Training Log Archive: Arnold

Austrian Team Championships, my home forest near Vienna.

An insane event, the idea is that you have 3 people in a team with 3 maps but only 1 sportident chip. All team members need to go to the 4 mandatory controls (roughly at 1/4, 1/2, 3/4 and the end of the course), but all other controls only 1 team member need visit.

In practice this means that 1 team member is the "active runner", sprinting like mad for 5-20 minutes and then handing over to the next active runner, while himself slowly jogging (or running at reasonable speed, depending) to the next mandatory control, or to the next handover where he is up if before

So the art is in choosing where to hand over, and then obviously also executing these decisions..

I ended up doing only about 15% of the active running (controls 10-13, 16-18 and 24-27 of 34), but at what speed...almost threw up after the first bit and was seriously suffering for it through the second bit (also I had to run quite fast to make it to no. 16 straight from 13 before the "active runner" made it through 13-14-15-16)

We came third in Elite, what a result! But it wasn't due to me...although I suppose chosing the right team members is also an art!!

Test running part of Sunday's elite race - where I was going to be the commentator until I fell ill on Saturday night...

a pretty green forest, rocky and steep, ugh

+560m climb. Nationale in Bretagne, day 2. Much hillier than yesterday. A great run for the first hour, then got really tired physically and started making mistakes, about 10 minutes in total.

Winner 1:21, an amazing time for 14+560!!

warmup

National Short-O, Bretagne. Appaling weather, heavy rain, really tough going in the forest (undergrowth plus rain). Forest was quite easy, some old plantations, some open forest with point features. Winner did 30.28; a long way behind..

Good gym session, 25 mins bike and 22 mins elliptical. I still feel reasonably tired on the tough bits (I do the standard interval hill session) but in general it's ok. Plus I read the Economist while doing all that so time passes quite quickly

French National Event this weekend: Sat middle, Sun 14.5 + 600..

2.5 sets, a little tired after a short night's sleep. It's quite funny, last week I thought, right I've had enough of this constant training stress (working hard and training hard, not a good combination), so I'll just train when I feel like it and not by the book. In any case it's the competition season so I don't necessarily have to train many hours.

But in practice, it's difficult to get rid of the guilt-at-the-back-of-the-mind that says, you should really train now, every time I come home early or have some time on the weekend.

I guess overall that's a good thing. Now when I do 4 hours a week I think it's totally pathetic, 3 years ago I would have thought that to be quite a lot

Long run in Meudon with Neil. Good weather for running (not too hot, a little drizzle at times). Felt a little tired, but ok overall, faded a little bit towards the last 15 minutes but ok given lack of recent long runs.

Lots and lots of climb (maybe 10x 50m climbs?), I'll try and count it at some point

Easy run to the forest

25 min bike, 15 min elliptical. felt ok but not as strong as last night. Was going to be 25min elliptical but got really hungry, and wasn't really enjoying it either.

3 sets. Felt very strong for some bizarre reason (big contrast to yesterday!)

Run to and from the train station

Run through Meudon forest. Nice weather, lots of hills (some steep ones as well), but felt pretty tired again..

Warmup (sadly, no warmdown)

+310 HM (somehow all that functionality has gone missing..)

Relay in Germany, ok run (1min mistakes maybe), but just not fast enough

Fast workout on the bike machine, it was getting late

usual run, fast one this time. it's these asics racing shoes I have, they're so light they really make you run faster!

i think my fastest ever on this is around 43 1/2 so pretty happy, especially since i didn't push too hard

warmup

French Club Champs (7-man relay), Nemours.

I'm back!! What a great feeling. Second very decent orienteering race of the weekend . Not as technical as yesterday but still interesting. Very clean run, maybe a minute or two split into little hesitations here and there. Fastest time François Gonon 49

Team came 2nd in 2nd division (of 33 teams), which means that we'll be promoted to 1st division (10 legs) for next year!

Oh, and I came 17th of 290 yesterday, which is ok and means that I qualified for the middle distance races at this year's 2 national meets. Fastest time was Damien Renard 26.50, I was 34.59

warmup and down

National Short meet, Nemours.

Good overall run, about 3 mins worth of mistakes, but ok considering the technical and physical toughness of the area.

Was 6th of 150 when I left, 320 people in total on Mens 21L !! I think I can reasonably expect to be in the top 20 (which would also be sweet because the top 40 qualify for the short race at the National Meet at the end of May)

Fastest time was 30.06

lovely run with Abi in Foret de Meudon, quite fast and lots of up and down. Got pissed on for 10 minutes in the middle but otherwise lovely sunshine.

Felt better than lately, looking forward to tomorrow!

Warmup and down

Park-O (yeah!) in Guyancourt. More fun than I thought it would be, and felt pretty good. 4th place (of 80), winner did 15.29..but I did make a minute's worth of "mistakes" including 20 seconds binding my shoelaces (which I didn't tape, thinking it would be only in the park. guess what, there was forest too..)

But overall, a good effort physically and technically. Looking forward to the weekend, middle distance and relay, 1400 competitors expected in total