Training Log Archive: BorisGr

Event: WC Round 1/EUOC
 

Warm-up and cool-down

Roslagen weekend, middle distance. After analyzing (and over-analyzing) yesterday's race, my main conclusion was that i wasn't nearly aggressive enough and often did not run hard, but rather very tentatively, hoping to avoid mistakes. That way, even my splits for controls i took pretty cleanly were mediocre, at best. So today i decided to try the opposite - attack the course and be aggressive. This resulted in a mistake of 2:20 right off the bat. After running up to the start triangle, we were supposed to almost turn around to go to the first control, and i didn't turn enough, ran up the wrong hill and, next thing i knew, i was relocating off a lake. I came to #1 with the guy who started two minutes behind me. Great. After this i just decided to run hard and make the best of it, and ran very well, though still having occasional problems in the circle (10sec on 3, 15sec on 6, 20sec on 12, 15sec on 15, 10sec on 16) before losing about 45 seconds on 17 and another 50 on 19. Still, i finished strong and ended up 25th out of 50 or so, 6:55 (19%) off the best time. Not a great race, but still probably my best middle distance race in Sweden so far, mostly because I was able to attack the course and run hard the whole way. As a result, i actually had good splits on controls i took cleanly, with a few top 10's, and even a 3rd. So, still lots to work on, but progress seems to have been made.

Splits at http://www.obasen.nu/winsplits/online/sv/default.a...

Jogging to the start - probably one of the roughest start jogs i've ever had, through feled areas and all sorts of crap. Don't know how the old people even mde it to the start. :)

Roslagen week-end classic race. This is the first hot day of the year, and I sure felt it. Started out very confused, as I stood at the strart triangle trying to find the triangle on the map for like 15 seconds before realizing the course went on both sides of the map and I needed to flip. In general, I wanted to keep a nice, steady pace and had as my not-too-important goals finishing in the top 20 and being less then 25% behind the winner. Well, I made a mistake right off the bat on number 2. We had a longish leg with a stretch of technical swamp/small island terrain (just like Lunsen, only at 1:15) with a control on a boulder. I came right to the boulder, didnt see the control, saw another control literally 10 meters away (that was our #11 - on the other side of the map) and panicked, thinking i had to be in the wrong spot, since there couldn't be two controls so close. Ended up losing two minutes or so. Grrr. Made another mistake right after we had to flip the map - by the time i figured out where on the map i was, i had already gone 20 or so meters in the wrong direction and never adjusted. Otherwise, i had no major mistakes, but continuing annoying problems in the control circle - 15 seconds here, 30 seconds there... On the whole, i managed to keep a pretty constant pace throughout, which is always nice for such a long race and was pretty happy with my route choices, but still was too tentative in the woods and never really attacked the course for fear (probably justified) of screwing up. Anyway, i ended up 20th, but that wasn't as pleasant as I had thought, as only 27 finished and 10 guys DNF'ed, probably because of the heat and long course. I was 23 minutes (30%) behind the winner (results at http://www.svenskidrott.se/Organisation.asp?WCI=wi...), which is a lot, and I was quite disappointed until I got home and looked at the last time I ran a classic race of comparable length in comparable terrain, which was the classic DM when I first got here in august, and saw that I was 49 minutes back of the winner (>50%) and 46 minutes behind today's winner. So at least there seems to be progress. At any rate, compared with when i first came here, I feel a lot more confident navigating here and actually believe that i will find the controls, which is more than i could say last August.

I walked home from the clubhouse on this perfect summer-like day and realized that i never really appreciated the sun as much until i came to Sweden. I mean, everyone is outside today, working, playing sports, relaxing, everyone is in a good mood, smiling - people are so happy to have a nice long sunny day, which is something i often took for granted in new york. Kind of cool.

Nice easy recovery run before breakfast, just like Sandra advised. Feeling a bit beat up from the last few days' training, so it felt nice to take it easy and take in the sunshine.
Wildlife: almost stepped on a great big bulfrog sitting right in the middle of the bikepath.

The usual

2-on-2 and 3-on-3 beach volleyball at Polacksbacken after class. Couldn't resist on such a nice day!

The Stadsskogen trail loop on a beautiful, sunny May day. Scared up some bunnies and deer and ran into Ulf T. along the way.

Running to and from the start of the interval loop.

Forest intervals! The loop this time had long stretches of deep swamp, which became deeper and wetter with every rep. We did 2:30 on, 1 minute off along the streamered loop that was about 1.1 km long. I did eight intervals, a few guys did 10, but i twisted my ankle a bit at the start of the ninth one and decided to jog it off instead. Feels fine now. For most of the intervals, I was right behind attackpoint's (and Tennessee's) own Mats Froberg, and he always pulled away in the marshes. I definitely need to work on leg strength! Luckily, though, I don't think Team Trials courses will have too many legs going through knee-deep marshes.
Anyway, forest intervals always make for a great workout and today, especially with the great weather, was no exception.

Jogging around Polacksbacken and setting "controls" (bright pink post-its) for this afternoon's sprint training.

Warm-up/cool-down with Hammer and theShadow

Sprint training that I set up for Hammer, theShadow, Rob, and myself. A beautiful day, three fast courses (about 2.0-2.1km each, with controls marked by little pink post-its) made for a fun afternoon training.
Sprint 1:
Rob - 9:29
Boris - 9:57
Brent - 10:08
Mike - 10:11

Sprint 2:
Rob - 11:03
Boris - 12:04
Mike - 12:07
Brent - 13:56

Sprint 3:
Rob - 9:00
Boris - 9:41
Mike - 9:47
Brent - 11:04

Man, Rob is a beast!!!

Club training at Lunsen. Had no energy from the start, so ran very slowly, especially in the beginning. Didn't make big mistakes and tried to stay in contact the whole time. Sped up towards the end, though, and felt pretty good. Still, need to eat more for dinner!!!

Running Tuesday night course U on Nasten with Hammer, theShadow, and Jan Troeng. Much easier to follow the line by day than at night, though reading on the run at 1:15000 is still tough. Picked up the pace quite a bit towards the end, but otherwise, a nice, fun run.