Training Log Archive: Arnold

Heydar Aliev Cup Day 2 Middle
A forest about 150km north of Baku, Azerbaijan.

Good map and course again. 75% rocky, hilly terrain but nice and runnable so that was lovely. Reminded me a bit of the Long day of the French WOC. Unfortunately the other 25% was scratchy green stuff where you basically had to walk and sometimes crawl. That bit was totally unnecessary as there would have been more nice white forest available.

Reasonable run except for one 3’ parallel error. Felt strong physically to start with, but then wilted a bit in the humidity.

When I left I was 2nd, about 2.5’ down to Jaka (who had also made one big mistake).

Absolutely fab experience overall and collected my 41st orienteering country. The locals were friendly and well organised. And I got to chat to lots of orienteering travellers including Dirk Goossens from Belgium (Yannick’s coach) who has 50 countries. What a wonderful sport this is.

Heydar Aliev Cup, Baku, Azerbaijan.
Day 1 Sprint, Baku Old City.

Brilliant, just brilliant. These guys know how to put on a show - big stage, announcer, everything.

And the terrain, map and course all great. Really tricky finding and following the best routes, but I held my concentration except for one 10-15s mistake. Almost missed the last control though as I was aiming for the big finish banner.

Turns out the Cameroonians and Nigerians on the start list only asked to come so they could get a visa and never had any intention of orienteering. The Iranians (women in full black outfit), Israelis, Georgians, Turks and assorted Europeans are all here though.

Edit: came 3rd and got a medal, diploma and pair of bluetooth earphones from the sponsor Huawei. Sweet! (except that the Chinese can now listen into my conversations).

C • Visa 2

Heading off tonight to Azerbaijan for some orienteering & a bit of sightseeing. Check out the amazing diversity on the list of foreign athletes here: http://smef.az/index/registr/0-1146
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C • Wow 2

Same as Tuesday - 22m cycling and 20m elliptical, except that I used a different elliptical machine with bouncy legs (on a rubber band) rather than static ones. This made it harder to get the speed up, but felt like a better workout.

Managed to get up to 517kcal - 16 more than Tuesday and closer to Kenny's number

I also brought my headphones and water bottle which made things a lot more bearable. Though the headphone cables kept being kicked about by the machine (and out of my ears a couple of times); wonder whether there is a solution for this - wireless ones maybe?

22m cycling and 20m elliptical, to avoid over stressing the calf. Forgot how much I dislike the gym, but got through it ok.

501 kcal expended in 42 minutes, so about 720/hr. is that a lot? It doesn’t sound like much, although I was sweating like a beast by the end.

C • kcal 4

Futile attempt at trying to catch up a bit on Kenny