Training Log Archive: slow-twitch

Stage 5 Hikanui
Brutal.


Even pulling back the pace a bit as this was the most likely ankle buster or calf aggravater of the weekend, it was still....

Brutal.

(a little time lost in not getting the angle right for the descent to 5, and in the circle at 7, but it's really only the physical aspect of this race that sticks in the mind)

The last STB stage ...ever? Kopanga Ride
It probably reflects where I was physically for this race that while waiting at the start box I could see Chris Beckman powering up the farmland spur and thought 'there'd better be another route choice for the first leg because I am not going that way' (there was, and it was good). But once I got going (thanks to a much preferable downhill road run start to the first leg) the fatigue monsters shut up and left me alone.... for a while. It would have been a good race had I not bollixed #2. The worst thing about that is that I actually think I ended up using a better route choice than I had planned but because it wasn't the one I had planned I had to spend far too long relocating when I suddenly realised I had no idea where I was. That put me in trying-to-get-the-time-back mode for the rest of the course, so I should probably be glad that the only point I lost significant time after that was trying to pick my way through the miniature railway - even though I recall it all making sense when we last ran on this map, I should have just gone round the edge and stayed out of the detail. Once the tricky thinking was over on the exit from the 12th control, I put the gas on, and I think I left nothing in the fuel tank running through the last few legs to the finish. (I know I almost left my lunch at the penultimate control if that's any indication)

Stage 3 Sacred Girls
From the sublime to the ridiculous, was messing up big time in the school parts of the map - seeing gaps where they weren't and vice versa, and loosing time all over the show. I never thought I'd say this but I wonder if Sacred Hearts in particular and one or two spots in Napier Girls are actually TOO complex for orienteering? I might be a bit more positive had the weather been a bit more user friendly, having glasses that don't really fog is pointless when they're covered in droplets about the mapped size of the gateways etc that you're trying to spot. The long route choice legs from 12 to 17 were fun (including keeping up with John Robertson et al on the long haul down Shakespeare Road - gravity is the slow runner's friend!) and I reckon I made the right call on all of them, just hit the wall on the way up to 17. Which may explain some very strange behaviour getting into 18 despite having checked out how it looked on the ground on my way to 17....

Stage 4 Hereworth
A bit of redemption following this morning's mess, I seem to be showing a preference for the afternoon races. Feeling quick, flowing and mostly accurate on the 'old' part of the map. There were mistakes but 3 of them were very minor - as for the 4th, unfortunately I only read enough of the control description for #11 to eliminate one of the three ways of interpreting the map (having only seen the two wrong ways) so ended up briefly in a relatively deep dead end wondering why there wasn't a control there. In theory I should have enjoyed the last part of the course in Hereworth proper, especially as there were no somehow no mistakes in that section, but I had very much run out of gas, and my glasses had finally got wet enough to demonstrate that yes they do in fact fog occasionally so I somehow got through those last few legs on jedi navigation.

Event: Sprint the Bay
 

STB Race 1, EIT
Plan for either orienteering Wednesday evening or a short loosener run during the trip over on Thursday disappeared into the personal-drama-vortex, with nothing to show for it. So probably inevitible that both the legs and brain needed a bit too much of the course to start ticking over properly. Only bad mistake was being halfway to 3 before realising the control was on the OTHER side of the rather wide building, a few small intepretation/hesitation type time losses but perhaps lost just as much time not getting into any sort of flow until towards the end of the first loop, and only really clicked into it halfway through the second. Not enough time spent orienteering in the future, as TG would put it.

Stage 2 Tamatea
I'd probably rate this as my best effort for the weekend. Had found a bit more leg-speed since the morning, and was just about always at least a leg ahead in the planning, sometimes further (admittedly it was mostly just one left-or-right decision for each leg and no detailed navigation into the control). Only complaint is that if the last 2 route choice legs were 55/45 rather than 50/50, then I think based on the post race debates I managed to make the 45 call on both of them.

Homewards for a change. Lovely day for it