Training Log Archive: Craney

Event: 2017 Australian 3 Days
 

At Connorton near Wagga. Had a good controlled run and fortunately just did enough to take the win. Really good fun granite terrain - fast but with huge rocks scattered about the place. First couple of legs were easy and I felt quite good running hard doing vague navigation. Tricky short legs from 2-8 caught a few people out: I lost maybe 20secs or so on #4 right in the middle of loads of rocks but otherwise coped ok. Then relatively fast and straightforward to 14 - my route down the creek on the long leg to 12 seemed pretty good. Small time losses on 15 and 16 but still going well. Last few legs were fast yet dangerous and I took a few risks but importantly picked good attackpoints and kept it clean. Happy to finally string together a good race combined with feeling fine physically. Good confidence booster for WOC.

Day1 Course 1 - Splits

Lunch lap around some of Red Hill north. Felt quite good.

Intervals on Mt Taylor: 4x3mins on flattish single track and fairly fast (~3:40s) , then a 3min uphill, then a 4.5min uphill to finish at the trig. Felt ok.

Warm-up/down and 1min recoveries.

IW with Sam and Jasen the usual longish route. Pretty fresh and windy today. Felt pretty good and we ran a touch faster than normal.

6x3mins on Red Hill south with Tomas. Pushed hard and felt like I was running quite well. Still got dropped by Tomas on a few - he's really flying at the moment.

1min recoveries and other bits of the run.

Lunch run from work and along the Red Hill south ridgeline. Felt pretty good today. In other news I have quit my job and will be starting with EY at the end of July.

C • EY 4

At Ratall Creek. Mispuched (w18). The record books won't look favourably on this outing. But for me I felt like it was still progress having not been able to run properly (let alone do any proper orienteering) since NZ and with only 3 weeks til I go to WOC.

Mass-start with a reasonably elite field - together with David (Swede), Tomas, Marty, Grant and Robw through the first three. Felt fresh and comfortable, but zigzagging a bit through fairly vague bush and with distracting rivals off to either side. Then we split in half for a couple of loops for the next 8km or so. Long leg to 5 I came unstuck a bit but rescued by the sounds of Grant shouting that we'd just made an EPIC MISTAKE!!! Turns out we were in the wrong spot, but only just, and we lost about 45secs max. Meanwhile he shot off somewhere else never to be seen again.

Had a reasonable section from then and dropped all of the others except for Marty. Pleased with how I was feeling and the nav got better. Dropped ~1min on #12 and #13. Marty was hanging back a bit though, so a lot of the time it felt like I was on my own. Couple of wobbles on #15 and #16 (~1min) let him get ahead - fair play, he certainly was keeping tabs on things. Back through the pivot and to the assembly - maybe I took my eye off the ball a bit here? Vague leg to a termie on a vague spur which I saw from a long distance away. Didn't check codes and in the end it turns out there were two controls about ~100m apart both on termies on the same vague spur. Ooops. Mispuch.

So went through the start ~10km in with Marty just ahead and, it turns out, Tomas ~1.5mins ahead (not surprising given some of our earlier wobbles). Marty and I proper nailed the last loop and got back past Tomas as he went AWOL on #21. As we ran to the penultimate I was assessing my options for ways to beat the Olympic marathon runner just behind me. I decided that the options most likely to result in me winning involved either stopping dead or deliberately getting lost, which I decided I wasn't brave/cocky enough to do. So we just kept going and he duly out-spurted me. In hindsight that was the right choice since we both mp-ed anyway!

Aanyway, positive to get moving in terrain again. And felt like I gained more confidence in the nav as the race went on.

C • marty 2