Training Log Archive: fletch

Event: Sprint the South West
 

Seeing as I am about 4hrs from the nearest O map, with a non-orienteering family, what are the options for next year that will keep me fit/ get me fitter and also be enjoyable?
A) olympic distance tri in April
B) marathon in July
C) *shudder* rogaining state champs...
Anything else???

C • Not dead yet 38

Did enough of a warm-up that everything stopped hurting, but never got faster than a shuffle, then waited for the mass start. Looking forward to it until we took off up the first hill and I was immediately dropped by the entire field.
Sloppy into the first control, identified where I was OK, but didn't trust myself and ran off to relocate on something else before returning. 2nd control I stood on top of the cliff which had the control at the bottom, but didn't see it. Repeat process from No. 1. Was way off line and very confused on the way to 3. By then, everyone was long gone and I settled in for a slow struggle around the rest of the course. Not too bad navigationally until 18, where I missed a control that I had seen previously on a course cross-over and wandered around for about 4 minutes before returning to essentially where I had been the first time again. One of the slowest runners for the day and nearly half and hour down on the leaders.
One race too many for the week. Absolutely shattered.

Just about died of shock when I turned over my first 1:15000 map in a few years. Took my time through the first couple and got them fine, but drifted off one trying to find a runnable line on the way to three, and by the time I worked it all out and came into the control from behind, Craig had punched and was on his way out. Caught up pretty quickly and alternated between tagging along with I'm, and trying to pull away a bit when we headed up hills. All I managed to do was get far enough in front agh we would be back together once I had missed the control at the end, or I would be a bit behind and have to lift further rot get back on his tail.
I got sloppy heading over the top of hill into 13, and when Craig punched and ran off down the hill without me seeing, I could make enough sense of things to figure out where the control was, but just couldn't convince myself to run up the hill to the right spot. Dropped nearly two minutes there.
Ran hard through the next couple, but somehow missed the control in the thick stuff at 15 three times, despite an attack point all of about 100m away. Another 4 minutes binned, and motivation waning badly.
Dropped another minute or more at 17 when I got the direction off the top of the hill wrong and wandered around in some unmapped rock.
Poor route to 19 and energy pretty much all gone and heading to 20, the train of seeded runners started to go through me, with on the the Danes going past and disappearing at a rate of knots.

One control later, Robbie P and Tomas came through, but they both appeared to be struggling physically as well, and I dig deep enough to keep then in sight through the last 7 controls to the end, helped by them bouncing around a little in the circle.

A bit disappointed to have run about 10 minutes slower than I should have, knowing I could have been about 8 minutes quicker by just pocketing my map and rolling Craig as closely as possible, but that wouldn't have felt terribly satisfying.

3rd West Australian behind Tomas and Craig. Beat all the Victorians (one mispunched) and nobody else had a full team, although we would have beaten ACT even if Lachy Dow was official), so Nomads won the men's NOL for the day.