Training Log Archive: W

Another new map for the Provincials long! I felt like this map was a bit more honest than yesterday. Much of the white on the middle probably should have been more like the light green on this map today, and there was plenty of it. But, at least you would enter it knowing what you were going to face.

In general I was quite pleased with how this went, the long leg from 3-4 went really well in the hillside, I pretty much exactly hit my line side-hilling, slow going, but a nice steady managable climb where I could keep the pace high and still feel fresh at the top. A few sub-optimal hooks in places where I should have attacked with more confidence, but the rest went quite well.

There was several new trails that made stop and be very nervous, especially on 9 when I hit a new trail and thought that I might have gone completely haywire at one point, but I stuck with my plan and it turned out okay. Its a bad habit to bank on trails like that, I should have just stuck with my gut and the contours and I could have gone full speed straight towards the control. Despite that hiccup, I was generally pleased with how the route to 9 went, I think it was probably the best choice.

Great weekend, and a cool new club member who is here from the CZ until December. She's a MTBO-er, and a pretty bloody legit one.

As in, Junior World Mountain Bike Orienteering champion of 2010.

http://oris.orientacnisporty.cz/Osoba?id=5110

Got home about 5, and around 7 Patrick called me up to go for a run. I actually initially thought when I got home that I probably *should* go for a bike ride or something, and then felt tired and lazy and didn't. So thank goodness he called me up. We went for an excellent little trail run scoping out how the slump of Keillor road was affected by the flooding this year. A large portion of it had just broken off and disappeared, so that was kind of crazy. Good stuff.

Long Course 7 - Splits

Okay! Provincial Champs. Unfortunately, there was no competition, so it was tough to really really run my brains out. However, that just makes it more of a shameful thing that I didn't read my control description on the control where I assumed it was the inside corner when in fact it was the outside corner a level above. I saw it on the map and thought "Ah ha! Its a trick! It'll be inside corner!" without actually looking at the description. I had plenty of time to look, but I was a cocky jackass and didn't bother and it bit me in the ass.

I plan to do a bunch of training on the U of A campus in anticipation of nationals to work on this exact thing. Really need to solidify a system. I'm thinking of drawing an arrow in permanent marker on my hand pointing towards the control description.

Great idea, or the greatest idea?

A middle! On a new map! How ridiculously exciting! I cannot think of the last time I've been on a new map in Alberta! No, wait, I can, it was last summer. Nevertheless, I was excited, I ran in Bragg Creek mid-summer and thought there could be some great terrain around here.

I really tried to focus on man-ing it up and going straight as I can. I had the mantra of making a strong plan and finding big features. Sometimes I forgot and it went a little haywire, especially on 2 where I totally overshot the control because I assumed "it was open and therefore nice and easy". Famous last words.

Its a shame we didn't get on this map before Worlds, because there was one section around 7-9 that was very, very familiar to some of the terrain in the long in Finland. It was young forest, with really bad visibility because of low branched pine trees. The ground was a little slower than in Finland, but it really, really reminded me of Vuokatti. Its not necessarily difficult contours, but the fact you really can't see very far really ramps up the difficulty, and I took extreme care to be able to pick out features along the way, and ultimately really nailed that section. I should go back there sometime and do some control picking. Its a small area, but would be good practice.

And then there was the terrain around 13 that Nev described as "the greatest 30 meters of terrain" he's ever experienced in Alberta. That was pretty much bang on, you came over the hill, saw the control, and go to bound downhill in this lovely white moss-covered forest.

It was a wonderful 16 seconds.

Middle Course 7 - Splits

Sprint Course 5 - Splits

Met up with Paul for a run before the shop. This is a bit of taper pre-weekend of racing. Quite hot out there too, so that was quite nice!

Its like, I look forward to Frank's race, but man do I dread the Frank's races. This time around was quite surprising, there were a lot of really quick guys, and then seriously took off from the start. Probably 10 of them. The strategy this week was to be a pit more conservative and try and ramp it up. I think I did that, but far fewer of those guys faded off as I hoped the would. Shockingly, two other guys took down Frank, so the calibre has ramped up considerably, and I couldn't gain back up to Jack or Brian, and was once again a few seconds behind Loshack. The stomach was really not agreeing with me again, especially on the climbs and descents, where I feel like I quickly tighten up and nothing feels as good.

There's no doubt that the last few months I've been focusing a lot on flatland speed and done almost no climbing intervals, but I don't recall it feeling bad.

Then did a longer-ish quite slow cool-down jogging over to orienteering, but just picked up some maps for training later. Or... drawing my own course on....

Stupidly, my heart rate spiked at the beginning so it claims I was running at 214 or whatever, probably didn't have it wet enough. But, I'm modestly pleased to see that I was able to get up to 184 max by the end (which is a minor accomplishment for me). Hovered generally around 177 though. Typical.

Okay, last one. For now.

Originally it was going to be a rest day with coaching kids program. Then it turned into roller-skiing, then it turned it to a straight run. But, it was not a bad run since it was quite slow and recovery esque. I'm not sure every workout needs to be high speed, just the majority of them. This one would not qualify as one of those.

Another grrrrrrreat run around the 10 mile loop which I extended a little (channeling my inner Baguette there). In Wolf Willow, there's this pretty technical singletrack I used to regularly do (on my bike), but hadn't done in years because there was a bunch of new construction and I assumed it was overgrown and unused. Turns out that's totally not the case, its still there, and as technical as ever (though not on foot). It has one section of this pretty high scary bridge which has now gotten all warped and super sketchy and there was a homeless guy underneath, which was difficult not to envision he was actually some sort of troll.

The trail extended it from 10 miles to 17.39km, so it made it a bit longer, and was naturally a bit slower, but super fun. The pace was generally tough, but really satisfy-ing-ly productive.

But then I saw Yannick faceblog about a "long training" that he did, where he ran 23k in 1:32. So... I still have a bit of a ways to go.

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