Training Log Archive: AlistairH

Visited a friend who is into geocaching and went on some hilly walks round some caches he maintains - set out in rather nice loop walks. I don't usually log walking but we went at a very fast walking pace breaking into a run in places so I'll call this 1 hour running equivalent. I was knackered by the last hill...

Event: British Long Distance Orienteering Champs
 

M21S, 10/20. Good run but lost 4'30 at control 3 (213). I was quite gutted at the time but slightly reassured later to find that on many courses a conspicuously large number of people lost time on the same control (e.g. 8/20 on M21S, 52/106 on M50L, 8/22 on W21E according to Winsplits).

After getting a couple of first controls wrong recently I had resolved to be careful at 1 and 2 (successfully) and was just beginning to get into a rhythm. I found myself at a wrong control on what was very, very clearly a pit. There was no pit anywhere near my control on the map which was disconcerting. I went away, relocated. Came back to the same pit. Went in what I thought was the right direction. Got the control. Ran away. After the race I figured out what happened... a 'shallow depression' was obscured by the overprint... not by the control circle (which had been carefully edited to avoid obscuring features) but by the first millimeter of the line to the next control. A fairly random gremlin. Still, I'll try to remember to check under the overprint next time I have a similar relocation problem. This didn't affect my place though.

Otherwise, pretty clean. Significant hesitation at 6. Lost 1'00 at 12 (pulling up on what looked like a path behind the control until I figured what I was looking at was a path before the control) - should have paced.

A long way behind leader on running speed - but my achilles tendonitis seemed to cope OK with what was a much more running intensive race than most Scottish events.

Left achilles really quite sore today - day off to rest it so marking this as an injured day.

Coincidentally, went to FASIC for an appointment I booked two weeks ago with a podiatrist. Quite different orthotic prescription this time - not so much to control pronation as to help with movement forward onto ball of foot and to balance front of foot - slight cut out under ball of left foot. He advised me that my calf flexibility was terrible, particularly in my left leg and that I should be sure to get back to eccentric strengthening exercises and stretching (which I had stopped long ago as it seemed to aggravate things). I was shown a calf stretch I haven't seen before which also stretches the base of the foot.

Arthur's seat. Having not really hurt on Monday or Tuesday my left achilles got really quite sore after the first climb although it settled later. It seems to be OK up to a moderate gradient but steeper sections just hurt it.