Training Log Archive: BrandNewMe

6 x 4 mins with 1 min rec. or it was going to be that. Rep 5 I only managed just over half a mile. It was a bit rough, and I was a bit tired from overcooking the early ones, but 4mins for 850m? That's shite.

Then I realised halfway through rep 6 that I had only done 3mins for rep 5. D'oh!

Felt physically good, but it was a bit more of a mental effort to get out there than usual. I don't think I am getting over tired (usually what drains my motivation) and the '5 weeks to go' is helping me out of the door.

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A trial jog. Felt ok. Dunsapie, then up to crow hill, down the front of the seat, sailsbury crags and on to Meadowbank to get the kids from a holiday club.

Followed the jog with a 2mile stop start effort getting the kids and their bikes home from Meadowbank. Lucy has no gears, so I was running while pushing her all the way from dumbiedykes.

Hip flexor was only slightly noticeable, but the top if foot pain is back. I think this will settle to nothing over the next few days. I have got some ibugel so hopefully that will help. 12 x 1k is the girls reps session tomorrow. I am thinking maybe not a good idea, but am unsure as to what to do instead. Dilemma. Back on the proper training plan by Wednesday hopefully.

No training. Hip a bit too unhappy, and foot v sore. It will calm down soon. Tiring weekend with little sleep on Friday night so a rest is good.

Barrathon

6:30, 6:13, 6:16, 6:28 (25:24)
6:39, 7:02 (hill), 6:25, 7:10 (52:40) then cramp:
7:38, 7:07, 8:26, 8:41 (really jogging now, and a v big hill) 7:03 (down the other side. Back hurting now too), 0:48.


Brilliant. Running better than ever, stretched out a massive lead, feeling v easy still, on 6:30 pace (good as this is no flat course!) THEN, after 8 miles got serious, repetitive cramp in my L hip flexor and jogged home in 92, 3rd lady. Meh! Hopefully avoided long term damage, but the ceilidh afterwards was not doing it any favours so i only managed 2 dances. Sore top-of-foot again too

Great weekend. Ray won, lots of microtrots for the kids, beach action after the race, and the brown turnout was overwhelming. Smiles all around! Most were staying up for Harris next weekend. That'll be us next year for sure! Just reminds you what an AMAZING country Scotland is.

Up blackford hill and on to school. No more school for 7 weeks!

Home via Frandy's. Tired legs, heavy bag and up craighouse road. Ouch!

Along the canal. 4 x 8mins w 2 mins rec. Nice. So wet I thought I might dissolve. Just over 2k a rep.

Ran in work-wards and got a bus when things got a bit achey. Stiff from last night but not too crocked.

Run home from work to the Bethany shop. Felt tired but was able to push quite hard.

Nice cycle

Jogging to Meadowbank and back and laps etc.

Meadowbank with Shona, Rachel and Kirstin.

I haven't trained on the track regularly for about 10 years. When you have had kids, or are in your late 30's your body just isn't designed for track training any more. It's just too sore. It's really good at getting you quick. I only have 6 weeks to woc so I wasn't using it for that, more that Shona suggested a session there and the company was v welcome.

So it was 6 x 500, starting every 3mins. Mine were all in the 1:38-1:40 bracket, so recovery was 1:20-ish.

Nice chat with Alex Mcewen (who I used to train with at the track) afterwards. Stagger home.

Home over corstorphine hill.

Sol6 dunalister

I stayed really v sober last night, and went to bed with the kids at 11, but I think I ate something not good, as I was ill all night. Feeling dire. I tried to go for it from the start but my legs were not cooperating and I felt faint so my navigating was not good either. When I scratched my eye badly going to 6 it was time to go home.

I'm trying not to be miserable about this. These things happen.

Beckett-Gordon pre-wedding race. Undulating race on the trails around badaguish.

There was only one way to run this, and that was as hard as possible from the start in order to say ahead of Angus, aged 10, who recently went sub 20 in the park run. Managed to finish well ahead of him (phew!).

Followed by lugging Lucy up cairngorm for the wedding ceremony, followed by trying to keep up with the kids on the descent - a tough job!

Working from home. Meant to do this last night but I was too tired. Fun.

6 x 90 secs on Castro, then a jog to the bottom of radical road, then up it and back to the school to get the kids. Fun. Felt good.

Cycle from badaguish to the cairngorm bridge, on my commuter bike with skinny tyres. Fun, if a little omg I am going to die.

Rothimurcus

This is a really special place. One of the most beautiful parts if Scotland. Orienteering was great fun, great training, even if the heather was a little deep. By that I mean that it was hard to see over in places!

Good compass training. Running along on a compass, thinking that the terrain looked wrong but keeping my cool, and finding the contours and rock detail that I was expecting.

I am so excited about WOC selection!!!

Long and Relay were what I wanted most at the start of the year, with the thinking that the middle too would be a bonus. I'll have to wait and see whether I get the middle. Delighted for Spongey too - SUCH a nice wee boy!!!

Working from home and I was chilly, so I went for a run up Arthur's Seat, down the bog and up the crags. Fun. My knees were slightly sore from the descents though, and I am not sure this is the best thing to do 5 hours before trotter training on Castro, but hey ho. I enjoyed it!

Run to work. Legs screaming at the start, but eased off slightly.

C • Congratulations 2

Home from work

Portobello. Legs felt ok after aching all day,

Bed at 9:30 as I was tired, but up at 3:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. On the plus side, lots of admin done, emails sent etc!

8 x 3 mins with 1 min on the canal. Nearly died after 4, but felt better coming back.

Run home via corstorphine hill. Felt perky

A wakeful night so I took a lie in and reduced the training. Pre-running Saturday's girls race. Time here includes warm up / warm down. Make of that what you want. I'll just say now, I took 5 mins less than the winner on Saturday!

Fun. Great views.

Jamie stevenson trophy. Green course.

So the kids ran and then it was the mums and dad's turn to race around the green. Jogged up to the start. I gave been wearing my icebugs for the last year or so. I like them but have sore feet, and I think it's a problem with the dobbs so I ran in my orocs instead. I felt v sprightly. I had forgotten how light these shoes are. Unfortunately I'd forgotten how to orienteer too.

Kinnoull hill has lots of badly mapped paths and high veg inbetween. So you rely on the paths, but they are not quite right. At least that's what the adults decided. We were all wandering around afterwards, wondering what went wrong with our technique, how we got it so badly wrong. The kids seemed to have no problems. Maybe they are used to having to use paths more.

So Rog nearly caught me on the run in, having done 30 and made loads of mistakes. Danny Stanny did 31, Jake Chapman 33, someone else was inbetween, I beat Grace Molloy by 1secs (TFFT!!!) Colin beat me by 30 secs, but I got Fraser by 6 mins and the usually v competitive Dave R got so confused by the paths he took 45. Conclusion - to adults, little paths are a very foreign concept.

I stopped to help a kid find the number 5 on the orange. Then the same kid was having problems at 6 and Fraser stopped to help him. Except Fraser couldn't make the paths fit and so had no idea where they were, so spent 5mins trying to relocate with a poor little lost kid in tow. Great!

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Run to work to get my bike, via corstorphine hill.

Took the morning off work as I have been struggling with tiredness. Tidied the house which made me feel much better (the underlying stress of living in a messy environment us certainly draining). Then took the kids to Aberdour in the afternoon, and after some strenuous tennis with Laurence I was going to go running, but fell asleep for 1.5 hours on my parent's sofa instead. Probably for the best as my feet have been aching a fair bit recently, and the sleep did me lots of good.

Tired and grumpy. Just like the rest of the Ward family.

Home from work over the pentlands. HW, Currie, straight on up the hill to the col, then left over the tops to Allermuir and home via Braidburn valley park. So tired. So hot. So glad to be home.

So tired that I decided mid afternoon to ask to take tomorrow and Monday off, and got permission to do so - which is why I work where I do.

Ray is doing some orienteering for both work and the kids school this week. I said I thought this was great, but said at the outset I had no time free so could not help him out whatsoever. Cue the last two nights him getting stressed and insist I help him with purple pen and condes, neither of which I have used before. Actuaries with a level of perfectionisim that borders on OCD should not be allowed to use such software. How thick should the control circles be Claire? Should I try to put the descriptions on the left for all courses? Does it matter that some courses have descriptions on the left of themap while some have descriptions on the right of the map? I don't care - LET ME GO TO BED!!! Late late night! (Thanks Graeme and Murray for your help).

Nice morning for a cycle, and early enough not to be busy.

Lunchtime jog. Hot.

Nice morning for it. Possible redundancies at work. This could be a great thing for me. 1 in 6 chance...

C • redundancy 6

Intervals. From work, along the canal. 6 x 4min with 1 min rec. Legs felt stiff but were turning over quite nicely.

Then hopped on the bike to cycle home. Pretty tired, there was some competitive fun with other cyclists. They got away mainly cause they were a bit more prepared to risk ploughing into people walking on the tow paths and their dogs than I was. Sunny day = loads of people = mega irritating on the canal. So I came off at Meggetland, and saw one of the competitive cyclists toiling up Colinton Road. Put in a spurt, and blasted past him with the air of practiced nonchalance honed by many years of cycle commuting. By holy corner I was seriously worried that I had popped my quads. I am such a silly girl sometimes. Fun fun fun!

Gawd, I feel so old and tired and achey today. Insomnia last night.

Home from work, via run and become to look at running rucksacks then via princes street gardens hoping to get up to the esplanade but it is shut already for tattoo seating. I know the tattoo is good for the tourists and local economy etc, but it shuts off one of the best places in Edinburgh for months, and every night when it is on we get woken by the fireworks at the end of the show. Moan, moan, moan. I am turning into such a grumpy old woman...

Heels sore today.

Trying to plan training, but I am a bit too whacked to imagine doing any. I really struggle with the way I go away, spend a week at races high on adrenaline, then have a post adrenaline slump at the same time as physical tiredness catching up on me, plus the house needs a bit of 'work' (tidying), plus the kids are hyper to see me, plus 600 emails at work. Early night needed!

Fun week. Really nice team atmosphere. I got what I wanted. 3 solid races, confidence in my nav and confidence that my fitness is not so way off the mark. I feel back on track now, and looking forward to the last 8 weeks to woc.

Morning jog

World Cup Middle Sweden

Good and v clean at the start 1-4, with only slight hesitations. then caught Ida Marie which flustered me. I should have been more confident in my own routes and concentrated on what I was doing, but I let myself get distracted. Crap. Should have run my own race. Got on the wrong track to 11, then hard to approach from here as it was just green so hard to see any detail, and the control was tucked away. Time loss...

Then the last loop was fine, but I had a pain in my heel that wasn't liking running, and I slowed a little.

No warm down as my heel was not good. I think with a few days of running in cushioned shoes, and icing and golf ball rolling it should be ok.

Jog with the sprinters

Jaunt on a training map. I was going quite well. Duffed the last one but made sure I did it again properly. Very wet today. Terrain was v different to tomorrow's middle too.

Morning jog with Ruth, Charlotte, Alice and Kirstin. Good as Ruth ensured I didn't get lost.

Warm up / down.

Halden Mixed Sprint Relay

Leg 1

I was running this primarily for relay practice. I haven't trained much sprint, so was chuffed to see so much forest / very rough open terrain.

Mass start, and it was quite a bit race with 38 teams. So same old thing at international relays. Everyone canes it off, and I don't really try to stick to the front, but look at the map instead, and move through as the pace calms down.

1, 2, 3 I was navigating. 4 was thick forest and hard to see much. We all missed it. I got a bit stuck amongst the bodies as I was trying to get down to it as others were trying to get up. Then I got stuck behind some of the fast starters that had now slowed considerably. Elbowed past some and moved on. 5,6 was also v congested. Few routes through the bare-rock-with-shrubs terrain. I made a slight miss at 6, then the rest of the course was fairly easy, as the pack were finding controls with me.

Massive fun, and i was pleased with my performance. Maybe lacking the adrenaline for total eyeballs-out racing a touch, but a good relay experience. A very different race than WOC MSR will be.

Peachy little area for middle training. It was so nice! Orienteering well, until I started thinking about how well it was going, then predictably is started going badly again. 12 out of 14 controls absolutely spiked though.

C • 10 hours Sleep 1

Morning run

Hard to sleep - partly cause I forgot my kindle so no reading for me. This run was meant to be 20 mins but it took me a whole to find a track, then I thought it was going to go in a nice loop, but it didn't, leaving me stranded in the forest. Found my way back but 26mins is longer than the 20 that was on my plan. I was stressing a bit about this (everyone gets a bit obsessive on race day) but spoke to Nick who pointed out that it just meant I had already made all of my mistakes for the day.

World Cup long.

We had 16 controls, one of which was a spectator, which was at 6k of the 9.2. The bulletin had said the first drinks were at 3.9, which made us think that there would be a long leg in the early section. I had looked at lots and lots of long legs with Nick so tho I hadn't spent any period of time in Scandinavia since we lived there 10 years ago, I was feeling as ready as I could be. The terrain was rough and bushy, but that should suit me more than others. My cold had pretty much gone, not much gunk left, so felt ok.

Start to 1. Bearing. Saw what I thought was the significant trees, but it looked too green so I stopped, checked and ran on to it.

2. Bearing through green. Checked the form line slope down was to my left, ran on, down one set of crags and in.

3. Take a bearing, at the same time as trying to look at 3-4. Oh dear I am offline and at a knoll. Lose 30secs-ish here.

4. Road, then track junction, path, through green, back on the path, off it up a hill, down some crags, over a marsh and up the reentrant.

5. Planned to go right of the hill but ended up in the marsh anyway. Past the big boulder, round the hill and in. Not sure why this was so tricky.

6. Bearing, hoping to come out of the green at the flat open bit but I got very disorientated and ended up at the hill too. Lost a lot here. 1 min 30? Deep breath. Calm down. Damn. See my 2 min girl.

7. Bearing. Ok.

8. Felled, ride, felled and in. V visible forest here so easy.

9. Tried to stick to tracks as much as possible. Had to swim, properly swim, through the ditch between the lakes (I didn't see the bridge). Quite pleased with my route, hesitated on the path before the control (imagining Nick saying 'you want to know where you are when you cross the path') gained confidence and ran on.

10. Hesitated coming down the hill, thinking surely we can't be expected to go through that shit. The swede, who I had lost, caught me back up, and we did have to go through the shit.

11. Road, cut through the fields (leaving the swede going somewhere else) hill, marsh, hill, reentrant, down the crags, hill and in. Really pleased with this nav, esp as I was coming out as the swede was coming in.

12. Picked up Lizzie here. I went straight and through a gap in the crags. Nailed it. Nice.

13. I came out of the control NE not E so was a bit off line. Skirted the hill, saw the boulder in the reentrant and the yellow hill. Nice line. Didn't turn here though and ended up too far north. Lizzie and the swede catch me again. Damn. 30 secs

14. Back through the fields and through a marsh (shitty). Up the reentrant with the others, and saw the control first. The others were going left, and I thought the control should have been left too, but it looked like the right feature and after last weekend I thought I ought to check.

15. Bearing. Hit it nicely, but was slightly too low.realised from the rocky bits and up. Fine.

16. Shitty but fine.


Pleased with the performance. No big mistakes made. Not as good as I want to be come woc, but I am looking forward to 2 months of sickness free training before then.

Long model event. Pouring rain. Going ok though. Nice terrain.

Travelling. An evening of musical beds and the remains of my cold leaving me feeling washed out. A rest day to freshen me up.