Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

The last UOF cup race. 6 people in my category, and I thought that I had a pretty good shot at coming in 3rd. However, I didn't have the clean race that I would have liked, not making a lot of sense of the forest near #2, making a 180 on the way to control 8 (which looks right, even when you hold the map upside down) and getting bizarrely bemused on 22. All this, combined with a few other places where I didn't grok the map so perfectly, meant that I was a little disappointed with my performance. Not enough finish chute left to battle my way back up to 4th after losing so much time on 22.

Still, a beautiful day and fun to have Ali come share the Uppsala experience with us.

Over to the clubhouse, and then through the Stadsskogen to the castle for a hill interval session.

The exercise was designed with a long, middle, and short length hill climb. My group, led by Johan, did 5 of each length and though my legs felt heavy, I felt overall quite strong. Sprinting against Johan on the last short intervals was super fun and somehow quite energizing.

Then back home. Good times.

Friday Innebandy with work people. The group is growing in popularity, and today there were 12, so we made teams of 6 with 2 sitting on the bench and 4 on the floor. My first team was clearly physically dominating, and we quickly scored enough goals to win and to rearrange the teams. The second team I was on was getting crushed, but it meant that I got to do a lot of chasing the ball, since I was the only one feeling fresh anymore.

Getting better at this game, and it's fun to play in the bigger gym.

No SynggMagnus tonight again, and the replacement, Anna-Lena, led an intense program that seemed to require a lot more concentration and coordination than I was capable of bringing to bear :) I'm sure I looked confused, even though I've done her routine before. Lots of pushups.

The reward for surviving the gympa was Hungarian Mushroom Soup along with Irish Soda Bread (Sam hopefully will add the picture of the bread making to the blog) and some orange ginger iced cinnamon cakes from Sebastian and Lisa.

Orienteering Intervals with the club. I missed the last time Linné ran a Czech relay style training because of bike troubles. This time it was Sam's chain that kept falling off, but we made it to the start just in time.

I paired up with Olle but I was not aggressive enough through the junky forest to send him off with the rest of the guys. This kept us just a minute or so behind for the whole first set of intervals. Henrik suggested that we could skip an interval and catch up and run with the group. It was more fun to chase down Mandus and David instead of running alone.

Not my best navigation, tricky to read the fine detail on the map, which was quite busy with course lines etc.

UOF Cup race number 6 . A mass start, forked, night race.

The forest is really quite thick and running straight on a compass is a challenge here at night. Constantly spitting out pine needles as branch after branch hits you in the face kind of running. I was never running with the group tonight, not making enough sense of the map at that kind of speed, tried to push the running where possible though. Was pretty discouraged at how hard it was to navigate, but looking back at the GPS track I wasn't doing so badly. Stopped short a few times, and also got blatantly way lost once too, relocating at night in these vague contours is a special skill.

Tisdagbana O I wore my Icebugs, but had just enough traction on the ice to remain upright (most of the time) and forward progress was much more of a challenge. I did the 11 K version, and tried not to get frustrated by how slow I was going. Christopher and I got messed up at the turn off for the 11, which is silly considering how many times we've run through that area on those trails...

Wander.Lost Is it spring?

I rushed back from work, trying to meet the pre-rockgympa running crowd, but was a bit too late and missed them. Luckily, Sam was interested in doing a short jog as a warmup, so we ran down to the clubhouse and back. Not feeling all that fresh still.

My favorite part is when I'm finally finished doing the Borzov jumps (deep jumping lunges) because they are so hard, mentally it's all downhill from there. I'm trying to make the planks a little harder by lifting one leg during each... but it's a work in progress, and I can only keep the leg up for 15 seconds or so before I need to switch or rest.

A few of us stuck around to play Innebandy, but the crowd seemed rather low energy and subdued, suggesting that I wasn't the only one that found Rock Gympa to be quite tough tonight. It was still fun, but there wasn't as much chasing the ball, and no one argued when I suggested we quit about 5 minutes early.