Training Log Archive: awilkinson

IS/IC Champs Day 2 - Pretty clean race for the most part, with my worst error being around roughly 2min. I had a few other baubles here and there, but I feel like it went well. I took careful compass bearings, and I think I thumbed better than yesterday, which was important on this course where there were a lot of small trails for me to cross and it was easy to mix them up. The hills slowed me down again. I'm hoping to do more terrain runs now that the snow has melted some.

C • Snow 2

Day 2 - Green Y - Splits

My flight got delayed, so I ran out of time to do the model yesterday. Luckily I had a later start time this morning, and was able to do it before competing.

Definitely a runner's course today. I was reminded that I need to do more hill workouts. It went pretty well up until control 13 and started getting tired, so I made a stupid error and lost about 5min.

Day 1 - Green Y - Splits

Finally over my cold, and just in time!

I ran on the treadmill today, there's a bit of a snowstorm in Boston. Hopefully it won't affect my flight tomorrow. I brought my middle distance map from NAOC to read while I ran. It was my most recent A meet, and it felt good to review it- what went well, what went wrong. I had a lot of variability on the middle, some legs were great, some were pretty bad.

As I was looking over it, my first major mistake was, well, control 1. In this case, the first control was very tricky. It was in an area without a lot of distinct features, and there were a lot of other controls. I should have been more cautious, but I was just so ready to start and get going. This time I'll make sure I don't start out overconfident, and will take a conservative route on the first control.

Control 5 was pretty hard as well, with a lot of similar features in the area. I bailed out to a line of cliffs nearby and relocated eventually, but should have done that sooner. I probably should have slowed down as I approached the control as well. The first part of the leg was easy, but then got trickier. If I'd recognized this and adjusted my speed, I might have had a better time on this one.

Control 10 was deceptive. It looked very easy, and should have been very easy. So easy in fact, that I got overconfident and started running pretty fast. I then made a pretty horrible parallel error. I was convinced the control was on the hill I was on, when it was the next hill over. This time if I don't see the control immediately, instead of scouring the feature I think it's on I should glance at my map and look for similar features I might have confused. Forty minutes into the course has historically been where I start losing focus and just running, so I'll watch for that this time.

One thing I think I did well was staying focused at the end, even with the arena set up and the proximity of the finish, so I had a strong finish. I did much better the following day, I think I just needed that first day to get my head into the map. I'll definitely spend a lot of time on the model tomorrow.

Running wise I felt good, and felt best about 20min into the run. I'll keep that in mind when warming up.

You can tell you're ready for IS/IC champs when the margins of your notes are filled with orienteering doodles.

Feeling a bit better, so I did an easy workout on the stationary bike. At the same time, I read the Armchair Orienteering manual and studied control enlargement and simplification. Hopefully I'll be completely recovered by Friday.