Training Log Archive: Mark3

Light rain overnight resulted in a pretty wet tent which made it heavier, but we'd eaten so much food that weight was about the same.

[kit review]
- The jetboil zip was amazing. Boiled water in no time at all and used barely any gas. 100g easily enough for a 2 day MM. Excellent purchase.
- Taking a zippo was much better than a disposable lighter
- I probably had too much food and it was too inconvenient - I think I'll dismiss the homemade flapjack in future and have cereal bars instead
- I just had the two meals, and flapjack for breakfast. This was fine, although maybe would have wanted the hot meal had it been cold
- Chewing gum would have been more effective than the tooth wipes
[/kit review]

Set off with a few options. After a straightforward first control, decided we had time for one of two controls - decided against the (extremely steep scree slope for 500m) first one as too energy inefficient. Then all the controls were straightforward really, we had done (ahem) the hard navigation the previous day, so we just had to keep going. We'd decided that to go for the one extra control we'd need more than 50 minutes left at the preceding one - we thought it would take an extra hour but it was worth being 10 minutes late - and we had 47 minutes. We decided it was better to be early and to risk it.

We won...on time. So only just. We scored 10 points more on day 2 but were 28 minutes early...2nd place were 22 minutes behind overall on the same score overall having got 10 points more on day 1.

So we'd done enough to win - but it would have been far more comfortable without the navigation errors on day 1! Still - that's only my second time with a 1:40k map (and 25m contours!) so it wasn't too bad.

Results: https://www.theomm.com/omm-iceland-2016-2/

Tom (my partner from my running club) has been doing lots of training (he even gave up drinking, bless him) and he can keep pace with me on the road, but he's not as fast over the rough terrain (see link yesterday). He promises to continue training for the Saunders next month!

Well deserved trip to the Blue Lagoon afterwards. Legs felt like new afterwards - great post-race treat.

I would definitely recommend this race! Small field, no trophy...but still £50 prize each, and the opportunity to run across terrain like nothing I've seen before.

Not as hard as the regular OMM - I think it was the fact that it was a score class that means you don't push yourself as much because you just omit a control rather than taking a risk - and nowhere near as hard as Transylvania.

Wow - Iceland is great.

Interesting format - map provided 30 mins in advance and has all controls on for both days - controls can only be scored once, so you need to have an overall plan...

After using an old Dartmoor map to practice at the airport, and coming up with strategies, we calibrated a piece of string with 5k intervals for a 1:40k map and decided we'd aim for about 30k in 5 hours, and 25k in 4 hours. Then we would plan our route for the second day first, then ignore all those controls and get the most points we could on the first day subject to that.

This worked extremely well - better than I'd hoped.

What let us down was my pretty-poor navigation on the second control of the day, in the mist... visibility wasn't great; we'd just found a pretty hard control on a ridge "rocky outcrop on ridge" - not rocks not on map - only contours - made finding said rocks tricky. Luckily they were enormous. Then we were unable to find "top of gully on ridge" (note that neither the ridge nor the gully were actually on the map). We came to the conclusion that we'd been too high up - which looking at the GPS afterwards was technically true - although we'd been >500m too far up slope, and the large flat area on the map was not the large flat area I had thought it was... this meant I wasn't confident enough in our position to risk the next control in the mist either, so made the decision to ignore those two. Retrospectively we were where I thought we were, so lost out on some possible points.

Next few controls straightforward and got us some confidence back. Then one on "northern shoulder" but which was marked on the eastern shoulder on the map - again, in the mist, we decided not to waste time looking for it.

Then another easy control before 2k straight line across a lava field - think this for 2k - which destroyed Tom mentally - then a few more straightforward controls before coming in 5 mins early for the overnight camp.

Result - 240 points; joint 3rd (two teams on 250, two on 240).

Other than missing those controls, we had judged our distance/time pretty much perfectly. We were a bit lucky in this - we could have gone much further in easier terrain; but some of the paths weren't as easy as we imagined, and these factors pretty much cancelled out.

We were disappointed as we knew we'd been far enough to be 90 points higher - and we'd chatted to other teams and knew that they hadn't! I can only really blame 30 of these on the map quality - 60 of them are due to me, which was frustrating. However - we knew that our plan was good, and we hoped that other teams had "used up" the easier controls near the Start/Day 2 Finish and then we could recover ourselves on day 2...

Incl. warm up and down.

Managed to snatch Daryl's CR but will only last until he has another go I suspect...

Felt tough. Certainly don't feel in marathon-running shape; but then I didn't last time, either, and that went ok!

C • Stoke Gifford 4

'My' orienteering event in Stoke Gifford.

It was going well until I was attaching the fourth control of the day to a lamppost outside someone's house, and she accused me of 'encouraging people to run next to her house' and went off to ring the council. This is ludicrously comical afterwards but was an incredibly stressful argument at the time. 'With all the other things going on in my life right now, I don't need this!'. Quite - me neither.

Other than Tim Sands' (I think) campervan getting stuck in the car park due to the mysterious addition of a height restriction barrier (his wife was NOT happy) and Gwen parking her car in the ditch (the AA refused to rescue it because 'it wasn't broken down')...and somehow managing to have control 10 and 11 in the same place in the Green (thanks for spotting this Richard - the previous 5 people who saw the courses didn't!)...and getting 111 and 117 the wrong way around and not being able to change them back because the gripple key got stuck in a gripple...everything went fine.

Massive thanks to Clare and Tommi for personing the road crossing, Paul and Ben for collecting controls, and Phil for doing every job I asked him to (the event would not have happened were it not for you).

This was an extremely stressful experience and I'm not going to be doing it again any time soon! Planning was good though - and feedback on the courses was generally positive - so might have another go at that. But organising is not for me!

Packing for OMM

New pyramid session; 400,600,800,1k,1.2k,1k,800,600,400.

Felt tired for some reason so this was a bit of a struggle, but persevered until the end!

400s: 80, 77
600s: 2:03, 2:03
800s: 2:49, 2:49
1ks: 3:33, 3:36
1200s: 4:20

Under the circumstances, not bad - not fast, but consistent.

4th/116 starters in Transylvania. I am pleased with me.