Training Log Archive: Anvil

West Point Long.
Weird race. Right off the bat felt exhausted and tired - moving through the terrain like a sloth, tripping and stumbling over everything. Suddenly after 45 minutes, everything clicks and I feel awesome and ramp it up for the rest of the race.
Was a good long course with a nice variety of legs and some very fun bits of terrain.

1-2: Drop down, loose contact and climb back up to early. Starting to feel the pinch already and Ross came through me here. There was no way I was going to be able to stick with him.
3-8: Exhausted. Walking the hills and getting pissy with the vegetation. Considering DNFing. Had a gel and a lot of water at 6.
8-11: Downhill legs - feeling a little better. Spend a lot of time at #11 searching for the correct fallen tree.
12: Spend a long time picking a route. Decide to go left and take the trail as much as possible.
Without warning, I feel great. I'm running uphill, my HR drops and I speed up! Awesome! Decide the race is too far gone for a good result, so just enjoy it. I fold the map, put the head down and drop the clutch.
As I near the circle, I start planning the next leg. Hmmm, that's weird, why is the number of my next control lower than the one I'm going to now.
Oh, no. In my heady joy of being able to run again, I've navigated to #14!.
Damn. Luckily, #12 isn't that far away - but it's still about another 7 minutes wasted...
12-18: A few small mistakes. But who cares, the forest was so awesome in this section. Still feeling strong.
19-F: Pretty straightforward. I should not be feeling this good this late in a long - though apart from #20, my splits still aren't awesome.

Long Blue - Splits

Event: West Point A-meet
 

West Point Middle.
Very physically tough middle course. A very rusty, mediocre run - only spiked 8 of 16 controls. Also forgot control description holder, so quite a few small errors in the circle. Map. Map/Video Combo.

S-1: Didn't realise the start punch was the start, so ran 15 secs along the trail before I realise something was up. Then in a rush, don't orient the map properly and head up towards the much smaller hill to the SE of the hill I'm meant to head up. It didn't help there was an unmapped rockface on the smaller hill right where there was meant to be on the larger one - but I do remember thinking, 'wow, this hill is really easy to climb for so many contours....' roughly 45 secs wasted, straight off the bat.
2: Straightforward. Contour up to the broad gully and over the plateau. Was tempted to drift west on the plateau, but the detail kept me on track. Flag was higher in the gully than expected. Spike.
3: Got a lucky glimpse of the flag as I crested the hill. It disappeared from sight, but stayed confident and spiked it.
4: Planned to go south around the marsh. Bad exit direction meant I should have changed my tune and gone north, but was pigheaded about sticking to my plan. Never saw the north road option which was clearly the fastest. ~45 secs lost on both sub-optimal route and poor execution.
5: Contour to the road, then rough compass due north. Spike.
6: Starting to feel very tired already, maybe started too hard after initial mistake. Lost contact rounding the hill and nothing seemed to make sense, just kind of bumbled along each knoll till the flag appeared.
7: Hesitant again. Knew I had to drop a contour but really had to force myself to do so.
8: Physically tough leg. Diagonal uphill through waist high scrub. Obvious attackpoint meant it was just a long slog. If you'd told me I was at Honeysuckle Creek at this point I would have believed you. Spike.
9: Plan was to go below the rockline in the gully and climb up at the last minute. Not the best plan, but still a plan. The gully was filled with new deadfall and other crap, so climbed up early to find more crap. I get to the knolls in the northwest of the circle. There's a guy standing on the feature I think is the right one, but he's not moving and looking around, so I figure it can't be there. After 15 secs of looking at the map trying to work out where I am, he leisurely walks off the rock and punches the control next to it.
As I run in and punch he offers a slightly obnoxious, 'you're welcome'.
10: OK. Used the green to guide me in. Wasn't totally sure that the boulder was right till I saw the flag - it seemed a bit small and the shape of the land didn't really fit the contour to me. Spike.
11: Contour to the saddle then down the gully. Cautious since I didn't want to make a parallel error. Screwed up in the circle, misread the feature.
12: Down the gully then a slog up the hill. Picked up the big double boulder attackpoint but misread the clearing to the south. Was standing 20m away from the flag mildly panicing before I noticed I was at a second small gully to the north.
13: Round the hill and straight in. Was a little high to begin with but the pond pulled me in. Again screwed the circle as I was looking for a boulder.
14: Biggest error of the race. Like many others, stopped short on #81. Just could not locate that feature on the map (was looking for a cliff with tick lines, not a rockface), took a very long time to relocate and make my way into the circle. ~3:00.
15: Easy, dropped a little too much and had to climb. Lost motivation. Spike.
16: Straight forward, but liked I still had to read the map going to the final control. Spike.

C • O at home 2

Sprint Race at West Point. Map

Warmed up better for this race and felt much better for the whole thing.
Race went as planned, strong and smooth race except for the spectator control.

S-6: No problems. A little trouble getting into the new scale at #1 and a bit hesitant on the steep slopes at #3 and #6.
#7: Got a little confused when I never picked up the trail out of #6. Decided just to ignore it and use the contours..
#8-11: No real mistakes, but generally sloppy on the micro routes on these legs - on each of these I climbed one or two contours more that was necessary. Looking at the results, this is the only section of the course where my splits are consistently slower than Ross and Robbies.
#12-13: Fine, tried to stay strong on the climb.
#14: The big one. Lost contact and stopped way too early - lost 35secs. Amateur hour.
A couple people mentioned that being an early starter, I didn't have the benefit of seeing the 'flow' of the spectator control so the mistake is more acceptable - but I figure I still had a map in my hand telling me where to go, so I can't really use that to justify that mistake. Also had the fastest split on the following leg out of the spectator control and I never saw anyone doing that one as well.
#15-17: Good. Flowed well and spiked all 3. Probably too well, since my SI never registered #16.
#18: Weak Aussie route. Dropped to the road to avoid the light green. Lost 5 secs to the leaders on this misdemeanor.

Looking at the results now, there's a lot of opportunities to gain more time out there that aren't connected to running speed. I don't have a lot of experience in forest sprints, so it's good to have things to work on.

Regarding #16 - I know I went to it, GPS confirms it, so the unit just must have been sleepy.
Missing out on 3rd place to a SI fail does sting a little, but I figure in over 10 years of use this is the first time it has failed me. I'll just have to make sure I listen for the beep in the future.

C • video 2

Middle Blue - Splits

With hammer - sneaking one last go off-trail in the Deeve before we're kicked out for a couple of months.
General wandering and commenting on terrain quality. Nice.

TNT, now with added ARK Attack.
First run of the new Partial Summer Rally. The SumRall. 18:01 - new Australian record.
Didn't want to go all out given the races this weekend, but was still redlining on Lowry. Felt really good on the gnarly trail and terrain, less so on the hills.
Got to play with the new drill toys. turbo will be jealous he missed out - they're all muddy and used now.

Inadvertent. Had hoped to get out during the 2nd hour of ARK, but the thought of getting sucked up by a tornado doesn't appeal. Also super tired after an early start this morning (by my standards).
Schools race went well today - after all the complaining I found OE super easy to use. Don't know what all the fuss is about.

C • Hard Core FAB girls went out in it! 8

TNT. First real 'trail' session of the season.
3,2,1,1,2,3 up the Bruce and the same back down again. Very small turnout tonight, but luckily our flanks were boosted by a few pieces of the HPP - in the form of Eric and Will. Sudden & Trav was there too, along with Trix doing her best Hound of the Baskerville impression in the real fog.
Took a long time to get going tonight, a long, long time. Even Trav was going faster than me on the early reps. On the way back up of the first set the legs finally decided what they wanted to do.
Felt OK considering the weekend, but not awesome.
Usual bannistairs after.

C • US Team Trials 9

C • huh? wuh? 3

Learning the ins and outs of OE and then managing a 550 race entries left little time for much else.

But, cause of all the compliments about TDM, I'll give all you Canucks a laugh - Australia's answer to Flipper... and Lassie

C • Ripper! 1