Training Log Archive: z-man

US Champs - Day 2 A lot of things were on my mind this morning as opposed to the morning the day before. The main question that occupied my mind was; what else could I do? How do I improve on already a very good outing from the day before? What Ross is going to do? Will he be running more conservatively knowing that he had a nice cushion? For one, I thought, that the pressure was on him and not on me, so that got taken care of. Should I be taking on more risk and try to be more aggressive from the start knowing how fast I faded yesterday at the end? So I took two GU with me to address that concern. Spend less time on planing and focus on faster approaches and departures from controls as in many cases routes were more or less straight. Focus on big features, don't read anything in between. Save time. Push harder where woods open up. Crash trough crap, but keep that line. Run through water and don't look for narrower spots to jump over. Stop if things don't make sense.
After a grueling walk to the start feeling tiredness in my muscles I took my first GU and off I went. Navigation seemed easy and legs started to feel better on the way to #2. Caught a glimpse of Nick, who started 3 minutes ahead of me, right before #6, and then caught up to him at #8. We began running towards #9 (the longest leg), I jumped ahead and started pushing it not really paying attention to anything but my way points on the map. Nick stayed close by but I jumped off the trail first and sped downhill on my bearing toward the bag. There was no sight of him when I got there, and I ate my second GU right then. Progressed through the short legs but was pulled away on #12 by what seemed like a larger cliff than I was expecting to see when in fact it was the smaller one of the two on that hill, so lost ~ 20-25sec. there. Then really cautious to #13 in the cliffs being extra careful with reading my cliffs. It took me a bit extra time to get down to #14 not wanting to really break anything but hit the bag with no problems.
With the technical staff now behind all I could focus on is move my legs as fast as I could. Going back up the hill to #18 was painful and my legs began to wobble right before the bag, but I didn't let it get to me. The rest was fast and easy with a slight hesitation at the last control that I hit from a slightly wrong angle.
I was happy to finish and was happy with my race. Not much else I could've done anything different out there than I already did. So with my fingers crossed I went to see the results and was like, "Really!?" Ross is a monster!

Realistically speaking, these were my cleanest back-to-back runs I've ever put together, and this gave me a very good feeling about this entire weekend. Also, beating feet, on both days, was just a bonus that I only remotely hoped for.

Day 2 Blue - Splits

Event: US Two-day Classic O Championships
 

US Champs - Day1 After having to deal with a nagging hamstring injury I had no realistic goals for this meet and simply hopped not to screw the hammy even more. This was my only thought on the way up early in the morning. I had no goal, no pressure, and no other competitive interests for this meet.

After a long walk to the start, I ate my GU, and off I went. The first three bags didn't seem to present any navigational challenges so I stuck with my compass aiming off a bit as not to overshoot the controls. I would guess that I started getting into the race somewhere along on the 4th leg. Legs didn't feel bad, slow, but not terribly so, and after spiking #4, the race was on. Had a good stretch until #9 where I kept waiting for the big marsh to show up before me and wasted bits of time trying to read some things in between. Then had a little bobble on #13 by going around the first cliff and too early just to end up back on the hilltop. There I saw Nick who started 6 min ahead of me so this was a good sign I thought. But he got hit by branch and spent some time walking and shaking up before I caught him. Then from #9 through #17 we ran together, taking mostly different routes but still meeting at the controls. I began to weaken on the way to #16 and lost sight of him, but had a better route to #17 and was ahead of him there may be by ~10 sec. or so. I started running downhill towards #18 aiming to stay roughly on the line and after ~250m or so things stopped making sense. I saw a huge cliff facing the hill in almost perpendicular direction that I could not find on the map. The hill was littered with broken rocks and I could not find that neither. I began to sense danger and stopped to try to sort things out. Then, with the corner of my eye, I caught Nick going down may be ~100m away, and I took after him. He basically led me to the bag while I was still trying to figure out what the hell happened. I was right behind him till #22, where I climbed the hill to stay on the trail while he went down into a re-entrant, and finished just ahead of him.
I was really glad that I saw him at the right spot and at the right time, which saved me from a sure disaster. I was fading fast and my brain could not keep up with my running. I simply got lucky.
After I got back to the parking lot and looked at the results, my reaction was a bit of a disbelieve. "Really!?" And then, Ross is a beast!

Day 1 Blue - Splits

Jogged at Verona park to warm up for the strength straining.

Pull ups, push ups, + a bit of other random stuff on the bar.