Training Log Archive: W

Day after double-sprint run. I was going to do a long run, but my legs were more tired than I thought, so it was cut short. BUT! I did find a nice new trail to run on that makes a new-ish loop, with the exception of my 500 meters where I have to brush through stinging nettles. That part is less fun.

Finnish Champs Qualification! So, in Finnish champs there is a qualification and final. I think its 13 people that make the final from each heat, and there's 4 heats. Last year I was 8th in my heat. Obviously the goal was to make the final, but, that middle of the pack area from last year didn't make me too confident this year, I figured I still had to run pretty hard, because, come on, I'm in Europe. There are like 300 better orienteers to every 1 Canadian orienteer.

I somehow ended up with a pretty late start, which meant I started with other hotshot who freakin' took off on the word go. Just, flying. I find, these days, that I really want to get a grip on what I'm doing before really really accelerating, and their mad dash to the start triangle maybe gave them a 5-10 meter advantage.

So, with my calm, calm demeanor and easy pace, I headed off to making a mistake on number 1. I wasn't supremely confident going downhill on an open forest hillside, so I decided to stay along the top and then go around the building. But, to go where I want to go, I had to go around the building, and then hard right down some tiny tiny stairs and under an underpass, but, I didn't realize this until I looked to my right, saw it, and kept going another 10 meters onto the terrace one level above where I needed to be. Thus, I had to stop, turn around, and head down the stairs.

Now already I'm on the back foot a little. I'm hardly certain if I can qualify at all if I don't make mistakes, and I just made a 10 second mistake. I wouldn't say I panicked, but I really didn't feel like I could mess around. And, really, I didn't, the little mistake pulled me back into reality, amped up my focus, and I stayed very sharp up top, doing lots of planning, glancing at my exits and future controls, reading control descriptions, and not smashing into anyone else (though there were some close calls.

After crossing the road into a little housing estate, I noticed there were a few fake fences which kept me from getting trapped in a few places, and, again, there were brief stretches where I had the time to read ahead, know where I was going, and anticipate more traps. But, given my earlier mistake and this being qualifiers, I couldn't dare tone down the pace.

And then, the ultimate fear, controls 15-19 were basically deadrunning across on open field. I had glimpses of 6-7 Yannick clones turning on the jets here, putting on 20-25 seconds on me and knocking me out of the final, so I still pushed pretty hard right into the finish. There's no doubt that effort in the qualifier hurt my performance for any race I would do in the afternoon, A-final or not.

Even more regret came when I printed off my splits. Rank - #1. Whoops.

Soon after Yannick came in and bumped me down, but I ended up qualifying second in my heat, 11 seconds behind Mr. Michiels. I could have run 1:05 slower and still qualified.

I have little doubt that many of those top guys cruised a bit in their run, and obviously I could have too. The problem is the only other sprint I've ever done with a Qualifier is WOC or a World Cup, and in both cases I absolutely need to run my balls off to even have a shred of hope of qualifying. And its happened once in 7 tries. I just can't switch off. This is a race. And sometimes I feel I'm doing a disservice to the race organizers and other competitors by not giving it my best effort. I regret not slowing down to save some energy, but on the other hand, I don't.

And regardless of if they slacked off, I was 12 seconds back of Yannick. Nice.

C • Crappy choice of control description 1

Sprint final time! This was weird. I was starting at nearly the end of the race with all the hotshots. I really felt out of place. If it were me I'd almost rather start in the middle. I like the middle. Its comfortable.

Anyway, I was definitely feeling the morning race. Maybe at this point it was all psychosomatic, I don't know. But the fact that SSL wouldn't accept my proof of having lived in Finland since the beginning of the year and thus making me ineligible for a medal was a little comforting. I was just focused on having a race I can be proud of.

Unfortunately, focusing on a positive attitude meant I failed to focus on two important things: 1) Artificial fences. 2) Dots in the control circles when it was unclear. (I'll get to moaning about this one later)

Yes, my brain had not gotten into "artificial fence mode", which put me on the back foot halfway through leg 1 where my plan was cut off halfway through by a fence. Fortunately, I was able to correct without going much off course, but then I again got busted by one on two as well. So, probably 10-15 seconds lost there on slightly inefficient route choices.

Like in qualification this made me extremely vigilant for a while. My speed was not high, but my brain was working really well and I did almost everything right, though really starting to have a tough time physically by the run through.

After the run through, though, it retrospectively all went wrong. And I'll rant about this after, so you don't have to read it. Needless to say, I lost some time on the control after the run through, and it annoys me. I think I lost a bit more time on the next few controls with a bit of hesitations, a loss of confidence where I felt the need to check my control description and mis-read the number, and then another hard run across an open field where I think I probably lost time to speed stars.

In reality - Over the last 3 controls (~300m?), I lost only 1 second to Mr. 7:59 3000m. WOW! Really proud of that. I even won the dead straight running leg through the stadium 3/4 of the way through the race. Hot diggity dawg!

Last year I was 31st at Finnish sprint champs. This year I was 12th. I wasn't the top Terä guy, which would have been really nice (down 7 seconds to Antti). But I was well ahead of the rest of the boys in the final. This last month has transformed my position on the team as "That Canadian who is not so great at orienteering", to "The sprinter". Which... uh... is sort of an improvement!

I can't help but wonder if things would have been a bit different if I had taken it easier in the qualifier, and without those few mistakes. I regret missing this opportunity because I really felt free of expectation, and next year I'm not have that luxury. But, whatever, I was 12th! 55 seconds behind Yannick, which would have put me top 30 at WOC. I've always seemed to race quite well in September, and I'm really happy with this performance. On the Finnish sprint list I'm now 18th, since I finally have 5 ranking sprint results.

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Winge time. I've said before that I often get frustrated with the seemingly intentionally mis-leading control descriptions that appear to be trendy in sprinting now. I've experienced races where I've felt the course planner chose an illogical (though technically correct) description choice that feels like its meant to be confusing or misleading. That seemed a little like the case at #14 of this course. Here's the control location:



Now, before the race, I scanned through the control descriptions looking for the usual traps, main if there were any "inside corners" of anything. There weren't. So I didn't worry too much. As I ran up the hill from 13 I check the control description for 14, and it said this:



In the context of the middle of sprint race, I really and truly had no idea what this meant. I couldn't remember that that's the symbol for trail (duh). I considered the possibilities and since I really wasn't sure where the control was, I took the south route which was slower, but if the control happened to be on the outside, I wouldn't be trapped like if I took the other route. Naturally, the control was on the inside of the fence, so I had to go around and lost 16 seconds on the fastest time, and 9 seconds on Yannick.

I simply don't think that saying the control was at the "SW end of path" is in any way helpful or informative, even though it may be technically correct. It feels like a sneaky way to artificially create route choice and time loss.

Now, to be fair, they said before hand that there would be purple dots in the middle of the circle showing where the control is. And I had a magnifier, so I could have zoomed in to see it. BUT, this was the ONLY control that had the dot, so by that point I had sort of stopped using it. So, I can't say I didn't have an alternative opportunity to make the right decision.

Also, that corner of the fence is not normally closed, there is an opening, but they tapped it off (effectively making it an artificial fence), so maybe then by definition you can't call that a fence corner?

But really, I think everyone would have expected that description to be "Fence - Inside Corner". And seriously the control was tucked RIGHT into the corner. When I ran past it, if I was using touch free, I would have accidentally punched it because it was right on the corner. I could have easily reached through the tapes and punched it manually. It was that corner-y. Why choose a weird description like what they did?

Still, it was a really fun race. I give props to Finns for trying to jazz up sprinting around their towns that are generally all the same.

C • Congrats 12

Alas, I have no more sprint training to do before Finnish Champs tomorrow, so I just went for a run and through in a few strides while I was at it. My goodness, I sure do accelerate slowly. I would eventually get up to a fast speed during the strides, but it took an awful long time. Its one of my biggest weaknesses when it comes to sprint orienteering. The less I have to stop the better. Though, on the other hand, its not like touch-free SI was really marvelously better, as did equally poor at the WOC sprints.

Maybe it would be better if you had to do something else at each control, like.... shoot a soccer ball... play tetris....or something.

Another brisk sprint training around the university. Not the most difficult map in the world, but lots of short legs meant it was good practice to stay on task, focus on the important things to do. Like... watch the ultimate frisbee practice outside Agora. Yeah. That's what I meant.

Legs are still pretty fatigued, so my idea for this week is to alternate between rest days and slightly faster sprint training today. So, Monday I grabbed some Keskusta maps headed to the city center to do a nice training made on the map that Juha made. 3 x 1.5-ish k or so, which I ran at brisk but not fast pace.

This map would be super nice if there just weren't quite so many fences. Its a common thing with Finnish towns to have things block off so that usually sprint courses enter a little residential area and then exit the same way. Then you run down the street to the next one and repeat the process. Unfortunately, that's what downtown Jyvaskyla is like in a lot of places. Which is not too exciting. There is some more interesting multi-level stuff over near the bus station. So that was cool.