Training Log Archive: jfredrickson

Event: CNYO A meet
 

Wasn't able to leave until 9 last night, so I got to the event area at 2am and just crashed in the back of my car. Not the best race preparation, but what can you do...

C • NAOC Accomodations 7

Brisk warmup for the sprint. Did everything I could to get pumped up and actually started to feel pretty good.

Morning sprint race at the CNYO A-Meet. Starts were seeded based on the rolling rankings, so I had the last start. I didn't catch anybody though, so it didn't help.

I felt great starting out, but wasn't really able to last the whole distance and felt fairly weak towards the end. I didn't feel all there technically though and made some stupid mistakes just from not being on top of what I was doing.

Made an especially stupid and embarrassing mistake on the spectator control just before the end. Before I started I had seen people punching a control on a trail just above my control, and had just assumed that that was the control I was looking for after glancing at my map. When I got there I saw it had the wrong code and quickly realized what I had done after another glance at my map.

PG chewed me out pretty good about that mistake after my race. He says that it is an important part of race preparation to get as much information about your course as you can see from the spectator area. The funny thing is that I had done that, but had assumed that I would have the same spectator control as everyone else and hadn't actually waited for someone who I knew to be on my course to go through it. If I had done that I would have noticed that we had a slightly different control. I'll definitely take this lesson to heart though.

Anyway, I somehow managed to pull out the win, only 4 seconds ahead of Ross and Greg Balter. Not particularly satisfying though.

Cool-down jog with Ross and Will Hawkins.

Warm-up for the Middle Distance race in the afternoon. Took some effort to get pumped up. Spent some quality time checking out the start and finish areas, getting as much information as allowed. The first control was visible from the spectator area, so I pretty much had my route to the first control planned before I started.

Started last again because the start order was based on the Sprint results. Felt great coming out of the start because I had spent so much time watching people on the first leg. Spiked the first control right on and had time to get a good look ahead. Probably picked up the speed too much though because I made a stupid mistake on the second control cutting off the trail way too early, but I was able to realize it quickly enough that I only lost about 15 seconds.

Caught Ross and Balter at number 4. Ross took off at full speed so I just settled in behind him for the next couple of controls. Lost him going to 8 when I got stuck in some nasty bushes, but caught back up to him on the way to 10. Then I made a really stupid mistake at 10. As we were approaching the control I saw one way down the hill from us and for some reason it just clicked in my head that this was my chance to get away from Ross since he wasn't going towards the control. Instead of realizing that it obviously wasn't my control I just took off for it. By the time I got down to it, read the control code, relocated and climbed back up the hill to my control, Ross was long gone and Balter had caught me up again. I ran the next two just ahead of Balter until I got very confused with the fields on the way to 12. I somehow got really disoriented in the fields, but fortunately Balter took the lead and so I just settled in behind him until I could figure out what was going on. When we hit 12 Ross was just leaving it, so from there it was a nice race to catch Ross up again and fight it out with him for the rest of the course.

I felt really out of control for most of the course and my technique was awful. My head just wasn't in the game. I guess everyone else had even more trouble then me though because I somehow came out on top, just a couple of seconds ahead of Will Hawkins. Definitely a weird day...

It is kind of frustrating to be feeling so out of it technically after feeling so confident for the past month or so. Hopefully it is just because I had basically no preparation leading up to this race. Spending the week in bed and then driving all night and sleeping in my car the night before the race certainly didn't put me in the right mental frameset.

While it is good to try to get to as many races as possible, I wonder if it can ever be bad to race when you aren't able to prepare properly for it. Can such an experience be detrimental, or will it help me to bounce back from this sickness? We'll see...

C • I actually had a good run tech... 2

Easy cool down run. Feeling pretty tired.

Sprint - Strong Lungs - Splits

Middle - Blue - Splits

Feeling much better today. Won't have time to run though as I have class all day and then I have to drive to Central NY for the CNYO A-Meet. Pretty crappy preparation for this meet, but what can you do when you get sick. Better this than NAOC. At least I will be able to run. I just hope all this time off won't cause me to peak too early. Hopefully I can come off the weekend into a strong training week and hold off that peak for another 2 weeks.

C • No worries... 2

Slept all day again. Got up around 2 and felt pretty decent so I decided to go to practice today. But when I tried running I felt a nasty pressure in the back of my upper neck / lower head which sent a shooting pain up and over the back of my head. I guess this is just the after-effects of all the pressure that has built up from being so stuffed up. I assume it is best to just take it easy and let it clear up. Hopefully I'll be ready to run hard on Saturday....

C • meningitis? 3

Ugh, another awful day. Felt mostly recovered from the usual stuffiness and exhaustion, but now it is just replaced by a dull ache in the back of my neck and head. Hopefully this is just the last stage of whatever my body is fighting. I decided not to push it though so that my body has the strength to finally kick it. Hopefully I will be able to run tomorrow.

Felt absolutely awful when I woke up this morning so I decided to spend the day in bed. I have no idea how I slept so long, but I guess I needed it.

Brisk warmup to Institute Park for a workout. Feeling quite tired from all the racing yesterday. It's interesting because after the race I was so high on adrenaline that I didn't really feel tired. But after I got home I just about passed out on my bed from exhaustion. I definitely felt it on this warmup run. It is probably a combination of the race and the cold I am still fighting though. I still haven't got my voice back, although my throat feels a lot better. Maybe with another rest day I will be fully back.

On another note, a girl on our team was riding her bike to the park because she has an injury, and just after she passed us on the sidewalk she got hit right in front of us by a car pulling out of a driveway. She took a nasty spill but only really scraped up her knee. It was amazing to see how fast the police and ambulance showed up though. It is quite comforting to know that there are so many people out there just waiting to help you in a nasty situation like this.

Anyway, I think she will be fine.

Ran another pyramid 5-mile tempo run at Institute Park. We did repititions of 2 minutes hard, 1 minute easy, 3 minutes hard, 1 easy, 4 hard, 2 easy, all along the 5-mile course. I decided to go out hard with T-Mac and just try to hold onto for as long as I could. I managed to get to about the 3 mile mark again before I was just too exhausted to hold on any longer. After that it was pretty brutal just to get around the last 2 laps.

My time was more than a minute slower than last week, although the pyramid scheme was different. I thought that the scheme we did today should have been faster, but even T-Mac was slower than last week and he was moving pretty fast all the way through. Anyway, definitely a very tough workout considering tired I was.

After the workout coach decided to have us do a 1-mile timed run at Elm Park just to work on mental toughness. I was actually excited to be able to give this a shot even though I was so exhausted. Somehow it felt good to finally feel so exhausted from training even though it is probably due more to this cold my body has been fighting than anything else.

Anyway, this was just a quick jog from Institute Park to Elm Park. I was so tired I had to just focus on the pavement in front of me and the world actually felt like it was spinning for a little while. Real trippy stuff!

Wow this was weird. I went out hard again just to see how long I could hold the pace. T-Mac kept trying to pass me but I held him off for at least the first 250m, but my body was just too far gone to fight. After T-Mac pulled ahead Dan started to catch me in the second 800m and I had to fight with him for a little while. But I was able to push through that and pull ahead again before the last 200m or so. I was so tired both physically and mentally that it was a really trippy experience finishing up.

I am pretty surprised that I was able to run a 5:25 considering how tired I was and how much it hurt, but I guess a 5:25 isn't that fast for me anymore. T-Mac ran an impressive 5:09, not bad for a post-workout mile.

A brisk cool-down with T-Mac back to the Kneller from Elm Park. I was way too exhausted to run the pace, but I really felt in the zone and just focused on getting one foot in front of the next. It kind of felt like finishing up the Highlander back in the day.

It really feels good to have such a tough day like this. It has been a while since I have felt truly exhausted from a workout, and it somehow feels much more rewarding this way even though it probably wasn't as good a workout as if I had been feeling stronger. Perhaps I gained some mental toughness though. Anyway I need to focus on fully recovering from this cold so that I can be back to full strength for this weekend. I certainly won't be able to rely on adrenaline to boost me up like yesterday.

Event: 2006 Sprint Series Finals
 

Warmup for first sprint. Feeling pretty crappy.

Took this one easy since I was in a fairly slow heat. Vlad tried to push the pace right out the start so I just settled in behind him. Then he blew number 3 pretty bad so I had to relocate fast since I hadn't really been reading the map. After that I led the way for the rest of the race, maintaining an easy pace. Mikey and his group caught us at number 11 and so I ran with him for the rest of the way until he ran away from me at the finish. It was cool to see him win his heat. It was even cooler to win my heat without beating a single person in any of the other groups :) And Erin rocked it too with the fastest time on the course, so HVO won 3 out of 4 in the first round.

Warmup for the second sprint. Feeling a little bit better, but a bit weak. Worried that I wouldn't have the stamina to keep up on this one.

Decided to push the pace out of the start and try to get a bit of a lead just in case I ran out of steam half-way through. Ran the first 7 in the lead, but no matter how fast I pushed it and how perfect I navigated, every time I looked back there was a group of people right on my tail. At 7 I decided I didn't want to get my shoes wet crossing the swamp so I went back out and around the swamp. Ross led the way across the swamp and took the lead, but then took the left route along the next swamp while I went right. Ross beat me into the control, but I was just ahead of Mikey. Then I just followed Ross he hit the road at 10 and stopped apparently not sure of where he was. I of course had been focused on keeping up with Ross and hadn't really been reading the map so I quickly went right out to the field to relocate then came back to attack 10. Ross hit it at the same time and led the way to the next 2 controls. I passed him going to 13 and was able to pull away after that. Had to push it all the way to the GO control before I realized it was just me and Mikey in the finish chute.

Not a bad race at all. Felt great the whole way through, and fortunately the terrain was thick enough that we couldn't really push the pace high enough for me to really be hurting. It was good to see that my technique was still there at high speeds when I was actually navigating.

Warmup for the Final sprint. The heat had gone way up and the warmup area was in a field in direct sunlight. I started to feel quite exhausted from the sun, so I tried to stay in the shade as much as possible. Other than that I was feeling mostly cleared up. I did everything I could to pump myself up to be ready to go out fast.

Mikey and Eric Bone started out very fast taking the first two controls. Then Eric looked a little unsure on the beginning of the third leg so I decided to take the lead and push the pace. He fought back after the 3rd control and pushed ahead on the road at the beginning of the 4th leg, but then he started running too far down a path that we needed to cut off of so I took the lead again and held it through 6. In the middle of the 7th leg I got confused by all the buildings in the campground and ended up drifting too far right. I noticed when I hit the big trail leading into the finish area and corrected by running through the field and getting to the control just after Eric. From there I just held onto Eric through the map exchange and all the way to control number 7 on the second map when he made a mistake just before the control. We were approaching a bunch of buildings out of the woods and I guess he didn't read them correctly because he slowed down and started going in the wrong direction. I recognized the building as the one we had passed right before number 4, and so picked it up immediately on my map. Fortunately Mikey was just ahead of me in the pack and so followed Eric. I managed to get about an 11 second lead on them and with only 2 controls left that pretty much wrapped up the race. Mikey pushed it hard at the end though and ran away from Eric taking second place.

This was an absolutely awesome race and fortunately I felt great throughout the whole thing. Maybe all the adrenaline masked any exhaustion I was feeling from my cold. There is nothing like running a fast, technical sprint and this one was an absolute blast.

It was especially nice to be able to realize one of my bigger goals for the year. I trained hard for this race and it was really depressing to be going into the race sick and feeling so crappy. I knew that I was in the best shape I had ever been in, and that made it even more frustrating. It was such a good feeling to realize that I was able to push hard and stay with the top guys, and especially to have my techique in such good shape at the same time. The Final was a real fight and when I saw Eric and Mikey making a mistake on number 7, my heart skipped a beat in excitement. I had a sinking feeling of nervousness rounding the building into 7 with the knowledge that if I wasn't right I had just blown my race. But I was confident enough to follow through and the control was right where I expected it to be. That gave me a huge shot of adrenaline and from there it was just a blast through number 8 and out to the GO control in the field. You rarely have the opportunity to run down the chute and know that you have done everything right and taken home the victory, and it was an amazing feeling. This will memory will surely be a great motivator for me in my training as I know that that is what got me to this point today.

C • Bonner Park Test Loop 2

Sprint #1 - Long - Splits

Sprint #2 - Long - Splits

Sprint Final - Long - Splits