Training Log Archive: Anna

It was a lot more hot and humid than what we've run in out west, but surprisingly, I was glad to get back to the familiar weather.

Ran the training loop backwards this time, making an effort to work on map memory. I'd look at the leg once and try to run it without looking again. It was tricky, even though the terrain was so wide open.
I noticed that I need a routine in looking at a leg, so I can make sure I get all the information I need. I need to know what feature I'm looking for, my attack point, and what direction to go from the previous control.
I also noticed that when I verbalize where I'm going, I make more mistakes than when I'm able to remember a picture. I think I should experiment with different ways of memorizing features, maybe on Catching Features.

Open park sprint course, with lots of opportunity to run. Unfortunately, my legs were sore from racing then sitting in the car, so I pretty much kept myself at a jog. I made a few mistakes, but I didn't have too much hesitation. This would be a good course to do intervals on because I could get used to the super-fast speeds while navigating, without worrying about getting lost or standing for a long time.

Bonner Park - Splits

Cooldown with Alison then cooldown with John, out to the other side of the highway where I was running the other day. Also includes warmup, when I was running in circles at the start because I didn't want to warm up uphill.

This was an interesting day for me. My plan had been to orienteer like I did yesterday, and I never changed that plan after I saw that every leg was technically challenging. This caused me to have very inconsistent and then unconfident orienteering. Near the end of the course I slowed down more, but that was only after two huge mistakes at the beginning of the course.
I've made a lot of improvements in controlling my speed over the past two weeks, but as I get more experienced I hope to be able to look at legs and recognize immediately how I should approach them--not just seeing what legs are relatively hard or relatively easy, but knowing at what speed I can be sure to find each control.

Green S Day 2 - Splits

Good race. Goal was again to distinguish between hard and easy legs and run an appropriate speed, and I did very well with this. There was lots of running at the beginning, and I slowed down and navigated really well once we got to the rocks on controls 6, 7, and 8. Although I also achieved this goal 2 days ago, today I had less mistakes unrelated to running too fast. This is working, so I have the same plan for tomorrow.
I had 2 significant errors today. On the second control, I navigated well until I got within 100 meters of the center of the circle. Then, I saw a control to the left and ran to it. It wasn't mine. Next, I saw a control at the top of the reentrant to my left and knew it wasn't mine without going to it. I was fine at that point, except that all that distracted me and I ended up all the way down at the ride, thinking the rough open was the doughnut clearing just past my control. Then, I looked all the way back up and saw what looked like my knoll and climbed up to it. Very careful after that.
I also made an error on 8, but at least it was at the beginning of the leg and not the end. I had found where I wanted to go up through the rocks and took a bearing. It was a field, but I went a little to my left to what I thought looked more like my field and hesitated a lot. Eventually I went back and came up the hill with Eileen and Mary. I still wasn't confident and jogged along with them for awhile, but then I figured out where I was and ran over the spur to the knoll.
One thing that was particularly satisfying about the race was how hard I was working physically, while still able to make minimal mistakes.

Green S Day 1 - Splits

Ran back from whitewater rafting with Kat, then went to the south side of the highway (which wasn't embargoed) and ran around in the terrain and came back. Lots of deer bones and one carcass. Followed a ride part of the way and also got to run up on this amazing ridge (which was private property) that overlooks the valley and mountains.

Walked around with Kat and looked at the rock features. The knolls with bare rock were kind of tricky to recognize, and there was a lot of climb back up the hill. Got a good feel for the map.

Good run, controlled my speed, practiced looking ahead a little. A few mistakes, but not from running too hard. I'm putting comments on my splits since there're so many. I don't know when I'll get them up.

Forgot my compass at the start. Felt stupid and had to get a new start time. Got a nice long warmup (34 min.).

Green Day 3 - Splits

Watched Crystal Relay runners go up The Wall.

Cooldowns before and after control pickup with John, on dirt road. It wasn't too hilly, but I was pretty tired.

Control pickup with John, from memory. I was surprised with how much I remembered, especially my checkoff features and attack points. John had to remind me of the course a lot, though.
A good day to re-run the course, because it showed me how well I could've done without much effort if I'd just slowed down and kept in contact with the map.

I completely bombed this whole course. I was thinking "Sprint=Run fast!" the whole way, and I should've looked at each leg and decided which ones were for running and which were for being careful.

Warmup, including 2 striders.

Had to run against Sam, on the first leg. We both had to go to the lower control, but I had about 30m less to run than her on the upper one since the junior team got to let one person run shorter. We didn't need to do that, though, because by the 4th leg we were ahead by a lot.

US Team Sprint - Splits