Training Log Archive: Jon X

Felt terrible all day, lethargic and heavy legs (maybe been tensing muscles to protect ankle while running at weekend?).

But silhouettes of mountains everywhere on the drive home so had to get out and do something: and inspired by today's article on JackB in the Stirling Observer, I dusted off my road bike.

Home-Blair Drummond-Deanston-back road-Top of the World- Thornhill-Blair Drummond-Home

Glad I made it out and got heart rate up to a decent level on the climb, gearing on the bike needs some work however (not that I know how to do it!). Reckon it would be a decent test of marathon fitness to be able to do this type of ride at twice marathon run speed - specifically perhaps double marathon distance ridden inside three hours would be good to do a few times...

Tendonitis not so good today but Men's Open for me - luckily in the third team on the final leg. Took over in 7th place with 5 mins to Rob Baker ahead and a decent gap behind. So not really a lot of pressure! Took it steady but still managed a total donkey mistake: "run along the ride and turn off at the boulder" only works if you spot the boulder! Ankle worse by the end so very slow round the final bit but safely back in 7th.

Loving the forest - want to get back in there soon when I am running better!

Event: Scottish Championships
 

To the start feeling absolutely terrible, stiff and no energy at all. Pretty disappointing as after the week of holiday and good sleeping I was expecting to feel great...

Didn't really get any better than the warmup! Was loving the forest and having it totally to myself but it was such hard work to keep running. Missed badly at #7 and #11 where it didn't look at all as expected, then decided to go straight to #18 as going so badly I may as well run through the nice forest rather than along the road and rides. However keeping running up the hill meant no map reading meant relocation needed meant parallel error on major scale. Worked it out eventually but just walk/jog from there on in. Over half an hour down, comedy.

Not sure what was wrong really, too much fine food and wine in the evenings, too many cooked breakfasts, not enough carbs all week, not sure. On the plus side (?) then my tendonitis in ankle was not too bad with a bit of ibuprofen. However tendonitis permitting, some proper training in the next few weeks is definitely needed......

C • no such thing... 2

Not such a nice day today - got as far as the foot of the Easains but only looked up at them before they disappeared into the rainclouds - they look great but not so appealing on this day. After getting blown off them at New Year 2007, this was a second refusal at them - I will get up them one day!

So instead went across to Newtonmore and climbed Creag Dhubh - perfect walk for this day but must be a steep little hill race....

After a night in Tobermory, it was the ferry from there to Ardnamurchan today. Westernmost point of the British Isles and all that, including a trip up the lighthouse (islands to be seen in all directions - chucking it down on the Cuillins of course!).

Enjoying the overall feeling of total wilderness and the miles of amazing coastline including a few hours barefoot on the white sand in Sanna Bay, even ventured into the sea - briefly!!

Boat from Fionnophort to Staffa - standard glorious day meant it was one of the few days each year when the boat actually goes into Fingal's Cave :)

Little wander round Staffa featuring puffins landing pretty much at our feet at one end of the island, then a walk to the depths of Fingal's Cave at the other end.

And then a visit to Iona which was v interesting despite the fact I had no difficulty with keeping my eyes closed during the prayer service in the chapel.....

Just in time for the ferry from Oban to Mull, and over to the north side of Ben More. What a great mountain - walked up to the col to the west of A Chioch, then after lunch did the walk/scramble over A Chioch and then up the west ridge of Ben More - pretty blowy and pretty steep, much use of the hands and much fun!

Very easy and quick descent down, loose stony track and then grassy slopes - I am not usually a fan of a long walk out or steep decent so this was just the job too.

Oh yes - and a pair of sea eagles came to say hello during lunch :)

Staying at Barcaldine just north of Benderloch, went for a gentle stroll up the nearest hill, Beinn Lora. Another glorious day and great views from the top.

Followed up with a coffee in the cafe (warned them how much custom they will be seeing in the first week of August 2011!) and then a sunny stroll along the beach!

Nothing like not learning from your mistakes (France last year) - tried to run back along disused railway line........mostly not possible! Found some usable bits but also some impassable bits and did some backtracking and running along the main road. Mountains looking glorious so not exactly a hardship anyway, v enjoyable in fact.

With Rosco, Fi and MC, up Jura's road from Craighouse to Lagg Bay and back. Enjoyable easy ride in the sunshine - a bit of spectator value provided by Scottish Island Peaks race runners at beginning and end.

Coustick's Corking Corbett Completion Caper

And what a full day - up early for the drive to Tayvallich to catch the 10am RIB to Jura, met up with the others at Jura Hotel and off for the main business of the weekend, a fantastic walk up the Paps of Jura to bag Dave's final Corbett. Finished off with a group meal at the hotel where lots of sunburned people were a bit weary to stay up too late!

Quite rough in places but glorious sunshine throughout, fun ascents and scree descents, champagne and cake on the top, deer cooling off in lochans, adders basking, us cooling off in streams. Great day.

Looks like it is all kicking off in the world of cycling today, here is the Floyd Landis letter that is in the news.....
http://www.bikeradar.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=127...

Sunny evening run up Carleatheran with Rosco. More of a struggle for me than for him methinks....

Evening event at Abbey Craig.

Despite flag not being where marked on my map for three of the first six (for three different reasons!), ran round pretty steadily and felt a little bit more like I could remember how to run after the first ten mins or so. Did run all the way up the hill to #1 but was far too out of breath at the top! Made a mistake the final time up the hill and turned down the wrong path, ended up with extra climb and doing it in terrain which I guess was good for me.

Shin sore at start but loosened off - fell shoes not ideal in the rough stuff and no help at all in the bluebells - only came a cropper once....

Collecting controls (it really was six of them this week.....) - ran up the hill with Rosco then easy back down via the controls,

Still feeling tired and with no zest for running.......but pesky control 163 still out there at Touch! Could have run from home but wanted to wear trainers not trail shoes so parked at bottom of forest road and ran up and then along to very end of track before retracing steps. Gorgeous evening out there. Felt terrible initially after so long without running but loosened up a bit eventually.

Totally wiped out.

Long distance selection at Creag Mhic. Shin/ankle still sore which was a shame as the terrain looked amazing and I would have really fancied pre-running today.

Spoke to Kim later in the day and she said it is a tendon problem, suggested some exercises, and said I am okay to run on it.

Middle distance selection race at Ardnaskie - last minute review of location of one control with Gareth, got it corrected just before the first runner came through....

Selection race sprint at Erskine. Decent weather despite the snow forecast for the morning!

All seemed to go off well and the new area as suggested by Rosco seemed to get the thumbs up - as did Patrick's map and Andy's courses - so all good!

Collected in 5 controls from the Touch evening event. Still resting shin so didn't run a course but walked/jogged in trainers and jeans.

Only when it came to putting the SI units out at Erskine on Friday did irt become apparent that actually I should have collected 6 controls....

My shin is really sore just above the ankle. I am chronically short of sleep. I have far more organisation left for the selection race sprint than I should have.

A few days off....

So. The Harvester Relay 2010.

Until Friday I was running 9.2km night leg for JOK, but Roger's injury meant I had to step up to the FVO team for the 5.9km day leg.

An easier course but one with quite a lot more pressure....

After a bit of a fitful night's sleep I am up just in time to see Marcus run up the hill to the final control and Tom head out on leg 5 in 2nd place, four mins behind SHUOC and with Farsta from Sweden and BOK in 3rd and 4th both within 3 mins behind him. No question Marcus was trying hard judging by the noise he was making as he ran up the hill!

Marcus and Chris Smithard went out together at the start of leg 4 and were still together at the spectator control even after two big misses by Marcus in the first half, however at the spectator they were seven minutes behind the Swede and have both passed him on the second loop.
On the previous leg Tulllster lost 15mins (!) at #3 yet still caught 10mins on Camel running for SHUOC. So there is a lot of time being lost out there and things can definitely stilll change! Particularly as Marcus is less than enthusiastic about the map....."I lost about ten minutes with three big mistakes but I am not blaming myself for any of them".

My leg still hurts so I pop the ibuprofen and get warming up. Tom comes through the spectator with exactly the same time for the first loop as Ralph Street for SHUOC......but Pete James for BOK has caught nearly two of the three minute deficit so it is all getting a bit close!

Do a bit more warming up and start to feel much better and pretty up for it, we may have hoped to be leading after the night legs but we are still in the fight for the top placings. Not quite sure how we are going to get Rosco a lead over GG for the last leg though!

Ralph comes in and sends out Rob Little, it turns out he has pulled out three minutes on FVO and two on BOK in the second half but it is still not long to wait before Pete James comes into sight pushing hard up the hill and sends out Matt Franklin for BOK. Matt looks pretty up for it and motivated and heads out quickly. Tom has run a great leg though and is only 20 secs behind Pete......

(leg 6 - 5.9km straight line)

....I set off pretty quickly but Matt F is running quicker than me as we head through the open and into the woodland. No surprise there - probably not much to be gained by running together anyway, the best outcome for us is if I run my own race and one or both of the others goes awol up ahead so I can sneak past.

Having started hard I back off a little bit to be cautious when the vegetation seems odd on the way to #3 and to get the right direction heading down to #5, then lose about 30s when I can't understand the vegetation again at #6 and end up in the dry gully to the right of the wet one I need. Later I find that part of the confusion is that I am blind to the stippled 'open with scattered trees' symbol, I am just reading it as semi open.

Annoyed by #6 and pick up the pace again on the downhill stretch then out into the park and work hard on the long uphill drag to the spectator control. Can't see BOK ahead but I can't go any quicker anyway and I feel I am putting together a decent run.

Take the direct route out of the spectator down the re-entrant, momentary panic when I think I can see the entire veg boundary my control is on but no flag - it turns out some kind soul has hung the control tight behind a tree. Off to the next one and again the vegetation makes no sense to me, luckily there is a path to catch me and the control is just past the bend and into some trees. Cross the open, into the trees but haven't seen a path - strange but I am in the trees so it must just be along here until the trees come in above me too - no feature - no flag. Head out to look for the path and extra woodland and work it out, I have missed to the left and made a parallel error - back I go and again don't see it straight away - the flag and trestle are flat on the ground half buried in leaves. Might even have seen it the first time otherwise. Relieved to see it but two very avoidable minutes lost. Later I realise it was the 'open with scattered trees' that helped confuse me again on this leg, must work out how to spot it on the map for future....

Push hard round the final loop and do it pretty well, the big climb to the last control is painful!

Into the finish to see BOK and SHUOC unsurprisingly both back already. It turns out BOK with a great run (five mins quicker than me - Matt F ran 33mins at just over 5.5 mins/km) have caught SHUOC and dragged them round the final bit so Rosco has gone out with 6 mins to catch on both teams - however it also turns out BOK have been disqualified on leg five so we are lying second with a decent gap to the Swedes behind us.

Ross does the job on last leg, strangely he doesn't catch GG and can't quite catch Tim Britton on BOK's last leg, but he is safe in second with plenty in hand over Farsta in third who finish nearly 10 minutes behind us.

Mixed feelings really: pleased to be second but tantalised too, we lost a lot of time on the night legs and so had our chances to have a healthy lead by dawn. To some extent it was the nature of the terrain and SHUOC were having similar troubles, but BOK showed what could be done - Clive Hallett had a disaster on their first leg and came back 25 minutes behind Will, but the rest of their team put together some impressive runs to drag them back to the front group - just like us they must feel they missed a chance to win. Similar feelings about my own run, felt like I did pretty well but hard to be pleased about it with the two minute mistake on the final loop.

It would be nice to win it back next year.......

C • Win it back next year! 2

Event: Harvester relays
 

To the start, waiting for them to set it up, waiting for the controller to come back and confirm the controls were out.
An unusual feeling being early!

Pre-Harvester chasing sprint at Hargate Forest. Men Open prologue, 3.2km.

Was never going to run the chase but ran the second half of this a little harder than planned once I got sight of the two AIRE guys who started before me and got caught by the Swedish guy from one minute behind. Good fun and typical Kentish terrain reminding me of my long-ago days running for DFOK. Map felt a bit 1980s in style too....

Thought I had better warm down too as even after the course I could still feel my sore shin/calf and also all the quad/ITB soreness from Dumyat race - decided I had better source some ibuprofen before the evening!

Back at Erskine. Decided not to post the Garmin track of where I went....

C • ...or how long you took to do it! 1

Event: Dumyat Hill Race
 

Went for a warmup jog in the woodland, calf/shin sore but loosened up a bit so decided to run. Could have done with a bit longer to warm up though!

Dumyat Hill Race (and FVO hill running champs!)

Pretty much like last year, not feeling the best for this race - and ran pretty much the same very average time for pretty much the same very average position. Would blame it on the three races over the bank holiday weekend but that didn't seem to affect Murray too much as he cruised to an impressive victory.

Struggling from the start even though not going too quickly - took longer from the edge of the wood to the top than in the reps session the other week! Actually started to feel stronger on the later parts of the descent and picked up quite a few places in the last five minutes - didn't quite manage to get back past Robin Orr although I did my best to sneak up on him at the end......

Warm down round the loch with the FVO boys plus Murray and Hector. Felt pretty easy and a lot better than in the warm up or in the race, hmmm.

Back at Erskine for some more fine-tuning of courses etc. Shin sore.

Feeling very very stiif and sore after the past two days, left shin particularly but trying to persuade myself it was just muscular and that it would loosen up once I warmed up. Never got round to doing enough jogging before the start though so a steady start was called for.

UK Cup Final, Men's Open course.

Hadn't really realised how fast and furious this race was going to be. Or at least how fast and furious it would have been if I hadn't been knackered. 8.4km straight line with 38 (!) controls - basically a never-ending sprint course!

Found it really good fun but legs too tired to really push hard, never got my heart rate up near where it was yesterday. As a result ran round pretty clean and efficiently although it did take a very steady start before I loosened up at all!

Actually ran 9.6km so a bit surprised how quickly I did manage to get my heavy legs to cover the ground, although 3 mins behind Roger and a terrifying 10mins behind Murray's impressive winning time of just over 34mins - only 50secs away from cracking the 4min/km barrier!

Not feeling too lively. To put it mildly.

British Relays M40+ with Jase and Brad. Leg distance 5.2km. Back mass starting with Women Open today after the chastening experience of starting with Men Open at JK.

Good fun race with first Phil M and then Martin W setting a crazy pace off the start. Settled in pretty well and punched #1 in second only to find a whole bunch already streaming towards the common #2 from their nearer control. Closed the gap a bit and then had the furthest gaffle again at #3, heading to #4 was the first time I had seen the lead women so knew the other was shorter.

At various points could see the leaders a bit ahead and didn't feel like I was too far behind on the track nearing #8......until they all punched and headed towards spectator control, and mine was further on again! This was the biggest difference I think, maybe 45-60secs extra. Down the hill to mine and back up, only to find the lead woman (Cat Taylor) was ahead again! Just kept reminding myself that I could still just about see the leaders and that Brad and Jase would have the shorter gaffles on their legs.

Got a good line to the one after the spectator and quick round the final loop, could see Jon Musgrave on the run-in ahead being announced in 6th, a couple of others including Donald were there too and I lost a place on the run-in to be 10th but only 1:50 down.

Happy enough with that given the gaffling.....until I got to download and (after some confusion) found that the labelling on my map and that for Jon Emberton of EPOC had somehow got swapped round. He did have all the short gaffles (i.e. I was supposed to have them) and he was back second - however the big problem was that it just affected leg one for each of us rather than the error applying for all maps for each team. The big big problem for us was that it was too late to fix it as Brad had just gone out on exactly the same gaffle as me! Pretty annoying for us, and well and truly put paid to any outside chance we had of challenging for a podium place.

I was told by the organisers that EPOC were luckier than us as it was their leg three that would need a revised map to sort their gaffling out and that could be done in time. However in fact it seems they were even luckier than that as it doesn't seem to have happened, James Logue on last leg seems to have run exactly the same short gaffle as their first leg and brought them through into 3rd place and the prizes. Not sure what I would make of that if I was in the 4th placed team. Well....actually I know exactly what I would make of that!!

C • That's poor... 7

Event: British Long Distance Orienteering Champs
 

jogging around field and then to the start, feeling okay but not amazing, in good time for a bit of stretching and strides before the start.

British Champs M40L at Abraham's Valley (Sherbrook).
11.2km and 16th place.

Pretty disappointing day, started off okay and strong on the long leg to #4 helped by having to stay ahead of Tullster on the uphilll road (gutted Jase beat me on the split).

All started to go wrong when the paths and distances all seemed wrong on the way to #6, made myself try and work it out but was totally puzzled and lost ages. So a bit of a shaky view of the map (not helped by the amazing disappearing path en route to #4) although at #6 it was mainly my fault, however this view of the map was then reinforced at #7 when the dark green was runnable, there was no boundary between it and the slow run, the control was too far up the valley from the flat bit, the veg boundary control feature was dubious, and the control was hung a contour above the re-entrant/earthwall instead of next to it. So 4-5 mins lost at those two in total, race pretty much blown, and in a major boo about the map! And the controlling of course....

Tried to push hard after that but made a small mistake on the way to #11 and then had all sorts of trouble in the quarry area, messed up the route to #12, undershot #13, couldn't find #14 or #15 or make much sense of the map (would have helped if the vegetation had borne any resemblance to that on the ground), didn't read descriptions at #16 and went too high. Another 5 mins lost through that section.

Tried to run hard after that but not quite as motivated, not convinced the last control in the forest was quite where it should have been either, seemed a bit high up. Finished 16 mins down on the winner and 12 mins down on 3rd.

So not the best day, ran some good legs but didn't deal with the dodgy mapping as well as others - too often relying on only one piece of info to find the control and so not minimising time loss. Felt strong which was good but knackered afterwards and sore left shin.....

C • 6 and 7 did both seem a bit funny 1

gentle hobble with Tullster afterwards.