Training Log Archive: IanW

A day where it stayed dry! Wow... so finally managed to get some surveying done for the city map. Tomorrow doesn't look too bad either...

Ankle strength and flexibility, and some lunges to try and loosen up the ankles after yesterday's exploits...

To Youlbury, pushed bike along some of the more grotty bits of path for part of ride

Summer Series, Youlbury. Had the aim of treating this as a training session, focusing on reading ahead on legs more, and looking at future legs. Quite easy to do on somewhere as open/runnable as Youlbury.

Well, managed the plan in part but after starting off straight down the hill, flowing into the first control, and the second - and not seeing Nev, Jon or Beat behind me (i.e. lead of 100m after 0.5k) then thought it was worth going for. Through the first loop no problem, just very slightly hesitant into one control but generally reading ahead well. Then the longest loop, big banana to one control must have cost some time, bigger 'error' was misreading one control circle slightly and ended up having to go round a bit of green wasn't expecting to, no more than 20 secs lost though. Poor error to make though. Then, coming across to final control saw Roger T at first control on his final loop.

Shortest, easiest loop last - hit all the controls perfectly, reading ahead quite well on the main part but wasn't essential except perhaps for one of them with a bit of route choice. 300m run-in from final control, 100m in saw Roger in the valley pretty much level but with the hill to climb. Started the sprint finish early, knowing it was very likely it was between us for the victory - edge of clearing where start/finish was had about 30m lead, saw no-one had finished and eased off slightly. All resulting in a first summer series victory - wow!

On a slightly different note, last two summer series events have been very similar in nature i.e. fast runnable woodland with enough features for navigation (no bingo controls) but nothing really technical - simple route choices, obvious attack points, primarily straight running. Areas of this type seem to suit me best, but probably still don't have the speed/fitness to be doing really well in them... Need to work out a decent plan to increase base fitness over the summer I guess.

Short warm down jog with Roger and Jon afterwards, loosened legs up a fair bit.

Edit: and as Luke has reminded me, a demonstration of "heads, shoulders, knees and toes" to the bemused onlookers of TVOC.

C • Heads, shoulders,... 1

and cycle home down the hill, much easier :)