Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Setting out SI units in the morning, then collecting controls and disassembling control stands in the afternoon. Running around the woods with a map and compass in one hand and an axe in the other made me feel like some sort of native american warrior. Except that they probably didn't have bags full of SI units on their bags...
Absolutely gorgeous day, lots of people turned up for our meet, which is cool. I spent most of the day manning the drinks station at the spectator control, but am still really tired now for some reason.
Hammer is in town and has a car. Might have to cancel tomorrow's planned day off and go train instead. It feels like I've done nothing but orienteer all week long, but it only adds up to 7 hours. I guess that's what racing season will do.

Long warm-up and short cool-down.

IF Thor's middle distance race, part of the Uppsala Meet week-end. An absolutely gorgeous day, perfect weather for orienteering - perhaps +13C and totally sunny. Before the start, a number of different people from the club came up to me and said they were impressed with my run at the Tiomila Test on wednesday. I had no idea people even paid attention to these things. Pretty cool. So, of course, with these high expectations I had to turn in a totally mediocre run. The course was what Rob Hart referred to as "the toughest type of orienteering for non-Swedes to compete with Swedes in": technical and runnable, but not too technical, so you can pretty much run in a straight line most of the time. Looking at the splits, i didn't make any big mistakes, but was plagued by a ton of small ones, and each of them counted - i wasn't running much slower than the top guys in my class, but they were just much less sloppy. It didn't help that on each of the first three controls i was within five meters of the flag and didn't notice it. Oh well, still not a bad race, just not what i had hoped for. Results at http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/sv/default.a...

C • Tio Mila 11

I spent the evening at Erik Melin's house programming SIs for tomorrow Linne meet. First time i'd ever done it - it's actually kinda fun and definitely a good thing to know how to do.

All my JK maps and the Tiomila Test map from Wednesday are now up on http://www.lightmercury.com/maps_boris/

Took it easy today because i was feeling a bit banged up and tired from all the racing of the last week and ran the trail loop in Stadsskogen. My first run of the season in Sweden in shorts! Nice day, nice woods, nice easy pace.

Haha, i just read on the site of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that the letter "W" has now officially been accepted as part of the Swedish alphabet so they could put "webb" ("web" in English) in the dictionary. Pretty funny.

C • But it was snowing yesterday? 3

It's hard to believe that after yesterday's +12C, I woke up to see it snowing this morning. A miserable day all around, with temperatures no higher than +2. When will this end??
In the evening we got to pre-run the courses for this week-end's Linne classic race (1300 registered, including Hammer). I did H20L, though not the whole course as it was getting dark. Kept a nice cruising pace and navigated well. Had a bit of a problem reading contours and stuff in clear-cut areas, and also finding quick, hesitation-free paths to trails, when you don't need to think much, just run and keep a bearing.

Warm-up + cool-down

OK Linne Tiomila Test Race
On a beautiful, sunny day we drove down to Sigtuna to run on the map that was day 1 of O-Ringen 2001.
This was probably the best I have ever run in Sweden. Despite coming from England the night before, i felt great physically right from the start and pushed hard. It was just so much fun to run through Swedish woods without snow!! The first few controls were pretty easy, and I just needed to be careful and slow down at my attack points, which was fine. When I spiked the first tricky control, #4, I got pretty confident and knew this would be a good day. Bobbled 5 and 6 by about 20 seconds each, but I didn't panic and relocated quickly each time. Coming into 9, I saw Joffe who started 2 minutes before me and tried chasing him down on the long trail run to 10, but he was too fast. It started getting darker towards the end of the course, and it was a bit hard to see the details on the map, so I slowed down a bit to maintain concentration. Made my biggest mistake on 12 - about 40 seconds lost, but finished cleanly, good for 5th place in the club's Tiomila test (though half the people ran it at night). Still, quite pleased.
Splits here: http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/sv/default.a...

C • Albin's beating up on the women too, now? 1

Nice, easy run with Kat along the river in Oxford on a beautiful sunny days with stops to stretch, look at cows, geese, swans and so on. A very pleasant spring day!

C • Stigtomta? 2

Warm-up and cool-down

JK Relay at Bramham Park
Team SLOW#2:
Boris(7km)-Kat(5km)-Chris Wroe(5km)-Hammer(7km), competing in the men's open class.
I ran the first leg as training for leading off CSU's Jukola team this June. As expected, the pace was very fast right from the start, tearing straight through the brambles that were all over this map. I was clean through the first two controls and found myself with GG and a couple of others going to 3 and finding ourselves in what looked like a piece of unmapped forest. After about 1:40 of trying to relocate, we stumbled onto the control and began pursuit of the main pack. I lost some time (20 seconds each) on 6, 7 and 9, but was still pushing hard and could see a bunch of guys ahead of me the whole time. After 13 and 14, the spectator controls, I saw that there was only about 1km left, and I picked up the pace, gaining on and passing about five or six guys right before the last control and holding them off through the long finish chute. I was very happy to finish with a pack (18th out of 32, 5:12 off the lead) and hand off to Kat, except..... Kat wasn't there. Apparently, the 2nd leg runners had to already have their maps before being tagged, and she had to run back and get hers. About a minute and a half later, she was there, and I finally tagged her and went to cool down and cheer.
Both Kat and Chris Wroe had very good runs, considering they were racing against the best elite males in Britain, and Hammer (who arrived while the 3rd leg was already out) brought us up to 24th overall with a solid last-leg run.

All in all, this was a great weekend of orienteering, and the kind of race format US A Meets could consider adopting - Sprint-Middle-Classic-Relay. It definitely makes the trip worth it if you get to run 4 times in 4 days. The weather was also good, as was the hospitality provided by the many SLOW members who housed us, drove us, fed us, and gave us relay teams. A big thanks to them! It was also great to see some old friends and familiar faces, from Graeme Ackland and Andy Dale to Niall Bourke, Ben Roberts and Dids. Finally, i got to meet in person a few APers, including bubo and angryhaggis!