Training Log Archive: IanW

Back from Sweden, wish I was still out there...

C • Varsity Match 5

Attempt at circuits. After a while, body said no and head felt funny...

Outside again though, nice and sunny although a bit muddy.

Jogged round to the waiting pen, just before the leading first leg runners came in. Joe was up there at the spectator so was expecting to go out with some sort of pack, 2 or 3 minutes down on the leaders. It turned out he'd made a big mistake late in the course and lost 10 minutes, so a bit more jogging up and down the changeover pen to keep warm. Eventually went out about 30 seconds down on Chris W...

Måsenstafetten relay - leg 2 for OUOC. Had seen a bit of the map before and it looked tricky - didn't run anywhere near full out, was just trying to get it right after Friday's screw-up. And the photos showed the terrain was lovely, if a little tricky:

http://www.okmasen.org/Stafetten2008/Skogen080315....

although it was a bit tougher underfoot than I expected - the recently melted snow made the moss/bare rock combo slippery even in 'O' shoes

There were several "how the hell do I do that" moments but took it steady and only two errors of note (2' and 1'), both of which corrected relatively quickly. Slowed down when I needed to, and stopped to check the map a few many times where it looked particularly difficult. Pretty happy with things afterwards, having avoided any silly or big errors, felt a bit more comfortable with 4m contours which made the terrain a bit easier to read. Maybe a bit over-cautious, but preferred to do that rather than completely screwing up.

I now really want to learn how to orienteer faster in this sort of terrain - the speed some of the guys who went past me were doing was quite amazing. Probably could have kept up with some of them, but then wouldn't have had a clue where I was... Still, noticed a significant improvement since I was last out here 3 years ago and in more technical terrain! This run certainly boosted the confidence a bit after Friday's relative disappointment. Bring on TioMila :)

Scandi relay changeovers - simple, no faffing with map issue or taking map out of a bag/breaking a sticky seal, no opportunity for cheating by taking cheeky peek at the map, big changeover area with full view of spectator, run-in etc and you can enter/leave as you please as you don't yet have a map. Easy to understand, and they work very well.

Why don't we do this in the UK? Was suggested for this year's JK, except it was vetoed. Why, you ask? (Cue laughter and utter disbelief). Apparently, because "the JK Relay is bigger than Jukola". Yes, you did just read that right. Some numbers to enlighten you:

JK Relay 2008 - ~500 3 man teams, 40 4 man teams. ~1650 Runners
Jukola 2007 - ~1400 7 man teams, 9500+ runners. And that's not including Venla (~750 4 man teams).

On what planet are these guys living?

btw, the Scandi system might well make an appearance at BUSA Relays next year.

VM Relays, bit of Nåsten near the clubhouse. Terrain significantly easier than yesterday and good spectator-friendly set up, seeing runners at least twice on each loop. Solid if unspectacular run, too many little bobbles and a few crap route choices.

Ran the ultrasprint from DX Deluxe 2006. 1:1250 map, 1m contours. Bloody hell this was tricky - working out how things were mapped took a good part of the first loop, found a bit more of a flow later on before it was disrupted by Pete Huzan sticking his foot on top of one of the post-its marking the control site - cheeky bastard... Overtook him before the next control though :)

Jog to start, stretching, bit more of a jog.

VM Individual, Lunsen. So once again I f***** it up. Rephrase - I royally screwed up one control (#2 on 2nd loop, 12.5'+) and missed another by a significant enough amount (2.5'+, #1 on 2nd loop), both just after the map exchange, so that was 15+ minutes down the drain and effectively game over. Really pissed off with my run at the finish, couldn't believe what I'd done as knew I had to respect the terrain, but just switched off for a bit too long and bang it was gone... Small mistakes (~1') on #2, 5 and 7 of the first loop, and quite a bit of hesitation to #6 on both loops (30" each). Should have comfortably been under 80 minutes.

Fortunately it wasn't costly - Matt and James had solid clean runs, Joe claimed victory but probably thinks he should have gone faster, and Chris E completed the scoring team even with a 10 minute error. Which gave Oxford a ~35 minute winning margin on the Men's. The women were even more impressive, all 5 in the top 6 and a 95 minute winning margin! with Helen claimed a third consecutive win.

So a clean sweep for OUOC and I could say that's all that matters. Definitely true from a club perspective - this combined with the 3rd place at BUSA was pretty much going to be as good as it got. But still there's always going to be some personal disappointment, especially when you know how easy it should have been to avoid the mistakes made...

And of course the final trophy to be decided was the beer race, with JOK taking it by a short head/canvas/whatever other analogy you want to use to show that there was less than half a second in it at the end... CUOC were then cheered on as they got through their final 3 or 4 pints :)

Training on the main part of the Nåsten map. Started off slowly and just couldn't get into things, was getting most of the way to the control fine then just losing it at the end. Then about 5 controls in something suddenly clicked, and was spiking the lot, even if a low-ish pace. Hit a 1.8k+ long leg perfectly, was happy with that :) Couple of misses later on but feeling much more confident about navigating in this sort of terrain afterwards.

Jog from/to the clubhouse to the main part of the Nåsten map. Quite tired on the way back.

Morning training on Lunsen. Wow! Why don't I live in Sweden? - there's nothing even remotely like this over here!

A route-choice type exercise with Chris Williamson, taking path/straight routes and seeing which worked well, getting used to how the terrain was mapped and how things fitted. Really quite fun and no major cock-ups, worst it got was a <100m parallel error. Taking it quite slowly though, meeting up at each control and discussing routes. Generally straight seemed to be a good option most of the time.

So if Sweden during the day was difficult, Sweden at night was nigh on impossible. Vegetation mapping didn't help the matter, nor did a couple of poor route choices which could have avoided this as an issue. One mistake which cost 15 mins or so would have been very avoidable during the day, as I could have worked out what was going on.

Compass work was really poor in places, kept on getting easily dragged, not only by the land shapes. Got it together a bit more at the end, spiked the last 3 controls even if the route taken wasn't that originally planned, at least I stayed in contact.

Quite glad that I'm doing a day leg at Tio, even if it is 17.5k!

Oh, and reflectors are a Good Thing :)

Event: 2008 Oxford-Cambridge Varsity Match
 

Day off before Sweden to travel/rest aching muscles.

Needed to get up to/back from the lab pretty quickly to print out bus ticket/insurance details/flight plans, and most importantly the Varsity programme. All because my time-planning is still its usual rubbish self.

JK Relays - again showing I can't race properly 3 days in a row. Blizzard at start, snow on map never a problem had to deal with before. Then navigation got sloppy, kept on confusing streams when crossing them as on wrong line, bit of a mental switch-off really. Two big (4-5 min) errors. Legs were feeling tired and couldn't keep up with Harold right at the end - again an uphill run-in. Not a particularly inspiring course or area, especially for a relay... Mapping was poor and the last 2k was a cross-country course - I'm sure there could have been a spectator control with a bit more imagination...

Jogged a couple of 5-minute sections back down from Hotsons to loosen up/see what was aching. Fortunately not too much, going to have a better stretch later - weather at event today was "stay warm for as long as possible" weather...