Training Log Archive: Cruachan

Awake and out early around town (to watch the marathon) - mostly off-road. Felt tired from yesterday but also relaxed.

Mostly before but some afterwards as well...

Blue course on Upper Star Posts... ran it hard and felt tired n rather drained (lots of training this week?). Pretty clean, but map was a little out of date which confused things. A few misses, mostly with vegetation - inlcuding 2 (map) and 11 (lucky-thicket dip). Overall, a decent blow-out in similar-ish terrain to next week.

After the event, went back out into the terrain on the 1:15 map for further route choices, contour intertpretation, bearing work.... concentrated on the hilly and brackeny parts (a la Cannock).

Nice jaunt around the village - chilly but with clear blue skies. Helped shift the groggy feeling. And then a 5 min jog after circuits.

The usual - 20 x 60 secs, 20 x 30 secs with a run in between each station. Felt pretty good this morning.

Fairly lumbering run to College - felt tired n drained so no hard session this evening.

After waking in such an exhausted n groggy state, it was so nice to get out for a decent lunchtime (!) run that also made me feel so much better as well. It's clearly what I need to do.... helped that it was such a lovely day and enjoyed the off-road trot around the Histon Feast loop.

Awake during night and then really struggled this morning on run to work - lower legs have swollen up and am feeling generally drained from the weekend. Took Cannock map with me to start preps for BOC.

Am home again - really struggled with tiredness and aching limbs. Legs even more swollen!

In spite of late return last night, managed to get up at 5 and out for a decent easy/steady run around town, knowing I had Governors in the afternoon/early evening.... And just as well as it turned into a 3 hour monster meeting!

Interesting weekend... some good points (some legs in the Middle) but more bad - performance in the Middle overall and speed and occasional errors in the Sprint. I guess I have to accept that age is creeping up on me (Grrrr!) and that I cannot expect to race at that pace without the necessary speed training. I havent done any Sprint-race training, so what should I expect? Am concerned by the 2 big errors in the Middle - both of which took place on 'easier' legs when I was running too fast and acting too smug? Lessons to learn:

* need to train more (physically) and more intensely
* need to use more competitions to prepare for big races and be able to switch off in them to focus on key skills (attack points!)
* need to travel more to get into specific terrain - can this be done in/from the south? (there was only one other southerner in the M40 race and only 10 (mostly lowly placed) in the 21E race (excluded Craney from this given he's only lived there for a few months!)

Lots of food for thought and to digest...