Training Log Archive: GraceE

Had a day out at La Grave with my parents, Matt’s parents and two french boys Zachary and Oscar from the family my parents were staying with. We went up in a cable car, a long way, towards the peak La Meije. At the top of the cable car, we went in an ice cave.

O-France Day 5 Long at Risoul Station (west).
Chasing start, I was fourth but only the top three went out at the right time and the rest of us went out at 30sec intervals as we were more than half an hour behind the leader over the four days.
Claire and Johanka caught me during the race but we took some different routes and switched the lead a bit. They finished ahead of me but I held onto 4th overall (6th on the day).
It was a good course with some long route choice legs which I could improve on if I were to do them again. It was steep again and I was quite exhausted but having others around in the forest helped me to keep working. Happy to finish the race. And happy to come 4th overall - the top three were very strong.

O-France Day 4 Middle at Risoul Station.
Made a direction error on the way to c1 and bounced off a road, losing about 1.5mins. The rest of the course was pretty steady, came 5th. Probably the most enjoyable of the 5 days, nice forest and no crazy steep legs.

O-France Day 3 Long (which had been postponed by a day) at Vars Les Claux. Lovely clear sunny day.
It’s always good to do something different, but I found this quite challenging. My first control was in a scree slope and I regretted not going around. Later it became evident that much of my course involved negotiating scree slopes, so no chance to avoid it really. I found it hard going, and the inside of my left foot got smashed on the rocks. It made me realise my left ankle is really weak.
There was a bit of sloppiness in the later stages, but the map was hard to read in places. I got quite tired towards the end (no food or water). Happy to finish! 6th place, a long way off no.1. Matt had a great day and took the win!

C • Postponed 2

O-France rest day. We spent a lovely morning catching-up with the Rothmans, then in the afternoon, Matt and I snuck out for a run. We started near Guillestre near the escarpment - the first half of the run heading down the slope to the river and the second half climbing back up to the other end of the cliffs. The run looked out across the valley to the fortress we ran around on Sunday. Matt had taken on board my comment from the other day and ran with me, which was nice. That was for 22mins, then he dashed off to do a lap of the town while I sat on a bench.

O-France Day 2, WRE Middle up at Peyrol (Vars). Lovely arena location by a small mountain lake which we all had to take a chairlift to get to.
I had a clean run which was nice, but I would rate the technical difficulty at 2/10. I had track routes for three controls and the rest were on big unmissable features. Physical difficulty though - 10/10. So so steep; the ups were gruelling and the downs not very pleasant either. Contouring was hard work. I was so exhausted by the end. Lovely scenery though! :)
I came 6th, 1 sec off 5th but 7.5mins off 1st! A little bit demoralising until I found out Anastasia is ranked 10th in the world.
A memorable moment out on the course was when I got electrocuted by a single-wire fence having just crossed under the chairlift. I was not expecting it to be on!

Event: O'France 2019
 

O-France Day 1, WRE Sprint around Mont Dauphin, an old hill fort.
It was a really cool area for a sprint, very unique! The map wasn’t terribly technical but you had to be careful to spot the tunnels and stairs early on to get you between the levels of the old moat and the castle grounds.
I had a fairly steady run up until the second last where l switched-off and didn’t read the map, dropping too low in the forest and losing a minute. That was annoying. Came 8th, 3mins down.

Matt’s parents arrived during the day. We were thus able to run at the same time (not together though heaven forbid!). We found a flat-ish path starting down the hill near Guillestre and Matt ran a loop; I did an out-and-back.