very fast, lots of sinkholes. Only 2 mistakes, 1 where I got a bit too low dropping into a control and had to climb slightly (#11) and then #13, where I hadn't climbed enough. Map may be sketchy on the contour side of things.

I tripped and fell in open forest halfway through the course, just as I was trying to up the pace. Wiped myself off quickly and continued. Only realised when I got to the finish that I had broken my compass. Ooops. I gather that I probably wasn't using it enough. ;-)

1815 - The final WOC event in Hungary, the Beer-O!

Great race organised by the Americans on the University map. Unfortunately, they was a bit too much running and too little drinking. The running was very sobering.

My best result at WOC so far. I cracked a Top 10!!!

C • BeerO FTW 3

Will take a rest day. WOC is over for me. Only Long F tomorrow, where I'll run the Open spectator race.

1100 - Ran Leg 1 of the WOC Relay. Not my usual position, I dislike the speed, but decided I was game with the objective to keep SA in the hunt as long as possible.

Felt calm and relaxed at the start. Gun went, I went out the back. Tough climb to #1. I started catching up the back of the train on my split. To # 2 caught Patrick (CAN) and CRO on the downhill. By #3 I was back with the back runners (dropped CRO and GER - presumably HGK, CHN already behind) and by #4 was in a nice loose bunch with TUR, IRL, NZL, SRB, CAN and BLR. Dropped them in #5, which was hidden in dense bush in a pit in a felled clearing. Got out of there without anyone seeing (SA-style), but then made mess-ups out of #6 and at #7 in some more green and was re-caught by a lot of them. Different forking to #10, then I made final 30s mistake on parallel road to #11. A final loop past the finish was technically easy, so no further opportunities to improve position.

Brought the team home in 32nd out of 38 teams, just behind CAN, SLO, BLR, IRL and SRB, but ahead of TUR, CRO, NZL, GER, CHN and HKG.

Result left me pretty happy. Had 3 errors of 30s each, which cost me a few places. First one was a result of not checking direction properly out of a control (too rushed), second was missing a narrow ride in green (can't find it on map now) and 3rd was parallel error (poor map reading!). The 3rd one is pretty stupid. The other two I can live with.

Team SA finished 36th in the end, with Cobus running 2nd and Eugene 3rd. Lots of drama in the front of the field with a major medical incident and 3 lead teams stopping to help.

Map below. My route measured as 7.01km.

Warming up before the start. Also getting comfortable in a brand new pair of shoes.

0933 - Well, a much better run at the Sprint Qualifier near the Miskolc Zoo.

Felt decent at the start. Managed to warm up and un-stiffen my legs. Felt good making my way from Pre-Start to Start. Bit of a suprise that we started inside the Finish arena. Was given Heat A.

Got off well, acing #1 and beating the 2 other guys starting with me. Then a long leg to #2, which also went well. My speed was high, I found the forest was very runnable, yet most importantly my map contact was good across very gullied terrain. I also made good use of the control description list, reading 2-3 ahead. This was very useful as there were many controls in each area, some as close as 15m apart.

Got to the far end of the map feeling good. On the return legs I was caught by my +1 min man (Spain). Surpisingly, he stayed behind for a while before running ahead. We both missed the next control by about 10s, a tower in green forest (never saw the tower, even turned away from the control originally as I thought it was a spur). Then a long leg in green, where Emil came past. I was slightly off going into the control and they got ahead.

Made my big mistake (40s) on the next one. Came flying out of the green to see a 1m fence. Stopped short when I realised it was marked us uncrossable(!!!!). Control was on the inside of the compound, entrance on the far. By the time I had double checked the map, stumbled into a tree and then run around, 40s lost. Obviously hadn't read the map well enough, also wasn't expecting an uncrossable boundary.

From here on, went okay on the final lap near the finish, but had lost visibility on Antonio (Spain) and Emil, so an opportunity missed. Lost a further 90s to them, with both going on to qualify.

Overall a fair / good result. Finished 31st of 38, +3:56 on winner Matthias Mueller. Quali was 2:12 ahead which is closer than normal. Still feel that I should be running 1m faster, even with my current speed. However, terrain and technicality suited me well.

GPS route with Map

C • Nice one 1

Warm up and pre-start run.

1200 - Went for an easy jog on the Relay Model area to readjust to scale (same map and features as used in Borsod Cup in early June). Nice to go back over some terrain however.

1630 - Short training session around the Model for the Sprint Q. Didn't put much physical effort into it. Legs are still a bit sore from Long Q, even though it's 2 days later and I never managed to run hard at the Q.

Ran a few legs to make sure that I was adjusted to the 1:4'000 scale. Lots of gully systems that are less than ideally mapped. Confusing, but I was feeling okay at the end of it.

Event: WOC 2009
 

1600 - Went training on the Cave Baths sprint map to start getting over the poor result in the Long. Did part of the official training course. No flags however, which make proper sprint training a bit pointless in this terrain as it is quite indistinct (lots of gullies). Found some of the peg markers in the ground, but not others. However, got some good physical exercise in - I needed the leg stretcher. Will go back tomorrow for the official Model training in this area (with flags!).

1058 - Long Distance Qualifier. One of my worst runs at WOC since the Long at WOC '03 in Switzerland. I discovered how much the cold took out of me in the last week, with me feeling dead already well before the half-way spectator control. The big problem however is that I messed up almost all of the early controls. 2 mins on #1, 2 mins on #2, 1.5 at #4, etc. In total I had between 9.5 and 10 mins of mistakes around the course. How I go from 45s of mistakes in the middle to 10m in the long 24 hours later on similar terrain is mind-boggling.

Back to the race, we had a (the only) long route choice on the way to control #1 that threw me. I decided to go low along the bottom instead of over the tops of the hills like everyone else was going. I hesitated for about 20s before deciding on this. I then spent the rest of the leg doubting my route choice, even when Anders Nordberg came past me (2 mins lost already!). Just before the control, whilst contouring in, I had a crisis of confidence and veered up the hill to where some other runners were. This was a 2 minute mistake as I was actually going straight for my #1 originally. The remaining mistakes for #2, 4, etc. were a result of poor focus as I started dwelling on my mistakes. (In hindsight, I actually think I DID take the best route choice to #1 - stupid).

Thus, a very disappointing result of 34th out of 38 on Heat B. I was 30:50 minutes behind the winner, Baptiste and 21 minutes away from 15th spot. Without the 10 mins of errors and another 5 mins of better running speed I would have been happy with 75 mins, a decent result placing me about 25th.

I'm quite dejected after this. The Long was my big goal for the year and it's now gone. I've got to pick myself up though for the Sprint and Relay. I don't stand a chance in the Sprint, but will still give it all just for the hell of it. In the Relay, I've started thinking that I'll prefer to run 1st leg now rather than 3rd. I hate the first leg, but I think I need that intense competition to get me in the right frame of mind for the last race of WOC.

The disaster is below:

Warm up before hand and the long run from Pre-start to Start. Too dejected to warm down.