Training Log Archive: IanW

To start, little jog around from there and then back from finish.

Brown course at Cranham, nice bit of forest on the whole, Chiltern-esque in places, which you wouldn't have guessed from the map... Heart rate suggests that I was working pretty hard, didn't feel like I was moving particularly smoothly but in part wasn't expecting too after not getting enough sleep this past week.

The map was in need of some major work - I'm not sure whether my brain has been addled by the amount of time getting the Cambridge map sorted out, but I found myself remapping on the run.

Lesson 1 - Ignore the vegetation - inconsistent, light green was mainly runnable, except where it was a holly-filled slope. "Open" fields were tussocky and had some rather large unmapped thickets. Lesson 2 - Inconsistent paths - little wiggly paths when the map suggested tracks, many established mountain bike tracks and other obvious paths not mapped...
Lesson 3 - The contours are vaguely right, but don't rely on them. Things often didn't feel right relative to the overall relief of an area. So a quick game of spot the difference with the 1:25000 OS map when I got home - didn't come up with very many differences...

Run wasn't actually too bad once you'd figured out how to use the map... Two controls seemed very close at #2 - this was to be my downfall later on. Plastered the map with mud after falling down the slope to #5; fortunately there was a little stream nearby otherwise wouldn't have got very far after that. 1' lost at #8 as found unmapped path, banana-ed #11, 1' lost at #15 as needed to drop down the hill. Felt tired after this (need to get proper sleep...) and fell into #17 after a bit of faffing, but picked up again and started to run and flow well through the open forest near the end, except for the pit at #23 well hidden amongst holly bushes and a myriad of unmapped paths...

Well I thought the end was going well. I'd dropped into an earthbank/crag at #22 - that was the feature in the circle - to find at download I hadn't been to #22. "There's another control there" - bloke on download points at identical feature not far outside the control circle - "we measured it, they're 60m apart." Hmmm.... and why? Tbh it's poor (and unnecessary) planning, and controlling - but then I should have checked the code. So my first ever mispunch - hope that's not an indicator of the way 2009 will go...

GPS distance - 7.3km after #5 (where switched it on) +1.5-1.6k beforehand I reckon.

"Deserved" level in new event structure - Level 3.

A first taster of the Cambridge city map. Comments on clarity/readability welcome!

C • Cambridge map 2

Usual Nature Reserve loop, felt hard work for the second half of the run. Plenty of thinning/clearing in parts of the woodland giving some small pockets of fast runnable forest, allowing a bit more off-path running. Cold out, still a scattering of snow in the more shady bits and a bit icy on some paths.

C • the "nature reserve" 4

First proper training of the year - usual circuits session - abs felt it after a few weeks off... Squash courts were pretty cold - we need more people there to warm them up!