Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Morning run with Kat's heartrate monitor watch and footpod. That thing is fun! Ran around the paths in Stadsskogen, moving pretty quickly, and jogged to the park and back slowly with Kat.

Running with Kat from the clubhouse to the start of the course and then back to the clubhouse. Saw sheep, horses, lots of snails, and a deer.

Running a middle distance training course (4.4km, 18 controls) in one of the most fun and technical parts of Nasten. I had run this course previously, in late September, and really enjoyed it, so decided to do it agai. I was pretty disappointed with myself - lots of mistakes, especially early on, and I wasn't very disciplined and did not look at the map enough times. I also didn't trust myself and went into "relocation mode" a couple of times when I was very near the control, but things got better towards the end, and I finished well. Still, not the kind of feeling I'd like to have with just four weeks till the WOC middle qualifier...

Map hiking through the most technical part of the course with Kat. I made her walk from control to control and say out loud each feature she saw (in all directions) and anticipated to see and also made her described what she expected to see as she entered the control circle. It was fun and a great way to force myself to think about these things as well.

A nice long bike ride on rented bikes around Uto with Kat. We explored most of the island and found a beautiful sandy beach to have lunch on before returning through a military training area. Lots of fun on a beautiful sunny day! Biking didn't hurt the hamstring at all, which was a nice change...

Kat and I went out to the island of Uto in the Stockholm archipelago and rented a kayak. After a half-hour of battling with the waves on the Baltic, we landed on a small island inhabited, oddly, by a deer and dried ourselves. Apparently, we looked like we were shipwrecked, as a military boat came by, landed, and a Swedish soldier came out, asking if we needed help. Having proudly refused help, we then went back into the water and proceeded to struggle for another hour or so before giving up and returning to harbour.

C • Island 5

After a nice nap in the afternoon, I went for a run exploring Uto. Ran out for a half hour and then did a fartlek on the way back, trying to run fast up whatever hills I found.

A Sandra-recommended pre-breakfast run in the light drizzle. Ran two ski loops in Stadsskogen, trying to avoid the myriad snails on the paths, mostly successfully.

C • recommended 1

Normal flexibility exercises.

Most of the standard loop around Stadsskogen at easy pace, with Kat navigating.

Running to and from Sten Sture hill and jogging between intervals.

Decided to finally start running intervals again and went over to Sten Sture hill, the one nice hill around here, to do a few hill intervals to see how it feels. Ran up Gula Stigen from the bottom up to the monument and down the other side as rest. Ended up doing eight reps - up each side four times. Felt pretty good, but stopped after jut eight to be careful and not overdo it.
Splits: (the left side is going North, right going South).
1:19.7 1:21.3
1:18.8 1:22.3
1:17.4 1:20.3
1:18.6 1:20.8

Rest was about 1:35-1:45 jogging downhill.

Went to see Thonny Wall, a naprapth recommended by Rob. He diagnosed me as having a partially torn hamstring (no surprise there) and did some vibration massage, as well as regular massage. He thinks he can heal it in three visits or so. We'll see. At the very least, there is some hope. Will see him again on Friday, and Kat will come see him for her knees, ankle, and calves...

C • Whats a naprapth? Like a Shama... 8

Went out to North Lunsen again with Kat and did the control picking exercise from a month ago, in reverse order. Went slowly, but felt pretty good and orienteered reasonably well. Will hopefully start doing speedwork again next week if the hamstring doesn't get worse.

Pool running at Fyrishov with Kat, including a few "sprints".

Unretired a pair of old shoes that sort of give me blisters for this nice, easy run on Nasten with Kat. Definitely need new shoes! Very nice run - the woods and meadows are bautiful this time of year, and the cows and horses along the way provided good entertainment.

From Rob and Allison's place to the clubhouse, then to various buses, and then to the start of the training and back. Watching the USA-Ghana World Cup match and holding out hope just until the very end, we ended up having to run hard to the clubhouse and arrived maybe a minute late, with everyone having already gone. So, after some discussion, Rob and I took a couple of buses to the training and got back to his place just in time for the kick-off of the Australia-Croatia game, which turned out not to be shown on Swedish TV!! But Australia went through to the next round anyway, so go Socceroos - doing a whole lot better than team USA!

Middle distance course on the North side of Lunsen - not as intense as the south part, but still really, really fun. Ran reasonably hard, as Rob and i wanted to make sure to get back in time for the Australia-Croatia kick-off. Ran pretty well and had good map contact except for a big mistake at 11 - probably four minutes lost or so... Lots of fun!!!!

To and from the start of backbana. The way there (22:30) through Stadsskogen and along the golf course and the way back (18:40) through Polacksbacken.

Plans to run sprint courses in Stadssgkogen with Hammer and rob fell through, so I dragged myself out to run one lap around backbana at easy pace. Of course, "easy pace" for backbana still means you are huffing and puffing on the uphills, no matter how slow you are going. As a result, I ended up pushing pretty hard and felt like i was going to beat my time from the last time i ran here, just before heading to the US for Team Trials, since that time i didn't push very hard. Well, as i made my way up the last hill and got to the finish line, i saw that my time was exactly the same, to the second, as last time. I guess this means i lost some form over the last month, as it was more of an effort to run 30:12 this time than a month ago, but that shouldn't be surprising, looking at my "training" the last month...

The flexibility exercises i haven't been doing in a while.

C • backbana 3

Janne's backbana in Uppsala - Splits

Check out this Venla video, a news story on Finnish TV, which I stole from ALJ's log: http://www.yle.fi/urheilu/mediasali/video/id42390_...

C • In Uppsala 3

Went for a jog on the Stadsskogen map to hang some streamers (toilet paper sheets) for Hammer to run the Temo Cup and maybe Linne's winter race that was here. Felt like an old man going out the door - everything seemed to hurt, and i had no energy at all, but everything got steadily better as the run went on, and i felt pretty good by the end. It started raining about halfway through, so my "controls" are probably already destroyed, but running in the rain felt nice.
My 2005 O-shoes' days are numbered, as their guts are coming out and they are starting to give me blisters... Need new O-shoes.

C • New shoes 1

A long, easy run with the Linne crew on Kung Bjorn's trail - basically all over Nasten. This "trail" was almost like running through terrain, including marshes and all that. A fun, relaxed run, followed by a great dinner and World Cup-watching at Allison and Rob's place.

Jukola warm-up - in the giant start pen with 1361 other first-leg runners...

Jukola 206. Team Cambridge Sports Union!!!!

Ok, I wrote up a big long thing about Tiomila, might as well do the same about Jukola.
The trip began for me on Thursday, when I made my way over to the clubhouse to meet up with Linne's first two men's teams and the women's teams for the trip over. The other teams would come over on Friday. We piled into a bunch of minibusses and drove down to the Silja ferry terminal in Stockholm. We got on the boat just in time to get the choice seats for the Sweden - Paraguay World Cup soccer game, and the trip began. After watching the game, I got seven solid of hours of sleep in the cabin and woke up in time to gobble down several eggs, lots of cereal, and tons of sandwiches at the huge breakfast buffet before arrival in Turku. Pretty much straight from the boat, we drove over to the Jukola training area and went for a training run on a beautiful sunny day. I got a chance to test out the theory that having rested for almost a week beforehand would make my hamstring feel better, and the theory failed immediately, as the hamstring pain returned in exactly the same intensity as before after about a minute or so of running. Oh well.
The training itself was fun and relaxed, and everyone was in good spirits, though i was slowly beginning to get nervous for my lead-off leg, which was still a good 36 hours away.
We spent the afternoon and evening in a hostel in Turku, spending most of our time watching World Cup games and planning possible Jukola 1st legs on the old map of the area - Mats organized a course-setting contest using the old map. This was a great and really fun way to study the map and terrain ahead of time, and i knew the general layout of the land and major features quite well by the time my start came about the following day.
I got up early Saturday morning and got a ride over to the Jukola event center with the girls' first team. Wishing them good luck, i walked over to the CSU team military tent and met up with the whole gang for a team meeting and the beginning of the true experience.
Matthias, Kenny, and Ross were already there, and Peter, William, and Claire showed up shortly, so the whole gang was together. Also at the tent was Leif Akerblom (bubo), who had graciously offered to be our team manager for the relay, as well as Benn Legg and Andy Dale, who found a random Finnish team to run for and were crashing at our tent. Right from the team meeting, it was clear that this would be awesome. Everyone was in a good mood and very excited, and Leif came prepared, with a (what turned out to be extremely accurate!) schedule of when each of us should come in and change over if were to achieve our informal goal of making the top 250. At the meeting we also got our new Axis Gear uniforms and took some pictures before getting a chance to dirty the uniforms (and sprain some ankles) during the model event.
The afternoon was spent watching Venla (with Simone dominating on the last leg, and the Linne girls, 4th through two legs, mispunching on the 3rd...) and wandering around the enormous orienteering city erected just for the weekend. Maybe it was the sunshine, maybe the pretty setting, or maybe just everything together, but the whole thing just felt like a big, giant festival - a celebration of orienteering. It's hard to describe the atmosphere in words, but watching the thousands of orienteers mingling, standing in line for meatballs and mashed potatoes, shopping for O-shoes (or farm equipment, which was also available for sale...), or just sunbathing next to the forest of military tents somehow made you want to do this orienteering thing every day of your life.
Well, standing out in the sun before racing isn't exactly beneficial, so eventually we made our way back to the tent to hang out, make jokes about Peter's age and height, and brave the smell of the latrines that the organizers had thoughtfully placed right next to our tent.
Finally, after all the wait, anticipation, and nervousness, it was time to run. I was thrilled (and terrified) to be running the first leg, but somehow the feeling of dread completely disappeared when I was standing on the starting line, with my map hanging above me, and row after row of orienteers lined up ahead and behind me as far as the eye could see. I had thought a lot about running the first leg and decided for myself that my main goal should be to not blow it - to not put the team unfathomably far from its goal right from the start, so reading control codes and trying to avoid blindly following were to be major priorities. As soon as the starting gun went off, all of those cautious thoughts disappeared, and I took off like a bat out of hell, hoping to not get trampled by the mob coming from behind, while passing as many people as possible starting ahead of me (we had a start number of 673, meaning that 672 teams - or so - were starting in front of me, and another 700 or so behind...). The starting dash consisted of making a half-loop around a big field followed by a steep climb to the start triangle. I flew up the hill, coughing because of all the dust thrown up into the air by thousands of pounding feet, and took off following one of the streams the crowd had split into, having managed to plan at least part of my route for the 2+km first leg on the climb. Having prepared myself for an extremely high pace early on in the race, i was surprised to find the pace to be pretty normal, and i managed to maintain good map contact on the first leg, as we were running in the open quite a bit, and darkness hadn't really set in yet. Along with a big pack of people, i spiked the first control and immediately saw what Leif had predicted would happen: dozens of people seeing the control code and stopping, looking confused and starting to run around hoping to find their own forking. I thought to myself: better to not end up like that!
After the first control we had a steep downhill to a field, and on the way down i felt a hand or foot of the person behind me on my shoulder, back, or head a number of times, and i had to struggle to keep my balance while flying down hill in a crowd. The next few controls went well, and i felt like i was gaining places in a hurry, but still not moving very fast. The terrain was steep and the woods were thick the entire time, so passing people was almost only possible by just spiking the controls - everyone was running in a long line, and getting out of line to try to pass was difficult in most places. There was a moment when i was running in a line reading my map and decided that we were going wrong and took off at an angle, suddenly by myself, something you are never supposed to do in this situation. This time, though, i was right and hit my control and rejoined the line, most of which aparently had a longer forking here that just didn't include my control. On the long, physical leg from 7 to 8 i was beginning to feel that this was becoming night-O, which meant i had trouble keeping map contact at the speed we were moving. Each time i tried to slow down to read the map, i'd feel a hand on my back or an elbow in my side as someone attempted to pass, so eventually i had to make do with either getting out of line to read the map or taking quick glances and hoping the people in front knew where they were going. Not surprisingly, this backfired almost immediately. After crossing a waist-deep marsh that had already turned into a mudpit, we climbed up a steep, green slope and and kept going, side-hilling along some cliffs. Suddenly, the pack turned uphill and i almost got sucked in with them, but stopped at the last moment. Then i heard someone shout my control number in English (or Swedish? - i don't remember) and point in a different direction. Taking a glance at my map, i agreed, and followed the shouter. Again there was a pack, this time climbing along a steep rockface, using all four limbs to keep from falling off. Even here i felt a hand push me from behind repeatedly, enough so that i stopped and turned to the guy behind me and said "if you touch me again, i'm going to kill you" in good old English. He backed off, while the guy in front of me turned around and smiled.
A few controls later it felt like night had completely set in, and tiredness was approaching. I didn't look at my watch, but felt like the race was going a lot slower, and the running was a lot tougher than i had expected. At this point, around control 13, i was around 215th place in the relay. After that, things went downhill. I slowed down to get a drink at 13 and sped up to catch up to the pack i'd been running with. I caught them, but at the cost of losing contact with the map. Sure enough, after a few hundred meters, the whole pack stopped, with no one seeming to have any idea where to go. I ran around the hillside for a while, found 3 controls that weren't mine before finally relocating and finding the right one - about 2 minutes lost. Crossing a stream in the dark green on the way to 15, i fell into the mud and emerged with the map taking on a nice dark brown color. As i was cleaning it running in a pack, i again lost map contact, and this cost me at least another minute or so. Then on 16 my problems continued, as i took my own route choice, going around a hill that everyone else seemed to climb. I was unsure of where i was attacking from, but went ahead anyway, afraid of slowing down, as now there was a pack running after me. After a hundred meters or so, i hit a control and was elated, only to find that it wasn't mine, and i was now one of those guys standing around hopelessly lost at the wrong forking. This took another 2:30 of aimlessly running around to fix, and by the time i hit 17, i was in 317th, having lost 100 places in 2km or so! I ran hard on 19 and 20 and took off for 21, sensing that the end was finally near. I was feeling very tired and low on energy, as this has been one of the most draining races i'd ever run. Sure enough, i messed up 21, a small cliff on a hillside sprinkled with a dozen controls and hundreds of people running in all directions. This was my worst mistake - from the splits, it looks like i lost abut 5 minutes here! What is more amazing, though, is that on this same leg i also gained 36 places! I wasn't the only one hopelessly lost, i guess... (I was surprised to see quite fast runners around where i was at this point, including Stephen Palmer running for the Malungs 2nd team). The rest was easy - just run hard, find the right map to pick up, and hand off to Matthias. I was shocked, as i ran through the finish, to see that i came through in 282nd, as i expected to be somewhere in the 500's at this point. The hand-off went well, and i was finally done. Turning around to look up at the hill, i saw a continuous river of headlamps emerging out of the dark forest and flowing towards the finish and finally thought to myself: this is pretty cool.
The rest of the night was all about watching and cheering. I talked to Leif and Peter, showered (skipped the sauna 'cause i forgot to bring money for it), changed, made sure that Kenny was awake
and went off to go watch. Next to the finish, there was a kiosk with computer screens on all four sides. You could come up to it, type in a team number, and see that team's progress through the most recent radio control. This was a great way to track the progress of your team and its rivals. By the time Matthias came back, having picked up a whole bunch of places and put is into the top 250, it was after 1am and already getting lighter. The coldest and darkest part was over, and people, many of them just lying in sleeping bags next to the finish, were beginning to wake up to watch the last few legs. It was really exciting tracking each of our runners and watching each of them having really solid runs and cheering them into the finish, one by one. None of us had a spectacular race, but everyone did what they were supposed to do, and when the sun was fully overhead and heat was beginning to set in again, we started cheering wildly as Will Hawkins appeared out of the woods, punched the final control, and took off in a successful pursuit of the guy in front of him, picking up one more place on the run-in for a final result of 204th for team CSU!!!
After some more celebrating and hanging out at the event center, we gradually began to disperse, in complete agreement that this was one of the most fun things we'd all done in our orienteering careers. If there is a North American club out there thinking of putting up a Jukola team - do it, it's an experience well worth the money and the sleep deprivation! I think every member of team CSU, as well as of the Greater Vancouver team, had a great time at Jukola this year. Everything, from the club spirit and camaraderie, to the feeling of having survived when you emerge from the woods and tag your teammate, whether in the darkness, with the sun slowly rising to chase away the fog, or with day's heat already setting in adds up to make this an unforgettable experience!

Of course, there is also the aftermath - when Kenny, Ross, and i got to Turku, we were exhausted. All we could manage to do was wander around aimlessly, eat some kebab, and collapse to sleep on the grass next to the Turku castle, where hundreds of Swedish orienteers taking the ferry back to Stockholm were sleeping, playing soccer, or getting a head start on the night of partying that awaited on the boat. I felt so tired (and also a bit sick) that i skipped all the drinking and partying and just slept in my cabin the whole time, only to wake up at 2am or so, when some of the Linne guys opened the door for our youngest Jukola runner, a 17-year-old, who crawled in on all fours, threw up in the trash can and proceeded to pass out on the floor.
I've been babbling a bit too much, so let me finish with a big thanks to Matthias, Kenny, Ross, Peter, Mikkel, and Will for making this happen!!!!!!!! Also, a huge thanks to Leif for keeping us sane and helping us all along the way, to Claire for not killing any of us, and to OK Linne for letting me travel with the club and enjoy all the perks of the trip despite not running for them this time!

C • Awesome! 27

Event: Jukola
 

Jukola model event, running easy with Ross. No real problems orienteering, though a couple of concentration lapses here and there. About 5 or 6 controls in, i went down a small cliff and landed awkwardly on my right ankle, twisting it relatively badly, especially considering that i had had no ankle problems at all over the past 10 months in Sweden. Walked it off and jogged the rest of the way. Spent some time icing and tried staying off the ankle in the afternoon, and it was just sore and a bit swollen towards evening.

Training day at Jukola on one of the maps adjacent to the actual competition. Nice terrain, runnable forest with large hills with bare rock and contour detail on tops. Made a couple of mistakes, in particular had trouble in the small patches of green with low visibility. Hamstring hurt.

Another hour of pool running with Hammer and Mats, talking about orienteering and occasionally looking at the Denmark middle qualifier map.

After catching a 6am flight from London-Luton, i walked into my room at 12:30pm to find an email from Hammer asking to come pool running at Fyrishov at 1pm. So, of course, i went. It was fun and a good workout for an injured hamstring.
This was followed by some hot-tubbing, lunch, a nap, and watching Brazil-Croatia with the Troengs, Rob, and co. in town on a spectacular summer day in Uppsala.

The plan is to try water running again tomorrow, then take Thursday off, take the boat over to Finland Thursday night (i changed tickets with Annika Billstam, who is now going Friday), and then train on Jukola terrain Friday and Saturday and hopefully be ready to race Saturday night. We'll see how the hamstring feels after a week with no racing...

Jogging with Kat, first a loop around Christ Church meadow, then to Iffley road track and then around the track a few times, and back home afterwards. I hoped to pace Kat for a 6:00 mile, but realized i couldn't after trying to run one lap at 90 second pace and having my hamstring hurt a lot.
I convinced her to run the mile (ok, 1600m) anyway, despite the less-than-ideal conditions for it, and she did great, running 6:00.08 .

Nervously jogging back and forth across the infield, cheering on Kat and yelling out splits and pacing suggestions as she raced the mile.

Warm-up and a bit of a cool-down

BADO district event about an hour south of Oxford. Did the green course (the equivalent of a US green), taking it pretty easy - not jogging, but not racing, either. Still managed to make two huge mistakes (3 minutes apiece) in the pretty vague terrain with no good attackpoints. Probably should have used pace count in this terrain, something i haven't done in years. Some M45 dude beat me by two minutes... Hamstring felt ok most of the way, just sore.

Jogging around the second half of the course again with Kat, teaching her to pace count and practicing it myself.

A nice, fun run in the hot English sun with Kat. We ran to Port Meadow and then in the nature reserve around it, with lots of horses, cows, birds everywhere. Beautiful day, fun steady run, but hamstring still hurt some.

Easy tennis on a grass court (never played on grass before!) with Kat in the afternoon. Took it easy to avoid hurting myself. We played for an hour and a half or so, but probably only 30 minutes of running.

The Linne Jukola teams have been posted. Looks like I probably would have gotten to run 4th leg on the 2nd team if I was interested. Looks good for next year.

C • Jukola 6

Warming up for the club Sprint Champs and then cooling down with Rob by running part of the course together.

OK Linne Sprint Champs organizerd by Thor at Stadsskogen, just a five minute jog away from home. After two rest days, i decided it was time to see how the hamstring felt and, anyway, i couldn't pass up a race so close to home!
Right off the bat, i missed the first control (i blame the map, and i'm not the only one) and took a bad route to the second (i blame me, and i'm not the only one), losing 10-15 seconds on each, but then settled down and had a decent race the rest of the way, maybe scattering another 20-30 seconds on the course. Ended up 12th, 2:35 behind a very impressive run by Jan, but just 26 seconds from 6th place, which would have been nice.
Splits at http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/sv/default.a...

C • Missed the fun 3

A run by the Charles while my friend Soojin rollerbladed along on a nice Boston day. It was really fun to do the run I got so sick of over four years in college, especially on such a nice day.
The whole weekend was great, and it was fun to see the CSU crowd back together, and we even got a chance to stop by Larry and Sara Mae's house and wish them a happy 50th anniversary and, as always, listen to the stories they tell by completing each other's sentences.

Warming up.

Nobscot Park NEOC local event outside of Boston, where I traveled for Will Hawkins' wedding for the weekend.
The map and terrain were really fun, and i had an ok race given that i had flown in the day before and that my hamstring hurt most of the way. Made about 3:30 of mistakes, meaning that I would have had to run a clean race to beat the groo that day.
Unlike the map and terrain, the rest of the meet organization made me mad. There are things that we can't fix overnight in US orienteering, but there are very simple things we can do to at least bring the sport into the 1990's.
Here are the two biggest things:
1) copying the map ON TIME. WHY??????????
How has no one in NEOC done anything about this idiotic practice? I can understand not pre-printing the maps - not everyone has the resources to do it. But why force the runners to copy the maps on time? How can that possibly be part of the results and how can it possibly add to the runners' enjoyment of the experience? If someone has some sort of justification for this, please tell me. I'd love to hear it.
2) This one is even better. On at least two of the controls, I got to the right feature only two find two flags hanging there. "Strange", I thought, but wasn't bothered. Then i looked at the code of one of them and saw it wasn't mine. Ready to run off and try to relocate, I decided to look at the other one quickly. Sure enough - mine! Yes, two controls on the same feature with different codes!!!!!!!
I don't think I very often just plain bash things that happen in US orienteering - it's a volunteer-run sport, and I appreciate the effort the organizers put in and try to thank them for the experience whenever possible. I want US orienteering to grow and thrive, and alienating volunteers is not the way to do this. However, the two grievances I listed above take neither extra time nor effort to fix. In fact, the second would save the organizers the effort of putting out extra flags. I just don't get it.

C • I'm not going to defend NEOC, ... 13

Red - Splits

Running from home to Polacksbacken, warming up, cooling down with Hammer, and running back home.

C • Jukola relay 1

Tempo Cup #1 sprint race at Polacksbacken, a rare race in Uppsala with 5% climb on the course! Basically, there was one big hill (The Hill in Uppsala), and we went over it a bunch of times.
The course consisted of loops run in different order, so people were running in all different directions, and a lot of people were making mistakes. I ended up doing ok, despite feeling pretty beat on the uphills, and avoided major errors, though still had a couple of hesitations and stupid route choices. Hammer was in the process of kicking my butt for the second day in a row, but made a mistake in the end, graciously letting me even the Canada-USA tally at 1-1 for the week. Jan Troeng won in 19:06, which does not seem like a spectacular time for the course. Splits at http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/sv/default.a...

C • USA vs Canada 3