Training Log Archive: Mark3In the 7 days ending May 7, 2017:
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| « | » |
| » now | ||||||||||
|
|
|
| ||||||||||
| Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa | Su | |||||||
Sunday May 7, 2017 #
Orienteering - Forest race (British Champs Relay) 1:00:03 [5] 6.59 km (9:07 / km) +330m 7:17 / km
(injured)
The least said about this the better. Lost more time today than yesterday; c.15 mins.definitely one of the worst performances of my life.
Saturday May 6, 2017 #
Orienteering - Forest race (British Champs High Dam) 2:54:03 [5] 19.09 km (9:07 / km) +913m 7:21 / km
ahr:140 max:166 (injured) shoes: X-Talon 212 (Sep16)
Wow, that was really tough.felt I was going ok at the beginning (not fast, but accurate, as was my plan) and then after 90 minutes I definitely started to get tired and made bad route route choices and silly mistakes due to losses in concentration.thought I'd be ok with the distance/climb, especially after last weekend; but just can't sustain the higher level of effort required for long enough for an elite classic race.
Happy with 1, and happy with route to 2 - I guess there's a long contouring option to avoid the climb but it was so far round I didn't spot it.went straight but slowly, knew where I was all the time and had a well defined AP which I used.happy with 3 too.little bit low on 4 and probably lost 90s but with this detail at this scale I'm not at all surprised.
Happy with next few legs, very cautious avoiding OOB but corrected well.so basically up to 12, 52 mins, pretty good so will be interesting to see how I was doing at that point.
13 was very well planned;had no idea what to do whatsoever.all the route choices looked hard.so I picked the simplest, which probably had the most climb, but I thought I stood the best chance of not getting lost.still got a bit lost but relocated at the luckily massive lake.not a bad route in the end.
15 definitely made the wrong route choice - this is where the mistakes start creeping in.didn't appreciate how low I'd end up by contouring east and hit the uncrossable, had to go along it for a couple hundred m to find a crossing point.it was an ok route from that point, but lost a good 2 mins in the circle, control was just on the other side of a spur but wasn't confident enough in my position to realise.
16I was pleased with as there were suddenly loads of people and I correctly ignored all of them and hit it well.in contrast lost a min on 17 going in too early and hunting a bit.
19 was my first ludicrous mistake and when I think tiredness really hit me.navigated perfectly into the control and could see someone else punching it from 100m away, exactly where I expected it to be.but by the time I got there I had somehow forgotten where it was and convinced myself I'd imagined it.I hadn't though, it was just on the other side of the knoll, but I didn't check, and lost 3mins convincing myself I must be in various different places.I don't think I'd have done this if it wasn't 1hr45 in to the race.really frustrating.let that anger put me off and lost 90s on the next control, again navigating to the wrong side of the right feature and then this time seeing another control and going to check it despite knowing it wasn't going to be right.
Rubbish to 21 too, despite following a wall the whole way, just too tired and kept stopping too early despite the obvious catching feature.
Managed not to get out off at the spectator which was good, though.didn't know what I was doing on the control after and was far too high, got the wall junction and wall bend confused, 2mins.
27 second bad route choice, went the easy path route but took the longest route possible through the terrain to get to the path in the first place and then the route lost and regained a lot of ascent.
30 there is a nice route choice I've only just seen right around to the West, I went a straighter way but with a worse AP and then paid for it.got two very similar bits of wall mixed up and stood perfectly still for about 3 mins while I worked it out.exactly the right way to deal with it , better than milling around,and the control was only a hundred m away.but still; time lost.
I add that up as about 14 mins of mistakes, which is a lot in a race I was specifically trying to be slow and careful in.plus the two big route choice errors.so not great...but...it was tough out there.there were a lot of retirements.definitely a good test of the best orienteers in Britain.
I thought the map was excellent although 1:15000 was ridiculous and I was using the magnifier the whole way round.
Happy with 1, and happy with route to 2 - I guess there's a long contouring option to avoid the climb but it was so far round I didn't spot it.went straight but slowly, knew where I was all the time and had a well defined AP which I used.happy with 3 too.little bit low on 4 and probably lost 90s but with this detail at this scale I'm not at all surprised.
Happy with next few legs, very cautious avoiding OOB but corrected well.so basically up to 12, 52 mins, pretty good so will be interesting to see how I was doing at that point.
13 was very well planned;had no idea what to do whatsoever.all the route choices looked hard.so I picked the simplest, which probably had the most climb, but I thought I stood the best chance of not getting lost.still got a bit lost but relocated at the luckily massive lake.not a bad route in the end.
15 definitely made the wrong route choice - this is where the mistakes start creeping in.didn't appreciate how low I'd end up by contouring east and hit the uncrossable, had to go along it for a couple hundred m to find a crossing point.it was an ok route from that point, but lost a good 2 mins in the circle, control was just on the other side of a spur but wasn't confident enough in my position to realise.
16I was pleased with as there were suddenly loads of people and I correctly ignored all of them and hit it well.in contrast lost a min on 17 going in too early and hunting a bit.
19 was my first ludicrous mistake and when I think tiredness really hit me.navigated perfectly into the control and could see someone else punching it from 100m away, exactly where I expected it to be.but by the time I got there I had somehow forgotten where it was and convinced myself I'd imagined it.I hadn't though, it was just on the other side of the knoll, but I didn't check, and lost 3mins convincing myself I must be in various different places.I don't think I'd have done this if it wasn't 1hr45 in to the race.really frustrating.let that anger put me off and lost 90s on the next control, again navigating to the wrong side of the right feature and then this time seeing another control and going to check it despite knowing it wasn't going to be right.
Rubbish to 21 too, despite following a wall the whole way, just too tired and kept stopping too early despite the obvious catching feature.
Managed not to get out off at the spectator which was good, though.didn't know what I was doing on the control after and was far too high, got the wall junction and wall bend confused, 2mins.
27 second bad route choice, went the easy path route but took the longest route possible through the terrain to get to the path in the first place and then the route lost and regained a lot of ascent.
30 there is a nice route choice I've only just seen right around to the West, I went a straighter way but with a worse AP and then paid for it.got two very similar bits of wall mixed up and stood perfectly still for about 3 mins while I worked it out.exactly the right way to deal with it , better than milling around,and the control was only a hundred m away.but still; time lost.
I add that up as about 14 mins of mistakes, which is a lot in a race I was specifically trying to be slow and careful in.plus the two big route choice errors.so not great...but...it was tough out there.there were a lot of retirements.definitely a good test of the best orienteers in Britain.
I thought the map was excellent although 1:15000 was ridiculous and I was using the magnifier the whole way round.
Thursday May 4, 2017 #
Note
(injured) (rest day)
Wednesday May 3, 2017 #
Gym Strength 1:00:00 [3]
(injured)
Pump #43
Shame to miss the O but don't want to risk it - should probably have this weekend off, but since have already entered and paid for accom, going to have to suffer a bit and then miss next weekend if it's still bad.
Shame to miss the O but don't want to risk it - should probably have this weekend off, but since have already entered and paid for accom, going to have to suffer a bit and then miss next weekend if it's still bad.
Tuesday May 2, 2017 #
Note
(injured) (rest day)
Monday May 1, 2017 #
Running - Trail race (GL3D Day 3) 3:12:11 [5] 21.6 km (8:54 / km) +1309m 6:50 / km
(injured) shoes: X-Talon 212 (Sep16)
We'd been warned that the path along the river was "not very good" and there were plenty of "much better paths" higher up the slope.
But we didn't want to go further and add more climb (unsurprisingly!) and so decided to go for it. We also went out really fast because we were nervous about our 8 minute lead and wanted to blitz the running bits since we'd been beaten on the slower, rockier day 2.
The path was pretty much fine. There was one section where we pretty much ended up in the river - the map is pretty dubious about whether you're allowed to do what we did - which is cross the river, go round the complicated bit and then cross back again - ie, it's not clear on the map whether there is a narrow strip of non-OOB along the shore, or whether the drawer has just been a bit lazy and used straight lines rather than following the exact boundary of the river. Anyway, technically on the map it was fine, so we did it - probably lost time on anyone who'd stayed on the actual path, but definitely gained over retracing our steps. Plus adding a bit of danger (the river was moving pretty swiftly, and some jumping was involved) always makes things more interesting. Anyway, for an orienteer the path was good. We overtook lots here. Tim struggled to keep the pace here; I think sometimes it's easy as orienteers to remember just how much practice we get with terrain running; clearly a skill that we don't really know we have. Had to keep telling Tim to put the map away and that I knew exactly where we were and he should concentrate on not falling over!
Tough climb up to Caw (but nothing on Harter yesterday) which I'd like to say I recognised from Lakes 2010 but totally didn't. Then made my one big nav error of the three days and came E off Caw rather than NE to give a less rocky descent, but let this carry on for waaay too long and ended up S of a big rocky feature rather than North and then on the wrong side of the saddle... a bit confused for a while until I worked all this out. This mistake actually resulted in a straighter line so it wasn't a total mess, but I think it had more climb. We lost about 5 minutes here. It was super windy again up to Brown Pike, such that every step was a bit of battle as one point of contact with the ground wasn't really enough to stay upright.
Gained some time back with some excellent contouring at least a mile round Dow Crag (loads of other teams were way too high; I ignored them; Tim didn't have faith and stayed about halfway in between us for a bit, but then we rounded the corner and he was justifiably impressed :) ) and then ran all the way up Coniston Old Man.
Then we absolutely nailed the descent down the steep rocky path to Low Water, we gained 7mins on a 24 minute leg here. It was proper keep-the-concentration-high-or-you-will-fall-off-the-edge-and-die running, absolutely amazing. We also stopped for at least 2 minutes during this leg to remove our coats and fill my bottle from the stream, so it was really 9 minutes. This was the day we had been warned would be 'raining the entire day' - it was bright sunshine and we were both overheating a bit.
Then easy from here to the finish, and it was an anxious wait for our victory to be confirmed :)
Day 3 results: http://live.sportident.co.uk/home/multistage/stage...
Overall results:
http://live.sportident.co.uk/home/multistage/multi...
Basically a near-perfect weekend, it was awesome to win (not a foregone conclusion by any means; it was Tim's first MM and I genuinely don't think I could have managed Expert (106km, +6850m advertised, rather than our 88km, +5800) - the distances aren't equal each day, and the 45k and 3000m on day would have killed me. It helped that the weather was perfect. The planning was excellent; they set out to achieve '...rather than complex navigation, the emphasis is on long mountain journeys, spectacular scenery and enjoying an amazing mountain experience' and they definitely achieved that.
A great warm-up to mountain marathon season-proper and has made me very excited for the LAMM in a month's time :)
But we didn't want to go further and add more climb (unsurprisingly!) and so decided to go for it. We also went out really fast because we were nervous about our 8 minute lead and wanted to blitz the running bits since we'd been beaten on the slower, rockier day 2.
The path was pretty much fine. There was one section where we pretty much ended up in the river - the map is pretty dubious about whether you're allowed to do what we did - which is cross the river, go round the complicated bit and then cross back again - ie, it's not clear on the map whether there is a narrow strip of non-OOB along the shore, or whether the drawer has just been a bit lazy and used straight lines rather than following the exact boundary of the river. Anyway, technically on the map it was fine, so we did it - probably lost time on anyone who'd stayed on the actual path, but definitely gained over retracing our steps. Plus adding a bit of danger (the river was moving pretty swiftly, and some jumping was involved) always makes things more interesting. Anyway, for an orienteer the path was good. We overtook lots here. Tim struggled to keep the pace here; I think sometimes it's easy as orienteers to remember just how much practice we get with terrain running; clearly a skill that we don't really know we have. Had to keep telling Tim to put the map away and that I knew exactly where we were and he should concentrate on not falling over!
Tough climb up to Caw (but nothing on Harter yesterday) which I'd like to say I recognised from Lakes 2010 but totally didn't. Then made my one big nav error of the three days and came E off Caw rather than NE to give a less rocky descent, but let this carry on for waaay too long and ended up S of a big rocky feature rather than North and then on the wrong side of the saddle... a bit confused for a while until I worked all this out. This mistake actually resulted in a straighter line so it wasn't a total mess, but I think it had more climb. We lost about 5 minutes here. It was super windy again up to Brown Pike, such that every step was a bit of battle as one point of contact with the ground wasn't really enough to stay upright.
Gained some time back with some excellent contouring at least a mile round Dow Crag (loads of other teams were way too high; I ignored them; Tim didn't have faith and stayed about halfway in between us for a bit, but then we rounded the corner and he was justifiably impressed :) ) and then ran all the way up Coniston Old Man.
Then we absolutely nailed the descent down the steep rocky path to Low Water, we gained 7mins on a 24 minute leg here. It was proper keep-the-concentration-high-or-you-will-fall-off-the-edge-and-die running, absolutely amazing. We also stopped for at least 2 minutes during this leg to remove our coats and fill my bottle from the stream, so it was really 9 minutes. This was the day we had been warned would be 'raining the entire day' - it was bright sunshine and we were both overheating a bit.
Then easy from here to the finish, and it was an anxious wait for our victory to be confirmed :)
Day 3 results: http://live.sportident.co.uk/home/multistage/stage...
Overall results:
http://live.sportident.co.uk/home/multistage/multi...
Basically a near-perfect weekend, it was awesome to win (not a foregone conclusion by any means; it was Tim's first MM and I genuinely don't think I could have managed Expert (106km, +6850m advertised, rather than our 88km, +5800) - the distances aren't equal each day, and the 45k and 3000m on day would have killed me. It helped that the weather was perfect. The planning was excellent; they set out to achieve '...rather than complex navigation, the emphasis is on long mountain journeys, spectacular scenery and enjoying an amazing mountain experience' and they definitely achieved that.
A great warm-up to mountain marathon season-proper and has made me very excited for the LAMM in a month's time :)