Training Log Archive: PhilW

Nice and easy warm up. Followed pretty well. Main mess up, was when I was looking for some big rock structures in a marshy area, and one of the other guys called me up to the top of the hill and told me I was supposed to be up there. I looked, and sure enough he seemed to be right...sweat had dripped onto my glasses and I was having a hard enough time reading the map...so I took his word for it. It turns out he was doing the long circuit, which I did next...and I had been in the proper area according to my GPS trace...but I don't remember seeing the rocks. There were rocks matching what I could make out of my map there.

Took it easy on this one. In the back of my mind I thought I might try to run one of the races tomorrow. 4 bad booms, which only 2 I can blame on the old map. One the pit next to the rock wasn't really visible on the map. I finally saw the brown ink to the sides of the rock after enlarging it with my slide loupe at home. The other map problem were all of the unmapped ditches and trails, extration trails etc. Those I got used to, after the line O more or less. The big boom was on #4 which on the map looked pretty straight forward with 4 horizontal ditches stacked...but it sure didn't look like it on the ground to me.
Sometime after #9 I did something to my right knee. Nothing noteworthy happened. I guess I twisted it in the rocky area, but I don't remember doing it. The other booms were a parallel error on one ditch then a stupid decision, based on the contours-I didn't see any elevation change at the top of the hill, and it looked like the control was at the western edge of the top of the hill...so I looked west instead of following my instincts and going east.

Really reading well until#10 where I got totally off. Ran right past the circle and into no man's land. Never did recover and took a DNF

After yesterday's fiasco workout timing wise, I couldn't figure out when I could squeeze a workout in. I really do need to come up with a training plan...

Almost didn't get this run in. I had planned on arriving around 8am do 2 or 3 sets of forest intervals plus a w/u and cooldown...but got a late start and only had time for one without a warmup. So started slow, and decided to just run the course, pushing when I could and relaxing a bit...more of a fartlek workout. I doubt the HR data...it'd be way bizarre to be that low. The battery on the watch probably needs to be changed.
I didn't hit two controls, #8 my nemesis and #10, which I just ran too far before realizing/looking at my map. I didn't have time, I finished a little after 9, and I had to begin teaching at 9:30 had to change, stop sweating and drive about 10 minutes to the course.

Went to Boel after work this pm. Did an easy loop around following my first map out there. Had a hard time getting used to reading the map. lots of cliffs, rocks etc. that don't appear on most of the maps I've been running on. It's good practice to go to this terrain and accustom myself to it. I thought I'd found the second control 3 times, but never felt real comfortable until the last one. After that I didn't have any trouble finding the next 3. The line O, was basically following a trail, with a few forays across some rocks and a small section of HTFU...10m or so. Nice run despite the rain...

Long easy run with good climbs...something else I need to add more regularly except for the last 300m of my normal run. I used to hate hills...uphills, but one day I decided that to be faster, I needed to work on my weaknesses...hills were definately where I got dropped often...so hills were the key to me running faster. I started a mantra everytime I came to a climb...stronger,faster,stronger,faster. After several months I found myself looking forward to the climbs, and in races, blowing past the competition...I need a lot more of that feeling/confidence again.

Really bad outing. I'm afraid I was making some pretty bad route choices...trying some more indirect routes, but following contours. Didn't work out too well.

Another round of Catching Features. Practiced reading contours...something I lack on most of the maps from Foret de Rennes. As usual I had some huge misses.