Training Log Archive: cporter

Core work - focusing on obliques and hip flexors

C • And you can claim your splits 2

C • Trails Registration - Early Entry needed by Tue 4/7 1

Flying Pig, Classic Distance - today's course was interesting, lots of route choice, but not terribly challenging navigationally. Ultimately it was a runners course - the winner was just going to be the one that could power up the hills (most definitely the greatest challenge) the fastest and keep going the longest. The best I could hope for was just to run as hard as I could which further dictated my route choices and for me walking hills is more taxing than just running around them so I opted to take longer routes to avoid climb and to just keep myself going. After the fact, it seems like that paid off on some legs, but not all of them. Also when comparing splits after the race with the other F 21+ women it seems that we were all pretty evenly matched on course time until the end - I just pulled ahead in the very last few controls thanks to endurance and the fact that I was able to continue to power up the hills (well, not "power" since everyone was walking the hills at that point, but I was able to recover quickly from the killer climbs and run off the top of the hills.) Still, I've got a lot of work ahead of me before the Team Trials.

Navigationally, I faired pretty well too. No real mistakes - a few bobbles and some moments of hesitation, but generally I was hitting the nail on the head. I'd say my biggest mistake was at my #12 when I was climbing and misread the dark green to the left of my control as the lighter green to the right of my control and so I had to climb through some nasty deadfall to get to the control which slowed me down alot, but still less than a min of lost time there.

Great courses, great weather, a great showing by DVOA at the relay champs and a great weekend overall! Thanks to OCIN and all the event organizers for a great weekend of orienteering!

Sunday Long Red - Splits

Flying Pig, Sprint

Flying Pig, Relay - since I was running the orange leg, I was the one running the mass start which I was a little bit nervous for - but overall found really exciting. All the excitement went a little to my head though and I made a pretty dumb error on my way to the first control. I actually ran to the wrong control first, which was thankfully not really out of my way, but still I knew better. The plus side is that running to that control (it was the yellow leg's #1) pulled me down to a trail which I ran and avoided a lot of the deadfall that all the other orange runners had to run through on the way to our first control. So even with my mistake I still arrived at the control just after Ted Good, the first runner get to #1. From there the orange course was forked so Ted and I took off in slightly different directions, but we met up again a few legs later. I kept him in my sight for another couple legs and was gaining on him - and then I made a another boo-boo. We were running down a trail that ran through a field and then entered the woods, and then forked and from the fork our control was only about 30m into the woods from the fork. So, I wasn't looking at my map terribly hard since I already had my compass set to take the bearing once I hit the fork and I knew I'd hit it head on since it wasn't far off the trail, etc. And so when I hit the fork, I took off into the woods on my bearing and EVEN came to the right feature (a pretty deep depressing/sinkhole/pit thing) just when I expected to, but there was no control there. I just stopped and blinked because I just didn't see how it couldn't be there...till I took a harder look at my map and realized that another trail junction with a much smaller trail (hence why I didn't see it initially) preceeded the junction I wanted. It also just so happened that there was a depression in pretty much the exact same location from the junction that I took as the one I was supposed to take. Thankfully I only lost about a min there, but it still really threw me for a second. The rest of the couse went reasonably well, I took a nasty fall and slid downhill for a few feet face first on my stomach (I've got some nice scrapes all over my abdomen from it), but I recovered from that very quickly. Again, the climb was killer especially toward the end of the course and I had to walk some of it. Its just kind of a bummer that I had that error, cause I was kind of looking forward to a race to the finish with Ted, but he came in about a min ahead of me (which was of course the min I lost) so I had to bust my ass up that hill to hand off to Sandy on my own!

Yay for being the 8pt team Relay Champs! Congrats to all the other winning teams!

Saturday Orange_8pt - Splits

Event: OCIN 25th Anniversary / Flying Pig XIII / Relay Champs
 

Flying Pig, Middle Distance

Friday Middle Red - Splits

Easy run during my lunch and a long stretch afterwards since I'm going to be stuck in the car for the rest of the day and part of tomorrow to get to the Pig.

Run along parts of Paintbranch Trail/UMD campus/surrounding neighborhoods. Since it was a misty and rainy day, I was kinda in the mood for a little mystery - so I ventured into some of the areas surrounding Paintbranch that I haven't run yet. The whole run was really nice because the rain gave this isolating quality to the air everywhere I ran. It was almost soothing. Also, there weren't many people out on the trail because of the weather so that was nice. I did pass two girls running though and overheard a most alarming comment from one of them - they actually stopped running just as I was about to overtake them and I heard one of the girls in between gasps say "Honestly, I think smoking has helped me to breathe better..." What?!?!

Kickboxing stregnth class (aka, bootcamp) - a lot of dynamic exercises and plyometrics with cardio intervals to keep up the HR along with some good old fashioned push-up and sit-ups.

I just wanted to give a HUGE thank you to anyone on AP that volunteered at the start for Ran-It-Granite this weekend. Well, thanks are in order for anyone that volunteered, but as chief of starts I wanted to say to all start volunteers that it was a real pleasure working with you. I learned a tremendous amount from all of you and there is no way I could have done my job without your input and experience. I look forward to working with many of you again in the future!