Training Log Archive: ndobbs

C • hmmm... 3

eGames Day 1
Espoo
15km

Didn't sleep or train enough the past week and it showed. Long and tough, too many paths! Picked a banana at the third last control.

Quickroute. Damn, I thought adding split times would also add circles on the published map.

Nice the organisers were still smiling when I finished. As was I.

Worst WRE pts in a long time :)

My nipples are allergic to my HS o top.

in and out of town in the evening

Still tired, still doing maths.

Either I shouldn't run tomorrow or running tomorrow is exactly what I need.

into town to work with Mike

buffet lunch and buffet dinner

too much maths for a tired neil

http://www.forsvarsmakten.se/upload/48701/WMOC%20R...

Must be all the training last week!

couple of hills, pre-breakfast

To Meilahti, should have an appointment for a nose-job sometime in November.
Took a spin to Seurasaari, did some maths, then some more down at the oh so lovely Cafe Regatta, before a guest researcher arrived for dinner and a beer.

C • nose job 3

Rännarberget, Box, Sibbo

Quickroute. Can you work out where the controls were?

Fun terrain, really nice orienteering. I didn't enter the main event (6.3km Pasi did some ass-kicking <36mins) by the normal deadline, and didn't feel like splashing out 34 euros for a late entry, so ran the 5km kuuntosuunnistus course.

Mistakes on 2 and 7, both unnecessary. Mostly good otherwise, need to get out on this terrain more. It's lovely.

Mr Aaltio ran 34:56, but I beat Mr Töyrylä. Splits

Unknown unknowns... don't read this till after breakfast... three weeks ago, a guy in the club was out orienteering, fell and bashed his thigh on a rock. It was sore but not broken, no big deal. Except over the coming days it swelled up until a point where, if I got the story correctly, he lost feeling in his leg and decided a trip to the emergency department was in order. Apparently deep inside the hamstring was hurt, fluid was building up and not escaping.They stuck a needle into his hamstring to try to release the fluid to no avail. Next up, scalpel, a nice slice the length of his thigh, immediate problem resolved ("if you'd come in a day later we'd have had to amputate"). Then stitch it all back together, except it was still swollen, so the skin was too tight, so tie the skin over the bulging steak with shoelaces, gradually draw them tight... Two weeks later, release the patient.

The body normally copes so well.

C • compartment syndrome 4

Ran a roundabout route to Kivikko with T, and ran last year's IR course there, except he ran the autumn one and I had an April one...

quickroute with all the wrong controls. No major mistakes, and mad trenches, but a little scared if Egames will be similar but at 1:15.

to/from kivikko

Running date with a former JWOC winner. Seven or eight hills, my one, the evil stairs one, the ski-jump one... repeatedly.

Getting excited about training this winter.

Better late than never? Some WOC Middle Q pics.

Went to Paloheinä after work to help club with intro to O.

They put on a bunch of courses for women only (the men have army?), don't advertise much, had maybe 150 people sign up this year in groups of thirty or forty. This group had a theory class yesterday, today they got to try it out, then on Monday they go to Iltarastit.

So today there was no group instruction or anything, they had the theory yesterday. There were twelve controls on four maps, lettered A through L. First woman does A, second B, etc, by the time you reach woman thirteen, number 1 is long gone. They go out, find a control, come back, get another map and go for another control. After doing that a few times they go and get two or three controls at a time. Our role (about eight of us) was to stand around and check they knew what they were doing, get them started in the right direction, I don't think we were hugely useful except to build confidence.

It seemed strange to me that we only spoke to them before they went control hunting and not about what happened on the previous control. It meant I didn't know how much of a clue the person I was talking to actually had...

Anyway, interesting ideas...

Whatever happened to Poland in the Relay at WOC?

C • 3rd member 4

work and town

6 shrinking hills

Crossed two professors, separately, as I was running; they were cycling to work.

Suunto height readings are quite funny. Maybe I should try collecting more satellites, or putting it in the back of my shoulder instead of front.

Meilahti and work

Damn hirvikärpäsiä! I seemed to run through nests of them occasionally.


And skin ailment is trying to return.

C • In other words... 5

Neitvuori

Again a big mistake on 4. Guh. Fantastic terrain, great views from on top!

SM Ultralong terrain.

Ugh, two huge mistakes, one on 4, the other in the corridor. Pooh.

Had to cut some controls at the end to make it back only ten minutes late.

C • maps 2

A swim, a wander around Anttola, and back for more.

Still made a few mistakes. Can I blame only getting to bed at 1am last night, and not really sleeping the 6.5 hours I was in bed?

C • getting sleep 4

Night-O Neitvuori, 'near' Mikkeli.

One big mistake at no. 9. Otherwise, nice.

Went to see a play (Passengers) in town after work.

Training weekend in Mikkeli coming up!

wet

Good luck pitching this to CUSAI:
"World University Ski Orienteering Championships will be reality"

C • CUSAI 6

wet

Edit: Music stuff posted, still have to write up Saturday's 'race', but in the meantime, on texting and driving.

commute

Flow commute

District Relay Champs, 4th.

Lynx and Bostrom were out to win, but other clubs didn't seem to have their strongest teams.

I was doing this on not enough sleep, so was hoping to not have a bad run more than to have a good run. Anyway, I did enough of a warm-up to feel alive at the start.

The first few controls went fin, not high speed but safe and almost smooth. By 6 I was getting tired, but still going ok. 7 I should have gone straighter instead of incorrectly trying to contour, went too far around and probably lost 30s. 8I chose the lower route, upper was probably faster as the runnability going down was not good. Not at all definite coming in to the control. Slow leaving 8, sign things are falling apart, but take a good route (via the sheep) on the longer leg to 9 and execute it fine. Then 10 was short and easy, almost get it right but don't have confidence when I stop 30m before and slightly to the left of the control, I decide the control isn't where it is because I don't see the knolls, check the hill to the left and come back, 1minutelost. 11 I was a bit shaky, but ok. 12 was ok. 13 was the bad one. Normally when strong I can do this fine, just run in the right direction and use the big features, easy peasy... ish... anyway, I decide to go for the ride, but then change my mind after 50m, and then go roughly straight, but end up going down the wrong re-entrant(?!) and crossing the marsh at the wrong angle and ending up 150m from where I ought to be. I realised immediately, but was slow, not fighting, to correct it, and hesitant coming to 13. 2+minutes. Then I thought of Anto waiting (and Tapsa, but I was unsure whether he was going to run) and told myself to fight... pushed for the last km and three controls, no problems with the easy enough navigation.

Anto and Tapsa picked up a bunch of places. I should have done better. I do need fighting practice.

Flow.

Siesta was too long, arrived as Public Enemy had just finished.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor wasn't doing much by way of music when I stopped by, so wandered, checked out a bit of Orphan Fairytale, not bad, girl with synth seems in vogue.

Of Monsters and Men were solid, recognised maybe two of their songs, certainly one! Maybe I should become a fan.

Bat for Lashes... background music plus strong singer, british (half Pakistani) girl with a high voice. Quite mesmerising, but I was never totally convinced. Left halfway through.

Kraftwerk. 3D. !! This was quite a show. It was worth seeing just for the first two minutes, to see part of music history, with the iconic four (bald) men standing in front of their control panels and a big screen behind. The music wasn't bad, sometimes catchy, sometimes monotonous electronic, with all sorts of industrial idealised imagery behind and projected out in front, thanks to everyone wearing 3D glasses. We are robots, Auotbahne, Chernobyl Harrisburg Sellafield Fukushima (a sign of a partial update?!), 12345678, lots of numbers, then Deutsche Bank FBI Scotland Yard CIA control your data memory (strangely topical). Plus Das Model and Tour de France which contrast with romantic imagery. It worked very well as some sort of art installation.

We left three minutes before the end to pitstop en route to see

Grimes. Girl with synth. Fun, I'm not sure why but I liked it. Good way to finish, except when it was over the food places had all closed.

Flow commute

District Champs Long, near Karjaa. Nice terrain, good map, though laser printed at 1:10.

First half went ok, bar a mistake at 2 I don't quite understand, must QR. Second half was a struggle, or maybe just a whimper.

More later, uploading gps to download it again.

The route doesn't look disastrous, but I wasn't in fighting shape. http://www.resultfellows.com/reittiharveli/gadget/...

Oh, I met a new nasty Finnish bug halfway through, the Herhilainen. My poor calf.

A 1h siesta and back to find my Flow.

Austra, just caught a song or two before the end, seemed good.

Jens Lekman, great. And the violinist is terribly cute. I said hi to her and her pianist boyfriend afterwards. The show ended abruptly, and apparently is the exact same set as a friend saw in Brooklyn with the same song intros. After a request early on, he said he only took requests in tattoo form. It seems like they enjoyed it, but maybe it was just a day at the office. Cool to see once, but maybe not a whole lot better than a CD. Or... a two hour set might be better.

Didn't catch too much Cody Chesnutt, but he was good.

My Bloody Valentine, despite their origins I didn't know their music at all. After two songs it was sooooo loud we had to move away, even with earplugs, holy skit. I might check out their music sometime...

Nick Cave was excellent. I wasn't expecting what it was, didn't know his music. Songs with devils and scary bits, one or two boring sentimental songs, but the band was wild, not often you see 60yo fiddlers throwing bows 20m up in the air.

Didn't check Beach House, time for bed. Don't know what I missed.

C • Bad Seeds 2

Home from Flow

Finding my Flow Festival in Finland.

I and Ville Ahonen were good, caught the last few songs of the act. He's also quite the dancer. At one point he was writhing, his back against a small tree. I think he must have been inspired by acjospe.

Kendrick Lamar. Fail.
Cat Power, lasted one song, expected better.
Alicia Keys, not my favourite music, but decent

Plus some random dj stuff around and about and some french guy throat singing, except he spent most of his time telling the sound engineer to add reverb, and more reverb, and more, and then, not that much, tone it down a little.

Left shortly after midnight, after all I had a race to run. And I only had half a beer all night, there was only one bar selling non-heineken beer, and it was impossible to take it out of the bar area.

to/from work, shorter route because I was late...

still nearly stopped to give some tips with a running (lack of) style that was soooo painful to see, but by the time I caught up with her I could see empty, painless trail ahead, so I continued on my merry way...

into town
taxied home because of wild thunderstorms.

to/from work

Calves sore after yesterday, not sure if it's more from running on the balls or from the whopping 150m of climb... either way I need to get back training.

work

6 hill loops

nice day again.

Last night I tried going out for a run, but the headache prevented me. Headache persisted for large parts of today too, had me worried about the big fat tick I found on Wednesday. Seems to have cleared up now, I hope.

"My friend came 5th in the World Games in orienteering."

"Is that like World Championships?"

"No, it's like the Olympics but for sports that are too unpopular."

Great advertising. I wonder what it costs?

Terrain for the WRE on Aug 31st: http://omaps.worldofo.com/index.php?lat=60.1898949...

After Ali's performance in Cali I couldn't not go for a run. Twice up by the ski jump hill, sun was shining horizontally on the hilltop.