Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Joined Sam for her track workout today. Nice morning to be out, stadsskogen smelled lovely and fresh on our way down to the track. Weather was a little chilly, and I was a little sore - especially in the glutes - after yesterday's hittaut run.

A pretty sizable set of kids were involved in a track practice, with a full group doing hurdles, another throwing shotput, a set doing long jump and another doing high jump. Not so many adults, and a few older kids acting as assistant coaches. The 4 distinct groups of kids were spread out around the track which meant that we were constantly passing one group or another.

Sam proposed a workout that was 3x 1600m at top speed with ample rest between. Legs weren't especially zippy but it felt okay on the first couple of laps, and actually became a bit looser as the workout progressed. I could tell that I was tired though when I came through the 1200 at the same pace as Thursday's interval pace. Ended in 5:11. Rested about 35 seconds longer than Sam on each because we started each one at the same time.

Next one felt much smoother and easier and I came through at 5:09 which felt (almost) relaxed. For the last rep, my speed was certainly suffering, but I managed another gear on the last lap and picked back all the time I had lost to finish in 5:07.

Makes me curious to see how quick I could manage with fresher legs. I think 4:40 is about my record, but it's been long enough since I raced something like this and memories are quite malleable I've found :)

C • Good for you for making the... 6

Sam and I were homebodies this weekend and decided not to go to either of the more local orienteering weekend competitions. It felt great to have the whole day to catch up on all of the little details that I have been putting off. After a morning in the apartment, I set my sights on my first hittaut run of the new year. I planned an ambitious loop since I had a large parcel of time and so I aimed to clear out the far reaches of the northern half of the map. Boris joined me for the first 90 minutes, ending at Gränby to take a bus home. From there I headed south with my headphones and a backlog of podcasts for company. After finishing my planned route, I still wanted to run a bit more, so I added 8 more checkpoints on my way back to the apartment.

Evening was a lovely affair with fun guests, good food and, of course, Eurovision!

C • all hittaut checkpoints? 2

A hard session of Innebandy. We had 10 players and teams were lopsided enough each time that there was a lot of scoring and we changed teams twice in the course of the hour when normally we don't even switch once. I was on the losing team each time :)

Best part of the whole week :) It will be sad when our gym time ends for the summer... only a couple of weeks left.

Normally Innebandy is the exercise that causes lower back soreness in my life. However, after innebandy I spent 3 hours hunched over in the lab helping Anja with a particularly ergonomically taxing experiment and my back certainly did not appreciate the combination of Friday activities.

On the plus side, the evening entertainment consisted of sushi, poker, buffalo wings, and an improvised game of Wits and Wagers (in honor of Ian and the CSU tiomila weekend) cobbled together with some of the poker chips and a stack of post it notes.

I had a busy day at work and it seemed wise to forgo club training and to join Sam for her track intervals. I think I accidentally got her to run one fewer of the 1200's by thinking that we were supposed to do 3 x 1200 today.

I checked the AP paces page for a good idea of how fast to run the pieces and arrived at 3:50, by selecting a "reasonable" 3k time. Sam tries to protect me from my habit of choosing a vDot that I wish I had as opposed to the vDot I actually should have.

It was a great workout and it was fun to have Boris for company on the track too as he did 400's. Hit the times pretty well and there was plenty of rest in between.

Quick turn around after training to go downtown for a date night of dinner and bowling.

Club training with SI controls. Tried to get an early start on this training because I had unwisely agreed to a 7pm SM-sprint sekretariat meeting in the evening. Boris and I did sneak out into Nåsten about 10 minutes early but it was a long way to the start and a long course as well.

Things did not start well when, directly from the start point I set off at top speed down the wrong trail while digging my compass out of my jacket pocket. 200 meters later before I realized the error and came back to correct it. Many mistakes, sometimes very silly ones of running past a flag without seeing it and sometimes more serious mistakes like greatly misinterpreting the map and terrain.

I think it is just tough to focus and race cleanly if there is an added time pressure in the back of the mind. (ended up 40 minutes late, though I think my lateness was excused).

Quickroute
Winsplits

Intervals tonight were planned for backbana and there were several options. Most people were doing 5 intervals spaced out along the length of the backbana course but there were a couple of guys interested in running backbana hard for a fast time. I thought that sounded a bit more fun for me.

I headed there straight from work and did a little warmup until the rest of the club arrived. Then I followed Rassmus and Oskar out onto the track.

My legs did not feel 100% recovered after the weekend and Oskar pulled away even on the first uphill section. I kept pushing hard despite the sense of being out of gas and was rewarded by coming through the halfway point much quicker than I was dreading. That added to my motivation and I needed all the motivation I could get to work past the burning in my quads as I climbed the last couple of hills. Ended up with 25:20 which is slower than my best but is a great result considering how many down trees we had to clamber over and how much tiomila took out of me.

Biked straight home and then to the clubhouse for Sam-baked cake and a celebration for our club's recent successes, like Tiomila.

Rockgympa with Sam. Giacomo decided to go orienteering instead, which was only sad because then he missed the fun of hopping up the stairs and playing Innebandy.

Innebandy after the core work was done. We played right up until the next group kicked us out. Jenny Bengtsson's sister was super good and made for an excellent teammate :)