Training Log Archive: susan

Loved it! 1st leg, nip and tuck with Ruth and Sharon, scrappy but pushing really really hard. Beautiful terrain with less rock detail cluttering up the map, and I found I could run hard and cope ok with the hills. Ruth got a bit ahead over the last handful of controls, and I finished neck & neck with Sharon.
2nd leg Heather brought us back with a healthy lead, and Olivia nearly held on to it but in the end we were second which was a great result and a case of 'if only' as it was so close in the end. Congrats to CorkO

Jog up to the start

Long Distance. Reasonable again. 2 misses - number 3 when I blindly headed in a vague direction and, surprise surprise, the control didn't jump up and hit me. Had to relocate off a handy lake, I wasn't in the zone at all. Some beautiful controls in the middle, though once again I struggled to visualise effectively in the technical stuff. Too many rocks and early on I decided to ignore the black bits on the map and focus on the brown lines.
Miss later on, number 17, it wasn't making sense so I decided to bail out and relocate on a fence, correct decision given the mess I got myself into.
What would improve it? Visualisation, smooth use of compass, attack points. And terrain running.

2 - Splits

Event: Irish Orienteering Championships
 

Jog up to the start

Middle Champs in Galway. A reasonable run except for the penultimate control, in the forest, which I executed spectacularly poorly and lost unnecessary time.
Navigation on the mountainside was ok without being great. I managed to get in the right area most of the time, but very much struggled to relate map to ground. Boulders in the way limited visibility and it was important to be sharp in the circle.
The terrain however was super and remarkably runnable underfoot (so long as you are fond of marsh).

WEE Series 2013 has started :) Head2Head with Olivia as early starters, zero warm up as we were setting up and then had to run in a hurry. I nipped in front on the approach to 1 but quickly lost the lead and had to run at my limit to keep tucked in behind. I was not a pretty runner. And then going to approx. 14 I started with horrible abdominal cramps, and in the end I just had to let Olivia go, and struggled to the finish. Why the cramps? I was properly hydrated and fuelled. Just bad timing? Pushing too hard for what I can do? No warm up? I remember now that I had a couple of episodes of this during the early days of Paddy's training runs, up and down and up those damn hills. Well I can work on the warm up, at least.

5th position I think - several of the speedy boys weren't there but still. I don't have a speed for last year at Ormeau because I was planning (and if I was competing it would have been slow on account of the knee deep water). But I suppose Orangefield is a good comparison at 6:50 per k (and best speed last year) so a tentative calculation of 6:08 is a bit of an improvement!!

Felt much better after finishing but decided against pushing it and skipped parkfit - probably the sensible choice.

Treat of M&S for dinner, feeling terribly righteous carrying my Simply Fuller Longer salady mulch to the till, though somehow a pain au chocolat leapt into the basket too. Would have been rude to return it to the shelf. It got its own back though - rubbish pain, insufficient chocolat, would have been better off with 4 jammy doughnuts for a pound.