Training Log Archive: Whitesheep

British Middle champs - Leith Hill
Excellent stuff. That wasn't really what I thought after finishing as it was a scrappy old race and I must have lost 30s to 2 mins on half the controls. At the finish I was a bit nonplussed, but it was very tricky and I seem to have done well to limit time lost. And it was a cracker of a middle distance race.
Two regrets:
- I knew leith hill was a tricky area and on the day in the murky conditions it was even harder than previously. Would have done better to keep a positive attitude to the end as people were clearly floundering.
- On 19/20/21 I made some very avoidable errors. I was running with a couple of M20s at this point and thinking we'd work off each other I tended to stick with them. Instead we made three people's mistakes rather than just one. Can't help thinking if I'd just done my own thing there I could have been 4-5 mins up and that would have been very good.

One thing I definitely realised from both days, I very rarely if ever do any technical training these days. I need to pick some races to go steady and work on techniques. Don't think it is fitness holding me back at the moment (unusual for me).

Event: British Sprint Championships
 

noticed that I often run a bit better after a morning easy jog, so gave it a go

British Sprint champs - heats
Well. For me this was all about the 5 minute meltdown at the end:
- somehow missed the 2012 statue control, just looked up and ran for the first statue on top of a hill I could see. Wrong one. Really should have twigged though either as the route to the last control was twice as far as it should have been or when running past my actual control.
- then it never occurred to me to just run back up and punch - 30 seconds to a minute perhaps. Why not? Instead just started to sulk halfway down the run-in.
- but would have been DSQ anyway due to going out of bounds. Although that's a story in itself. Can't argue that I didn't go out, but if it was really important that we didn't go on that patch it needed more than a 2mm strip of olive green (half the width of the other uncrossable features in ISSOM...) and nothing on the ground to distinguish the OK knee high grass from the OOB knee high grass.

The main point is, this has been coming. In all the park races I have been tending to run just a shade quicker than my safe speed.

British Sprint champs - C final
Bit low-key but I wanted to atone a little bit. Made a biggish mistake to #2 though, going back up and down. The lesson there is that if your route has you doubling back and climbing/descending stairs, double check it!

weights - thought I needed to wake up my legs a bit after a few days off-colour but without getting DOMS for the weekend, so did 2-3 fewer reps than usual

felt better than in a couple of weeks, not quite springy but getting there

yoga