Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Warm-up for day 2 of Costa Calida.

Costa Calida Day 2 - middle distance chase start. I woke up in the morning with the knee still stiff and swollen, but much less than the day before. Put off the decision to race until the last moment and decided to go for it, as adding a DNS to three DNF's in the last month would not do much for my self-confidence. In other words, I kneeded this one.
I started a minute after Rob and a minute before Ulrik and set as a goal for myself to not give Ulrik any chances to catch me. The terrain offered some more of the same tough, rocky hillsides as the day before and, with cold rain coming down, this was not the easiest of races. My knee felt significantly better on trails and running flat or uphill, to the point where I half-walked most of the downhills. I had a very good start to my race, orienteering cleanly and smoothly, but still ended up making a 40-second mistake on 7, losing a minute or so on route choice to 10, and another minute walking downhill to 13. Still, I was very pleased with my race - the time is far from spectacular, but I felt good orienteering and was much happier than I would have been sitting at the finish all day and not racing. Ulrik beat me by 16 seconds, but didn't catch me, and Neil was about 2:30 back. Mats and Lina ended up 2nd in the elite classes, so, to Mats' great (maybe not too great...) annoyance, we had to stay for the award ceremony and miss the first period of the Olympic hockey finals. Watching the 2nd and 3rd periods with a whole bunch of Swedes was a lot of fun, though if the final had been Sweden-Russia, i think my cheering would have been louder than the noise all eight or so of them produced cheering for Sweden...
(Sweden scores, the crowd says "Great." Finland scores, the crowd shakes its collective head.)
:)

After the hockey game and the short Swedish vctory celebration, I dragged Neil out to go run the JWOC middle distance final course from 2002 on Guardamar Sur. More great sand dune terrain, even more runnable and fun the Guardamar Norte. Some of the best orienteering i've done all week - felt good and smooth, and the soft ground didn't hurt my knee very much. We weren't running at race pace, but were mostly orienteering smoothly, keeping good map contact on the run and having lots of fun.

Getting to and from the Guardamar Sur map. I thought that getting there was an adventure, as we had to cross a canal by climbing up a highway overpass and then make our way through the town's dirty industrial part and busy center to find the map, but it was the way back that was the most memorable. We tried to run along the beach to get back, but hit a marina, with no way to get across the water. Afer more wandering and some fence-jumping, we eventually found ourselves less than 100 meters from our campsite, separated from it by two canals. After seriously considering swimming and (not as seriously) building a raft out of wooden crates, we cursed and ended up running all the way around, up the highway on-ramp, across the bridge, and down on the other side, adding an extra 4km or so to the run...

C • Ahh! 4

Event: XVII Trophy Costa Cálida
 

Costa Calida 2006 - day 1, WRE.
Started reasonably well, clean on the first three controls, though legs a bit tired. Then made a mistake on 4: couldn't make sense of the map in the control circle and had to relocate twice, coming back to the same spot each time! Ran with Ulf on 5, made another mistake on 6, then on the way to 7 took a nasty fall, smashing both knees hard on the rocks. Sat by the side of a road for a while, decided it was just a bad bruise, then got up and tried jogging/walking. Limped to 7,8,9, then came in to the finish, on the way to which I ran into Jan Troeng, also limping in after hurting a toe - a more serious injury than mine, as he'll be unable to run for a month or so. In all, 4 Linne runners DNF'd, and Ulrik, as well as Rob, mispunched - not the best day for Uppsala orienteering. On the bright side, Mats and Lina had the 2nd best times in H21E and D21E, respectively!
The knee was very stiff and swollen the rest of the day, but a bunch of ibuprofen, a compression bandage, and some jacuzzi treatment in the afternoon helped loosen it up a bit. At the meet site, I limped over to the medical staff and asked if they had ice (which i would have thought to be the most obvious thing to pack for an o-meet if you were the medical staff!). The ambulance worker shrugged his shoulders and said that the guy selling Coca-Cola might have some ice...

Morning training at Fuente el Alamo - old middle distance course from a previous Costa Calida meet. Lots of open terrain with big cliffs and tons of small route choice decisions that reminded me a bit of what San Diego must have been like - hard to find the right passages between cliffs and easy to end up standing right above the control, with no obvious way to get down to it. Fun!!

Afternoon training. With the Costa Calida meet the day after, we took this training very easy. I ran with Neil, and we jogged around a few short loops, talking about route choices and taking different approaches to controls. Not the most interesting terrain, with vegetation being the most challenging thing to read on the map.

Morning training on a map high in the mountains called Penarubia. Much colder up here than down on the beach in Alicante, and it even snowed on me at one point on the course. Started with a stupid mistake in the vegetation on 2 (not much training reading vegetation in Sweden!), but things went better after that. Couldn't find a small path on 15, wasted some time and got cold. Cut the course short after 19. Tough terrain - lots of rock underfoot and a lot of steep climbs.

Jogging to the start with Neil.

Running around before the start of the afternoon race.

A little race put on by Per Stenner on the sand dune map next to our camping (Guardamar Sur). It was meant as a Night-O, but a day version of the same course was also offered, and I took advantage of that, given that I do more than enough night-O in the Swedish woods. The course was fast, but you had to concentrate the entire time. I made a 1 minute mistake on the first control, but learned my lesson and was clean and fast the rest of the way, quite pleased with my time. The best time during the day was 19:52, while Mats had the best result at night at 20:20. It was fun to have a time close to his, even if the terrain was much easier during the day than at night!

OK Linne Spain Training Camp, Day 1.
After getting up early in the morning and leaving cold and snowy Uppsala, there was nothing better than ending up in sunny, warm Spain in the afternoon and going for a run on beautiful, fast sand dune terrain just three minutes away from our accommodations. Very runnable sandy woods with lots of contour detail made for fun, fast orienteering.

Running to and from the Guardamar Norte map and running around on the map some more with Neil (ndobbs) after the course. While running the course, I got to stop and show a couple of Swedes where we were on the map - a rare moment for me! :)

To/from KG, to the start.

Since a lot of us are missing Bjorn's wednesday night-O, we got a chance to pre-run it tonight. Only Kalle and i decided to do it, and i had no desire to do is a race, but rather as easy-pace night technique training. So that's just what i did, going very slowly and carefully, trying to make as much sense of the map as i could. Still made mistakes, of course, but it was nice to not feel rushed during night-O. I should force myself to do this more often. It's not easy mentally to make yourself go out into the dark, cold, snowy woods alone, but it's definitely the best way to improve night-O skills - better than racing it. This was also fun - a nice and peaceful feeling, running along at my own pace. Just me, the woods, the snow, and the moose hiding in the shadows.

Day off tomorrow.

C • Way to experience night-o 2