Training Log Archive: Becks

Today started way early than I was anticipating halfway through my second glass of wine on Friday night, and as such when Boris dropped me off at Camp Buckner to run the Blue middle from last year's West Point A meet, I was feeling pretty worn out and not very up for it. The sight of Jordan et al directing a few couple of hundred scouts into the woods cheered me up a bit. Still, the jog to the start felt tough, yesterday's hills weighing heavy on my legs, and I wasn't sure how much tempo I would be able to manage out there on the course.

C • 2

C • Today started 3

The course wasn't too bad, though I was barely moving uphill. Made a couple of sizeable errors on 3 & 6, then a poor route choice on the long leg back. Still, even with those errors that time would have put me midfield on the men, without controls that's not too ridiculous. Errors mainly came from ground to map instead of map to ground, something Boris and I both independently decided to work on this afternoon after this morning.

Need to remember to stay off the hill bounds the couple of days before this year's A meet though. A lot of potential time lost that way.

Control pick on Surebridge. After spending a couple of hours lying in the warm sun on the asphalt in the car park, set out to do some training feeling much happier, though still pretty tired. Focussed on not going anywhere until I had visualised the whole route to the control. So this was a stop start exercise, although I managed to get more flow following some of the easier legs. Despite this, was confidently hitting the unmarked feature every time, and it was great to remind myself what confident, positive orienteering felt like.

Ummmed and ahhhed for ages about whether to do this last exercise or not, then remembered I was in Harriman and it was a gorgeous day and I would be stupid to sit in the car while the others had fun. So AliC and Kseniya and myself did the standard map memory exercise on Polebrook and it was really fun. We were all very good at it, although sometimes there was a lot of detail in the circle so it was difficult to say very confidently "It's that rock/dot knoll." Really fun exercise. This excellent day was topped off by a lovely Japanese meal chez Ksenina/Zhyk, and a remarkably easy drive back to New Haven, where I slept for 10 hours. Mmmmm.