Training Log Archive: Craney

Bank Holiday Monday (Canberra Day) today so able to unwind a bit after the weekend. Went out for a run late on in lovely evening sunshine up Wanniassa and Isaacs. Reasonable length with some good climbs but all at a fairly gentle pace. Legs felt fine and surprisingly niggleless.

Chinaman Flat - 2nd place, 1sec behind Oscar McNulty (17 years-old), 6-way sprint finish! The tightest, most exciting and fun finish to a race I have ever been in. Oscar, me, Bryan, Shep, Simon and Robbie all in a sprint finish, with 5 of us finishing in 4secs. It's hard to say what I feel like now - a mixture of still buzzing from the excitement of it all, a bit gutted to have missed out, jealousy of a super-fit M18, but pleased with my approach at the death of the course... Quality racing though, and certainly has made me hungry for more.

So loop 1 (gaffled). I hit the front of our half of the field on the way to #1 to a quip from Robbie about the WOC relay - should've seen that coming! Still, got them better this time and led through to #4 where the 2 packs came together, our just behind theirs (good, that probably means we've done further and we can run them down). The course splits again on a longish leg, so I now have Simon and a load of juniors to run down. Unfortunately we all miss #6 by a good 30secs and wobble a bit to #7. Another split and I'm on my own for one control before heading back to the run-through. Went to the final control here instead of the changeover control so lost some time, and came through just behind the others, including Oscar.

Loop 2 (also gaffled) was a bit longer, which explains why we were ahead of the other half of the field. This time I had the shorter first few controls, same as Oscar, but they were tricky and together we messed up #11 being completely unable to picture the landscape - lost almost 1min. Into the common control at #13 and there's Simon again and the other half of our half. This time we had the longer bit and it quickly became just Simon, Oscar and me. I dithered at #15 and had to reel them back in to the next common control at #18. Suddenly, bang on cue, in comes the other half of the field (Shep and co), but not many going to my control before the changeover, where Murray, Matt Parton and I lost a few seconds. Into the changeover and I'm in about 8th, but we're all together.

So I'm pretty relieved to still be in the race at this point really after a scrappy first 2 loops. There was a real opportunity for someone to have jumped ahead by a couple of minutes here, but we all lost bits of time here and there. So I think I had already thrown away one good chance of the win by now.

Loop 3 (ungaffled, and much longer than the other 2). Ok, this is going to be quite good fun. We were clean through 3 tricky controls at the start of the loop, and a small pack of 4 (Simon, Dave, Oscar and me) started to form at the front. I led on the easier, but more physical, legs to #24 and #25, but felt a bit tired here and happily let Oscar do the work to #26. Hit the front again on the way up to #28, but it was back in tricky stuff and I caused us all to miss it by 10-15secs, so was back at the back of the pack of 4. Suddenly was also aware of Bryan and Robbie in a mini-chasing pack keeping us in sight. Shep led cleanly through #29, #30 and #31 which were all quite tricky. Then it opened up, with some longer legs and path options. I'd had my eye on this bit of the course for a while as a good chance for me to 'make my move'. #32 was still tricky, but I got a good line in and hit the front. #33 was a long leg with path or straight options (flat, vague, patchy vegetation). I hammered it out to the path, but got all confused what was going on with the path network, and did a completely unnecessary loop. Simon and Shep went for the straight route, but Oscar and I took the path. Game on! I was hoping Oscar would start to fade a bit at this point, but he was looking as strong as anything and we ran pretty swiftly side-by-side for a km on the path. As we came into #33, there's Simon and Shep. Shit, it didn't work. 1 more long leg to #34, and no choice but to go through the vague stuff this time. Shep's at the front, we cross a path, into a gully. Feels wrong to me. Simon pauses too. What to do? Should I run down the path to the next gully? Nah, she'll be right. Simon decides the same too. It's not fitting though. Yep definitely wrong. Shep apologises! So we run through the terrain to #34 instead of on the path. Another chance to get away lost. Anyway, as we come into #34, Robbie and Bryan are punching it! 3 controls to go, 6 of us together, me in 6th. We pop out to the path and we're literally within 2metres of each other. I dug in and hit the front running down the path - I need to start the sprint finish now to have a chance. But #35 is tricky so I'm a bit nervous and have to concentrate hard going into it. Fortunately spike it but no chance of pulling away yet. Then we hit a really steep bank coming out of the gully and we're all scraping away at the dirt - I think I nearly stood on Oscar's hand. Up the hill to #36 (been here twice before so I know where I'm going) and I'm still at the front, the others right up my ass. Last control now, cross the road and Oscar comes past, but he's dropping a bit low to the right, Simon's left of me. I realise this, but there's a massive fallen tree blocking where I want to go, so I have to go a bit low too. Of course Oscar realises and corrects, but I have a few metres and get to the last control in first. Baaaah!!! 150m run-in. Hammer it! Oscar glides by though and is just pulling away, my shoulders slump, but then I hear pounding behind me, so without looking back I resume hammering it and keep my distance behind Oscar (about 2m) and cross the line in 2nd, with Bryan, Shep and Simon all coming in in the next 3secs and Robbie just after. Wow, that was class. I actually cheekily punched the finish control first.

So, what to make of it. My shape's good and I feel fine after 3 fast races. Good on the hills and paths, ok in the terrain. Speed needs sharpening, but I deliberately didn't do speed work in Jan-Feb, so that's ok. Nav lacking some confidence, especially when around others. More o-practice needed (again, not a surprise), but isn't far away (no mistakes over 1min over the weekend). Lost the race in the first 2 loops I think, and missed a chance on #34 when Shep went AWOL. Also ran very conservatively, hardly out of my comfort zone, up until #31, but not sure an aggressive tactic would've worked in highly visible, but not super runnable, and tricky, terrain like this. Did well in the last 3 controls though, leading the pack. Just didn't have the kick of Oscar.

I'm really impressed with Oscar. I couldn't believe it when I found out he's an M18 (after the race). His sprint was good, but today was seriously impressive. He had the lead at a few points in the race and always looked calm and in control, he looked strong at the end when the pace ramped up and he was the strongest on the finish chute. This guy has a lot of potential. With the likes of Oli Poland (also M18) too, things look a lot more promising for the Aussies in the future than I thought they did.

C • Oscar 6

Long Distance ME 7 - Splits

Event: Eureka Challenge, SILVA NOLs
 

University of Ballarat - 2nd place, 9secs behind Oscar McNulty (17 years-old, more on him later). A reasonably straightforward sprint, but enough going on to require constant map contact and 3 or 4 decent long route choice legs. I had a pretty good run - lost touch a couple of times, but felt good in the legs and flowed well. Couldn't really figure where I'd lost the 9secs at the finish, but looking at the splits I was 11secs down to Oscar at #1, so my wide left route was probably wrong. It also looks like I may have lost tiny handfuls of seconds on some of my other routes. So, happy enough with that - haven't done much speed stuff yet and I felt good. Would be nice to have Oscar's speed, I wouldn't want to be up against him in a sprint finish...

Surface Hill - 3rd place, 11secs behind Simon, 6secs behind Shep (at the time I thought that this was tight racing). Quality goldmining terrain - a bit like the deciduous, mine-workingy bits of the Forest of Dean or Leith Hill, so certainly not alien to me.

Did a decent warm-up to shake off the morning race and rocked up at the start to find out that they'd cocked the startlist up and I wasn't off for another 40mins. Went and sat down for a bit, and then had to do another warm-up! Slightly narked, but not quite in boo status. Anyway, set off quite hard on the long leg to #1 but got a bit unsure in the cicle - lots of broken ground and no obvious dot knoll. So slightly unconfident going through the next 3 really short legs, and didn't get much to match up losing a total of 30-40secs on these, so almost a minute down at this stage. Then it got really fast and open for a couple of km and I dug in and got some decent splits. Coped ok with the next technical section, dug in on the next short fast section, smooth enough through the final technical section and finally hit the lead at #18 when Shep made a mistake. It only lasted to the penultimate control where I binned 20secs and let both Simon and Shep through - didn't have a clear attackpoint and hit the lake behind it.

Anyway, a good race - didn't lose much over 1min, but pretty gutted to throw it away at the death. It's all well and good winning easy splits by a couple of seconds in a race like this, but it all comes down to smoothness and consistency on the tricky legs. A great, fast middle race.

2 warm-ups and 1 warm-down.

M Open Elite - Splits

Middle DistanceM Open Elite - Splits

Work, then flying to Melbourne and driving to Ballarat for the first NOLs of the season.

Cruise on the tarmac the lake to Yarralumla and back through Deakin and Forrest. Found a public loo in Deakin so need for a wildy :o)

Ran the twilight o-race on Ainslie that I missed in December - it was fun. I wasn't picking great lines through the terrain but felt ok physically. Bumped into Lizzie near the end and stopped for a quick chinwag.

Pretty standard run through Griffith onto Red Hill and back. A few aches but felt alright in general. Got fairly soaked for the 2nd half of the run.

C • space 3