Training Log Archive: Thompass

TL;DR bad day at the office, more work on incomplete plans on short legs and want to push myself more, i.e. aggressive orienteering (thanks for the vocab lesson in the car), in races. Unlucky with the injury and a lot of good legs in there, so I'm fairly certain there's progress.

1: Have seen better ideas, looked fine when I flipped the map and went but looking at it now I think I lost a lot of time going so far left. The ride was horrible running as well. Think recognizing the other path on line and easy approach, could have saved time there.

3: Disappointed getting so close and losing my head, didn't go in with enough of a plan. Recognized the steepness of the hill but couldn't place the two big rocks I was on, popped out to the trail and attacked again, eyes were up and I almost strayed too far left again, 7 minutes lost. Will focus on prevention and doing better for next time: staying lower was an option, there's more of a terrace and a flatter bit that is most likely more runnable as well, which would run me by the cliffed lake and the open marsh, fairly obvious attack points and guarantee that I'm attacking from the right. The tendency to turn off my bearing sharply rears its ugly head again, another habit to work on.

4: In the state of losing my head and low motivation up the hill, just overran the reentrant somehow without seeing it and head back, changed focus a bit out of racing and more into setting back into good nav. Will work in future races on aggressive orienteering, more tempo and push, think it's the most missing element of my orienteering atm.

5: Thought about going straight but decided against, think it's the faster option but saw Will flying past me while I was faffing around to 3 as he was headed to 5 and that influenced my route choice.

From there, everything was fine, navigated quite well and was happy with the pinball section in the west, was reading the fine detail very well. Compass bearings on the more open bit were good, and reading larger contours to 14 went splendidly. Back down the hill, controlled, and finished. Ankle bone was slowly getting irritated and spent quite a bit of time shouting at myself on the way to 7 trying to think through the pain and keep going. Wouldn't say it calmed down at all, more I just got used to it. Cross training for a few days at least to let that heal, came from an impact on Wednesday that I don't remember.

A day of frustration really, I was happy with how the sprint went and was ready to put everything into action in the forest, but still have a lot of work to do. I'll keep on working out the specifics, it seems like my biggest bane is incomplete plans on short legs (from what I've been gathering over the training camps and the last few races). I obviously want to start performing better and better and am reaching a mindset where I'm more willing to push myself, but still some pretty big pieces missing.