Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Warm-up for the relay. In the rain. This time, the special twist was heavy fog which made the first leg runners disappear from view before they reached the start triangle, in the middle of a field less than 100m from where I was standing.

World Cup Relay. Second leg, after Eddie ran an excellent lead-off, coming just a couple of minutes behind Australia and less than ten minutes from the lead.
I felt tired from the long and unsure about my navigation from the start, given my bad experience two days prior. Still, it's a relay, so I started running pretty fast, but slowed down a lot in technical areas. Hit the first couple of controls and the confidence started returning. Running across a field to #4, I saw an Austrian and a Belgian who had started behind me (apparently about a minute and a half back) closing in and sped up. The forking was pretty severe, so I didn't see them when I came in to #5. In my opinion, the key leg was a long traverse from 7 to 8, running along a hillisde, counting reentrants and charcoal platforms. I was nervous and careful here and hit the control right on. From there in, the course wasn't too technical, and I just had to keep pushing, which was a little hard since I felt very tired and was totally alone. Still, i was pretty much clean the rest of the way and, after finishing, was happy to see the Austrian and the Belgian come in a couple minutes later. I did end up losing one spot to Hungary, but we still were in better position after two legs than we had expected. Randy closed with a solid third leg, and we ended up ahead of Japan, the second German team, and the second Belgian team. It was great for each of the three of us to close the tough week with solid races with no major mistakes!
All in all, this week was an awesome experience for me - the races were great, the variety of terrain was simply unbelievable, and I got to see if my so-far short time in Sweden was producing benefits. I do think that my map-reading skills in detailed areas have imporved a bit and that I am a bit faster than I was in Japan, but still weak on the hills and occasionally prone to stupid mistakes, often related to errors in estimating distance and climb.
Finally, hanging out with Karen, Sandra, Randy, and Eddie was great, so thanks to everyone, as well as to the US Team for covering the entry fees!
Final beer score: 4-2 (Neil paid with a bottle of Limoncello, which, I think, was a fine substitute).
Race grade: A-.

C • 6

Warm-up for the classic race with Eric Morris, on the warm-up map.

World Cup Classic. Awesome terrain. Fast, open woods, intricate detail on the hillsides. Lots of charcoal platforms, Early start on a nice, cool morning. Solid splits to 1 and 2. Good route choice to 3. Told myself to be careful attacking it, a charcoal platform in the middle of a bland hillside, French Creek style. Stupidly, attacked right at it instead of contouring and then dropping right down or 'terrace-hopping' like Eddie did. Just missed it and kept going. No way to relocate in the middle of nowhere. Seven minutes lost. Neil, having started six minutes back, comes into as i finally stagger up to the flag. Tell Neil that the beer score is 3-2.
At this point, with about 11km to go, I was totally demoralised and ready to quit. I finally convinced myself to shuffle around after Neil for a while and, somehow, this 'while' turned into 11km or so. I tried, in vain, to get away from him a couple of times, forcing poor route choices that I didn't execute too smoothly, while Neil was cruising along, not really making mistakes and I was losing whatever confidence I had in my navigation. We ended up running the rest of the race together, with Neil beating me to the punch on every one of the controls after 3. Pretty sad performance, but at least I finished, avoided (with Neil's help) major mistakes after #3, and now have an international-level classic race under my belt.
Eddie was a bright spot for us, with a solid race and some really fantastic top-30 splits on the killer climbing legs!
Beer score: 3-2.
Race grade: C.

A cool-down in the finish area with Neil. Felt dead.

Off day. Happy birthday Mom!

"Warm-up" for the sprint B-final race in another downpour. Starting almost last after sitting on a bus (the only dry place - aside from a rock Randy and I huddled under- yes, I said 'huddled', not 'cuddled') for four hours or so was not fun...

World Cup Sprint B Final. A disaster from the start - after telling myself to be careful to #1, i went right by it, even pausing to see if it was the correct reentrant i was passing. I ended up way down the hill, relocating at #2 and climbing back up, counting guys passing me on the way down. By the time I made a 180 and ran in the wrong direction out of #2 for about 100m, Jon Duncan who had started three minutes after me was with me. Great. He and i collectively messed up the questionable mapped #4 and picked up the guys who started 1 and 2 minutes after me in the process. The next two controls were ok and then we hit the city. For the first control in the incredible village of Cervara (perfectly captured in Thierry's video!!!! - it's linked from the WC discussion thread), I followed Jon Duncan and, of course, messed up. After we finally stumbled upon I was determined to navigate by myself and picked up the pace, hoping to ditch the three guys who were with me. We all went through the spectator control at full speed, surprised that there were still people around cheering (I realized later that the award ceremony had just ended.) As we made the brutal stair climb to #10, Thierry jogged up to us and ran along, videotaping as he went. At one point he was running up the stairs backwards faster than we were going forwards... After a couple of tricky short legs in town, there was a long one with route choice that went across the hill with the chuch and statue of Mary that dominateds the town. Everyone split up on this leg, and I found myself chasing down some Austrian guy and counting stairways going off to the right. At one point the Austrian turned up into a stairway, but I thought we were one short. Still, i wasn't sure, so i stopped and waited a couple of seconds. Sure enough, I shortly heard a loud "Scheize!" from above and continued running to the right stairway without looking back. Coming out of 14 with a German guy, i saw an old Italian man wave me down a certan passageway. A quick look at the map confirmed that was the right way to go, as the German disappeared in the wrong direction. Somehow, on the final leg, four of us converged and ran at full speed, sprinting up the last staircase and down to the finish.... Jon Duncan came in two minutes later. All i could do at the finish was shrug my shulders and laugh - this was the most complex and technically demanding sprint I had ever run, and I had failed the challenge with flying colors. Looking at the results, I wasn't the only one, as many big names found themelves way down the in the standings... Anyone who hasn't seen the map of this place, should immediately find it on the WC website or someplace else! Pictures of the town are coming shortly.
Beer score: 3-1.
Race grade: D.

Sprint modet event in Jenne. Jogged around, tried to adapt to the scale. Felt pretty comfortable reading the sprint map despite not having run a real urban sprint in a while. Too bad there was no model for the forest part of the sprint...

Warm-up for the sprint qualifier.

World Cup Sprint Qualifier. The sprint course was laid out in such a way that the first five controls were in the woods (pretty dense green with strangely-mapped rock detail) and the rest was in the streets of Subiaco, a hilly down with the streets, connected by numerous passageways, spiraling around the church situated on a hilltop in the center of town. As someone pointed out in the discussion, the contour interval for the street part of the sprint was 12.5 meters, which made it almost impossible to tell if you were going up or down on your route, but it did greatly improve map readability.
The race: I started a minute after Mats Troend (among others) and for some reason had a strange vision of catching him in my head as I was about to start. Sure enough, before the first control, there was Mats, standing around, scratching his head. Of course, I joined him there for a bit, but figured out where i was quickly and got my control, realizing along the way that the rocks that were everywhere were very hard to read and that i was still not used to the scale (1:4000). I was more-or-less clean to 2 and 3, running past some of the world's best walking around the woods, hoping to discover a flag behind this rock or that. And then came the most typical beginner mistake, one that I thought I had learned to avoid. I punched 3 just behind a Spanish guy, glanced at my map, saw that he was headed in roughly the right direction, and followed him. About 40 seconds later we were totally lost. It took me a really long time to relocate, and i finally found the flag, losing 1:30, an eternity in sprint races! Of course, on the way out of 4 i saw the same Spanish guy, still walking around looking lost. Angry with myself, i picked up the pace on the relatively easy road legs that brought us to town, but managed to slow down when we hit the detailed part of the street network. I had to sometimes slow down to almost a walk to figure out which passageways were helpful and which ones were dead ends, but i think this was the right way to go, as a lot of people made mistakes in the city, and relocation in the maze of little alleys was very difficult. It was fun to go through the spectator control with a lot of people (including my friend Lars from Linne!) cheering and runners spreading out into all different directions. By the end of the course, i felt almost dead after a long stair climb leg right near the end. All in all, i was happy that i managed to salvage a decent result after a disastrous start and that i did not try to overcompensate for the early mistake and run too fast in the cty, but I am still angry at myself for a beginner mistake that cost me the race: i was 37 seconds from qualifying this time.
On the bright side, both Karen and Sandra made the A-final (first time for each of them), so that totally overshadowed my own near miss!!!!
Beer score: 3-0.
Race grade: B.

C • I like it! 1

Longish warmup for the World Cup (WC) middle distance qualifier. I spent some time running on the warm-up map, exploring the terrain and avoiding cows.

WC Middle Qualifier. Very interesting, challenging terrain: farmed meadows with traces of terrace farming with clumps of impassable green briars and spiky bushes and intricate rock detail. Pouring rain, very wet and slippery the whole time. Despite not having spent much time in this terrain (i flew in after the model event), i stupidly started aggressively, running too fast to the first control and overrunning it, losing about 30 seconds. Spiked the next two and promptly missed #4, misreading the vegetation and climbing too high. Mats Haldin caught me here, but missed the control too, but recovered before me. This cost me about 1:10 and qualifying for the A-final... The next few legs were short and technical, and I had to slow down a lot in the circle to avoid more mistakes, so I lost about 15 seconds on each of #6 and #7, before spiking 8 (won the split!) and finally feeling comofrtable in the terrain. The next leg was a long route choice leg around a hill, followed by a number of quick short legs, which i ran parallel with Simone Niggle, who was probably running faster than me, but surprised me by having some trouble in the circle on several controls. Then, on to the finish to find out I missed qualifying by 0:57, still making this my best middle distance race in international competition so far. I wonder if running the model event and getting more comfortable with the vegetation would have made a difference, but there is no reason to second-guess...
Before the start, Neil Dobbs and i decided to wager a beer for each of the World Cup races and our head-to-head results (place in the heat, rather than time, counts if we are not in the same eat.)
Also, I am going to try giving myself a grade for every race I run, just to see how many races I am happy with and to what degree.
Beer score: 1-0.
Race grade: B+.

Cooling down in the rain with Sandra, who was sooooo close to making the final!!

Warming up for the middle B-final in the afternoon on the warm-up map.

World Cup Middle B-Final. Absolutely miserable weather, a donwpour when I started. This is probably the loneliest I ever felt during a race, as I saw no one on the course except some cows and the total number of spectators at the finish when I finished was 0.
Other than that, it was a pretty good race. I felt surprisingly good physically (this was surprising because up to this point, i had a history of doing much worse in the second of two races in a day) and managed to run at a pace where I actually could read the details and know where I was the entire time. I slowed down a lot in the very technical area around controls 4 and 5, and it payed off as I managed to avoid mistakes that a lot of people had there. I lost some time on a route choice on the long leg (#7), as I chose a longer but safer route climbing to the top of a ridge and running along it down to the control instead of contouring along the hillside, which turned out to be faster. (On the bright side, the views of the surrounding countryside from the top of the ridge were spectacular, despite the downpur.) I also lost time on the first longish leg after the road crossing, #11, where I was confused by what looked like a fence crossing marked in the terrain but not on the map. The hesitations there cost me about 45 seconds, and 2 places in the race.
Overall, this was probably my best race of the week - 10th place out of 27 in the B-final, within 5 minutes of Jon Duncan's winning time.
Beer score: 2-0.
Race grade: A-.

Cool-down.