Training Log Archive: W

O-Ringen, Day 1. This is the big one, the big one! The first long. For all the WOC marbles. The only one I really care about. I was nervous, but not as anxious as I was in Italy last year after a week of making horrible errors left and right. Sure, I did make horrible errors at KRV, but I felt like things were coming back together and getting a little better. Nevertheless, I was nervous, and really focused on going slow to number 1 to set the tone early, and staying as focused as I can throughout the race.

And there was definitely some nervous moments to 1. I went slightly too far left, and was in a reentrant, but I wasn't certain whether I went a little too far left or too far right. So, in a moment of panic, I guess, and went right. And... found the control. HALLELUJAH. I tried to immediately get any thoughts of "what if I went left?" out of my head and continue on, though it took me until after 2 to settle down again, where I got to run a little while on a path and have some time to plan and plan and plan some more.

Number 4 was another scary leg (at least, the last 1/4), so there was quite a few map stops and slow running to make sure I didn't head off course. Eventually I made it through the marsh and the thicker bit of forest to some white forest and a distinct re-entrant and was able to open it up again and go back to running.

I made my first bigger mistake at Bingo 7, which was a random rock on the side of a hill in some green forest. One of those rocks that you sort of couldn't see until you bumped into it. I thought I'd be able to see it while running along the bottom of the hill, or at least the wide shallow re-entrant it was on the side of, but.... nope. So, a little circle tour later, I eventually found it but lost probably a minute or slightly more.

Then there was a mega long leg which I executed only kind of well, and slowed down in the last third when I was extremely uncertain of where I am (since I went up the wrong re-entrant), but kept going on the bearing I had since I figured I would eventually see the rough open clearing prior to the control. And I did. And I sighed a sigh of relief. I also reminded a dude that he didn't punch at the water control, and he got all grumpy. No more helpful tips for Swedes from me!

Unfortunately as the race got longer and longer, I made some larger mistakes, one going to the hill above the small hill I was looking for, then getting hopelessly lost in the marsh of misery, where everyone was lost and there were controls everywhere. But, I relocated really quickly and kept time lost to a minimum. I then made a much bigger mistake on what should have been a quite easy control on a random rock in some green. It was a result of a bad bearing from a marsh before the control.

Bad bearings were, as usual, a recurring theme of the week.

But, then I did pretty well on a super scary flat marshy leg, created a little bit of a train, hooked one more control, flew around a small easy loop in white forest, botched the second to last control, and then hustled into the finish.

I did some mind math at the finish and concluded that the number of smaller mistakes I've done almost certainly wasn't good enough to win. I was so disappointed I thought I might cry. But, then it turned out that basically everyone in the entire race made those kind of mistakes. I was then so happy I thought I might cry.

Good day.

C • Well done! 1

Finally made it to O-Ringen! (And I mean that in an Attackblogging sense, though I suppose also in a literal sense)

Friday was a day off but we jogged over to a training map on Saturday to wander around and get a sense of what the happenings are in the woods of Bor[a with circle on it]s. The forest seems pretty runnable, plenty of squishy marshes that are physically difficult to run through but also easy to spot and navigate by. Lots of rocks underfoot which means my ankles will go back to being sliced up after having just recently healed from KRV. Oh well, who needs skin when I've got plenty of scar tissue?

Tomorrow starts O-Ringen, both logging and blogging, and I've got lots to say! So set your eyes to RIVETED.

Not really a race, per se, since we were all pretty knackered, but meant to be a full course that we could run and try to do everything right and put in a strong navigational effort. I ran with a 1:15000 map, which was really nice. Some parts of the forests are really really nice to run on, and the marshes are really, really tough to run in. Was kind of slow in the control circles (as if that's new) and made a few mistakes because of losing contact mid-way through the leg, but overall, despite the utter fatigue, my navigation was pretty well, especially given the level of detail at 1:15000. I haven't gotten to be on very many 1:15s in Finland at all, so this was great!

Morning relay training, which consisted of four different courses and mass starts with forking with the rest of the team. The first one was tough to get into the map since there seemed to be a lot detail, but the next three went much better as I was able to start recognizing the features vs. the map. There's lots of little micro-route choices here, since the visibility is good you can usually see where you want to go, its just difficult to figure out a way to get there effectively. Lots of little steep ups and downs can potentially make it better to go around rather than go straight, if it allows you to run quickly.

Was real tired by the end too when picking up some flags, and I suspect almost everyone stopped for a blueberry fuel break.

We're all pretty darn tired, so the afternoon workout was just a simple relocation exercise. Our partner would run into the box without us looking at the map and then we'd have to relocate to the control. It went pretty well for me, but I find it hard not to at least follow where I'm going in my head from my last known point to try and map out where I am. I can't imagine that's entirely the idea since during a race if I need to relocate I won't know that sort of thing.

Because I'm lost. If I know where I'd gone, I don't think I'd be lost....

Morning simplification training on a much nicer map than yesterday. Aimed to work on spotting the big round hills the controls were on and having good direction towards them. Quite easy control locations but it was good to stay mindful of focusing on the big features and seeing them from far away, especially useful on this 1:15 map.

Then a super huge rainstorm and thunderstorm came along and got everything real wet. I didn't know they had thunderstorms around here. I wish mid-Finland had more.

A little bit of compass work in the afternoon in another set of nice forest outside Stromstad. Unfortunately my compass is still kind of lacking, but getting better. As long as its getting better, I'm happy! I found again the difference on this map between the Kallio and the open land to be difficult to spot, and missed a control by going too high after not recognizing which is which. Plenty of rock faces that are not mapped as cliffs as well. Hence the importance of good compass, I suppose!

While I try to write up my previous posts from Kainuun Rasti Vikko, I thought at least I'd try to use this spotty internet to keep up to day on current sessions.

I spent all of yesterday travelling by train plane train car to Stromstad, Sweden, for a mini WOC 2016 camp with Team Canada Junior. After a mega-long day, we still had time to head out to one map for a bit of 1:15000 training. In general, I really quite like the tops of the hills in this terrain, quite open, pretty runnable, some Kallio, which is familiar, but I find the contours to be a little tricky and a lot more cliffs than the map seems to suggest. I don't agree with the map on that!

Unfortunately, though, the bottoms of hills are ugly and thick and ugly and apparently full of ticks.

Focusing these few days on keeping my focus on the simple things I have to do right. I wrote down plenty of things to think about from KRV and am slowly implementing them as I can. The mental focus was rock-bottom at KRV so any progress on that front will be positive.