Training Log Archive: schnitzer

For once the usually perfectly on-time Stockholm public transport system let me down and I had to change my travel plans slightly to make the hash in time. Anyway to cut a long story short had to run at virtually max effort (mostly uphill and with full pack) from the tube station to make the train - not good what with being totally knackered from the last 5 days of training. Got to the platform with 30secs to spare :)

Big Man Wanted/Eye-Full Underground hash #822 from Alsjo (27). Virtually zero effort but another really long hash :( Was supposed to be a recovery session. Totally ruined now, no running tomorrow.

C • Is there a hash on july 17t... 2

Sommarserien no. 6. A complete contrast to yesterday - a collection of woods separated by parkland both extensively used by the public. No controls in the parkland but running through it exposed to the super strong sun was not appreciated. Good warm weather training though.

Pretty easy nav due to the extensive network of tracks and paths. Slight miss at number 1 then clean until 8 where I totally messed up the best route across the railway line - probs lost a couple of mins. Messed up crossing it back the other way as well but not as bad. Was running at full effort tonight which maybe wasn't that fast as I was quite tired from five days in a row. Really didn't appreciate the huge long leg at the end where the only real choice was across huge fields and then along proper surfaced roads. Then back in the forest, up a steep hill and then missed the control :( Fine from there to the end. Very tired now.

It reckon this would have been much better done last night str8 after my tempo run - proper stiff!

Right... start again at square 1. Nice and easy, no wrist/ankle weights, half a workout. 5*10 ff.

Special Luffarligan! Special as in the middle of Summer. Not so special as in draw your own map and pin punches. Finland again i.e. same forest as the Sommarserien event last Tuesday but mostly in the Southern part instead. My club mate Anders had told me it was a big forest and now I have the all singing, all dancing A3 map! All within 10mins drive of my house :)

Took it steady today and tried to plan well, keep in 100% contact and not miss any controls. Got a bit confused with the little paths leading up to 4, missed 5 ever so slightly and 9 a little worse but made the right adjustment immediately on both. Was getting tired after 7 and took some safer path routes (maybe too safe on 9) to try and reduce the risk of another ankle twist. Missed the finish :(

Same as Fri Jun 18th. Took some splits...

14:00 - Out
09:00 - Loop
14:05 - Back

...so a pretty even paced run.

Junior Turd/Floater Absolut hash #591 around Gubbangen (9). Wow what a difference a full night's sleep two days in a row makes. Felt good - definitely not ill. Sampled some lovely single malt whiskies back at JT's place afterwards along with traditional Midsommar herring.

Training with Eric Roller on a Jarfalla area. Felt really poo, had a sore throat last night and this morning but not ill (phew!) - just run down from not getting enough sleep over the last week or so. Anyway let Eric go off on his own and carried on...

...at a much lower intensity then...

...caught Eric back up (I assume because he was having problems having not taken a compass) and we carried on together again but not as fast as to begin with.

Afterwards we hooked back up with SJ (who had been doing her own thing) and took a dip in a nearby lake, followed by a sauna/bbq/beers back at Eric's place - just loving that Midsommar vibe!

Pole Fucker Underground hash #821 from Sodra (26). Bit of a long one tonight - glad I jogged it all at a snail's pace.

Stockholm Training Camp!

I have been chatting with a few people about the possibility of organising a Summer training camp in Stockholm over a long weekend in August. If this happens it will take place over either the 6th-9th or 13th-16th August.

I would like an idea of who might be up for this before I go any further with it. So whoever reads this please give an indication of how interested you are/what weekend you would prefer (I would like it to be the 7th/8th myself).

An idea of what the schedule might be...

Fri pm - training then night out
Sat am - training
Sat pm - hashing/after party
Sun am - long distance training
Sun pm - touristy stuff/chill out then BBQ
Mon am - training

The training will be varied, all in sexy Stockholm terrain obviously and planned mostly by Nick Barrable who has all the experience necessary to plan quality exercises and give the advice that goes with it. Sounds good? Let me know...

Current Ryan Air Flights from Gatwick (add £20 each way for a 15kg bag, £30 for 20kg)...

OUT (departs 20:25):
Thu 5th Aug £44 or
Fri 6th Aug £33

Thu 12th Aug £27 or
Fri 13th Aug £44

BACK (arrives 20:00):
Mon 9th Aug £27

Mon 16th Aug £44 or
Tue 17th Aug £20

Flying SAS from Heathrow looks much more expensive.

C • Accommodation? 10

Summer Series No. 5. Did I actually leave Finland? Not sure - the terrain today was quite similar - maybe not quite as technical but very rocky, low visibility in places and a bit shitty in places too. I had a very good run at the same fixture last year and wanted the same again... but I had a scrappy one. Lost time on most of the controls - slight hesitations, misses and route choice errors but certainly nothing over a minute. Happy with under 10mins/km though what with all of the hills, runnability and around routes. Nice to be running at full race pace for once - I will probably go back and run the same course again at a steady pace, hopefully clean and try to do the same time. An interesting experiment?

A good stretch - not feeling too much tightness in the usually troublesome areas so proactive rather than reactive.

Wow. Words just cannot describe how amazing the Jukola experience is... and this was one of the best. Fantastic event, map, courses and competition.

Tuomas Tala described the area as possibly the toughest in Southern Finland.

Matt Speake described his experience as the toughest night event he has ever done.

In my opinion 2008 was more technically demanding but there's not much in it. Physically it wasn't as bad as expected - it was quite rocky and bushy but I've been to tougher areas.

This year there was a opportunity to change from my usual long night to last leg which I took because of my recent ankle crunches - less chance of doing more damage. Plus it was nice to sleep through the night for once but in the end I only got 5 hours sleep - woke up much too early but was too interested and excited to try to get back to sleep again.

My team (OK Ravinen 2) missed the changover closure by about 20mins so I was in the restart... in good company - Joe, Tom etc. However I didn't see anyone I knew at any point. The only bit I didn't really enjoy was the sheer amount of people running. So tough to maintain an even pace what with frequently overtaking and being overtaken.

My run was ok. I lost 30secs at 2 and slightly larger mistakes at 4 and 14 but nothing major. Physically I seem to have lost a lot of strength and stamina. The couple of hardish weeks I did at the end of May were a good effort towards getting some of my form back from when I was a lot more dedicated to training in Jan/Feb but then 40mins total running in the two weeks prior to the Jukola was too much of a taper to say the least. The N/S champs elite classic races I did 4-5 months ago I remember finishing and feeling like I hadn't really done anything. However now it couldn't be much more different - I walked the last few km with just no energy left in my legs at all :(

Summary of (mostly) British runners last leg (can't include Whitesheep in this analysis yet for some reason - assume splits not available because of current DQ status of the BOK team)...

2.2KM:
01) 13:46 - Joe Mercer
02) 14:18 - Oleg Chepelin
03) 15:09 - Seamus O Boyle
04) 16:32 - GG
05) 17:08 - Keith Agmen
06) 19:06 - Rich Guillaume
07) 20:07 - John Hartley
08) 21:17 - Tom Ryan
09) 27:28 - John Tullie
10) 50:38 - Ed Nicholas

5.1KM:
01) 39:18 - GG
02) 42:40 - Oleg Chepelin
03) 44:32 - Seamus O Boyle
04) 44:52 - Joe Mercer
05) 47:42 - Keith Agmen
06) 50:36 - Rich Guillaume
07) 51:44 - John Hartley
08) 65:05 - John Tullie
09) 66:20 - Tom Ryan
10) 82:27 - Ed Nicholas

8.7KM:
01) 070:07 - GG
02) 075:56 - Oleg Chepelin
03) 081:44 - Joe Mercer
04) 085:44 - Rich Guillaume
05) 087:05 - Keith Agmen
06) 087:09 - Seamus O Boyle
07) 089:56 - John Hartley
08) 105:35 - John Tullie
09) 106:01 - Tom Ryan
10) 118:16 - Ed Nicholas

9.7KM:
01) 078:23 - GG
02) 083:57 - Oleg Chepelin
03) 092:09 - Joe Mercer
04) 095:30 - Rich Guillaume
05) 097:20 - Seamus O Boyle
06) 100:44 - Keith Agmen
07) 105:13 - John Hartley
08) 117:19 - John Tullie
09) 117:57 - Tom Ryan
10) ???.?? - Ed Nicholas

Not really interested in going any further for the obvious reason. Anyway today was the first day in my last 5 weeks of training before the O-Ringen... and what good training it was! Going to really try hard to stay dedicated from now on. 5 weeks - medium, heavy, v. heavy, medium and then an easy final week. Well, that's the plan anyway.

Event: Jukola Relay Kytäjä-Jukola 2010
 

It seemed strange at the time but I got this sudden urge to go running. Then I remembered... I am a runner.

http://www.mapmyrun.com/route/se/Stockholm%20urban...

Training with the Farsta kids again. This time ran their test course - they run this once/twice a year to gauge progress. Course record around the 50mins mark by double JWOC gold medalist Gustav Bergman (on his 4th attempt so I'm told - apparently his first attempt was around 64mins).

My two goals for today were to not miss any controls and to not do any more damage to my ankle. Both pretty optimistic seeing as the terrain was super rocky and technical. Took it at a similar speed to yesterday i.e. quite slow. Spiked the first 13 and then small misses on 14/15 (14 wasn't my fault - my map had disintegrated right in the circle). 16 I lost several minutes making a parallel error and lost another few on 17.

So it seems I have to work on my concentration near the end of a course. Or maybe I am just too tired from bumping up my hours recently. Although this last week has been a bit of a struggle physically am quite happy with how I've coped with the increase in training. Looking forward to my next runs after a couple of rest days again - hope they work this time.

Drove out to Paradise to try and cleanly navigate through the really detailed terrain in an attempt to replace the 'I'm useless at o-ing' feeling with something more positive. Trouble was I forgot my map - fortunately there was an old guy there just coming back from the forest and I persuaded him to let me have his. It had a short course that I had never done before (been here a few times but it's the kind of place where that doesn't really help) and I carefully ran it and am happy to report technically perfectly :)

Unfortunately I crunched my ankle again near the end. Not anywhere near as bad as at 10mila but still something I could have done without - not having the best time of it recently. Things were going so well with my troublesome right ankle - went from July 09 to May 10 without turning it at all. Back to unstable again I guess.

Titan Dick & Laid Bird Spor&Dic hash around Gardet (2). Ankle seems ok (phew). Ran with moderate effort until the second drink stop and then...

...jogged the rest at pretty much zero effort. Proper tired now.

OK Ravinen long champs. Disaster - really wanted to do well today running against Kjelle the Ravinen team selector. I know sometimes I can be a bit rubbish at orienteering but losing 10mins at number one reminded me that sometimes I can be totally useless. Tried to pull myself together after that but ran off with no energy once again and by 5 I was wondering if I was going to make it.

Missed 3, huge mistake at 7 losing a few minutes. By the long leg to 12 I was walking wherever there was a tough bit of terrain (which was frequently - it wasn't the best area in terms of runnability or interest) or even the slightest of gradients.

The only plus point I can draw from today is that I got another 100mins of exercise under my belt... in proper warm weather.

Really didn't have the motivation to do this but forced myself as felt quite stiff in the usual places (glutes/calves).

11:45 - WU
10:30 - WD

Re-ran Flaten Luffarligan course from Aug last year. Pretty sure the physically flat peiod is behind me now but took it really easy what with the KM tomorrow. 2 big misses and 2 small ones - should be totally clean at that speed :(

First stretch in three weeks - range of movement hasn't suffered too much but bloody hell was it painful!

Ditto core work. Just half a workout to get back into it. 5*12 ff.

11:15 - WU
09:00 - WD

5 really steep reps of 32m. Think I felt a little better today than the last couple... but still fairly pap so didn't do too much.

Sweet Meat Underground hash #818 around Grondal (25). Beautiful day for it - spent the first 10mins running rings around everyone else and then the same out of breath/no energy thing as yesterday came on :(

3:00 - WU
3:00 - WD

Summer series no. 2. Failed to keep up my 100% informal win rate for a number of reasons. First and foremost some other people actually ran the course. Second I was navigating like a beginner (lost time on every control until number 8 then pretty much spiked the rest) and lastly I felt physically awful - I guess the increased amount of hours from last week did proper do me in after all.