Training Log Archive: Ralph

I’m going to try and write some form of monthly write up, it seems sensible. I sort of should have done it last year but well, stuff.. It makes sense though for this one to start with a write up of the season and how I see it. And I am starting on a Tuesday in the middle of the week/month because I am an adult and I do what I want.
The stats:
WOC Results:
Middle – 19th
A very typical British result, clustering around 20th position. A race where I wasn’t able to run like I was doing in training, so pretty disappointing all around. The physicality of the terrain was a surprise, lots more rock and fallen trees, so I was weaker in these sections and this possibly contributed to some of my mistakes (or poor running). As with everything this year there is quite a lot of underlying positivity, 2 minutes up to the top 10 which was easily findable, but one does have to string the good parts together for a whole race and one shouldn’t be relying on luck for that to happen at the key race of the season.
Relay – 17th
Britain’s worst ever relay result (excluding 2 women’s DQs). I seem to run in teams which mostly either do extremely well or extremely badly. I much prefer this to depressing mediocrity, although it does suck on the rare occasions it all goes south. I think I personally ran a lot better than in the middle distance, minus wandering aimlessly around on the top of a hill. The terrain was much more what was expected and I was more in the mindset to go out and do some proper orienteering.
10mila - 29th
Got the chance to run last leg, ran pretty badly. I didn't really have any serious problems navigationally, I just had a generally bad day.
Jukola – DSQ
Actually ran quite well apart from getting the wrong second last control and disqualifying the whole team.
World Cup:
Overall – 17th
The plan this year was potentially to focus on the overall World Cup as I was actually going to run nearly all the races for the first time ever. My view is that the overall standings mean absolutely nothing to anybody outside of the top 6.
Individual results:
Forest - 24,53,19,27,24
Sprint – 3,13,17
Again, not really held together a decent race all the way to the end - apart from when I got to run around with my buddies.
World Ranking:
Forest – 24
Sprint – 14
No more early starts (except in KO sprint Q which seems to be reverse start...)
Training (since 1st November 2018)
531 hours, 3573 km
Forest, 98 hours, 815 km, just under 2000 controls
Sprint, 4 hours, 55km, 250 controls
Spent too much of the year struggling with niggles, should have been smarter during the winter and found better places to run. Maybe overdid the terrain this year; in the quest for success at the World Champs I spent all my time running in stuff that was what I thought WOC would be like. Maybe I should have remembered that I am still British and getting out of the forest some of the time is potentially a good idea. It can't have been bad for my overall fitness though, and I should see the benefit of the terrain miles in the future. Now what I need to remember for next year is that I am a forest person so I can't run everything on the asphalt either.

Bislett 8x1k
Nic was going fast today