Training Log Archive: ndobbs

O-Festivalen, Chasing Start!

Took me two-thirds of the first control to fold the map so as I could see the start triangle and the first control. I was running fastish, watching the terrain flow by and checking that the two guys ahead were looking at their maps. Blind faith. By the time I got within a hundred metres I had an idea what was going on... but again on the second leg I was following for lots of it, but took a better route coming into the control as the others had veered left. I slowed down to watch them, took a breather and punched just after. We had overtaken the people starting a minute or two ahead by this stage, but the pace was too much for me.
Bad route on the short fourth and then came the butterfly.
I hate butterflies. Veered right going to the 5th(9th,12th) control. Corrected, passing the 10th control on the way. No excuse for that mistake as visibility and runnability were excellent. 6789 I got fine, then made a balls of 10, perhaps because I had already seen it. Doh.
Maybe 2-3 minutes lost.
By 15/16 I was getting well tired. Trundled along to the 21st, nothing too exciting to report. Bad micro-routes and bad execution to the 22nd followed by a mistake in the circle. Not major but another couple of minutes lost.
Leaving the control, didn't see that the road crossing where the drinks were was ON a bridge (didn't notice the bridge on the map) so I crossed the road myself and missed out on a valuable drinks stop. Doh.
Really knackered by this stage... took a path route to 24 - in a middle I'd have gone straighter. Plodded. Running towards 26 with a couple of other guys.... I cut up to the control later taking a safer "easy" option which should even have been faster... except that I didn't understand one bit of the map and overshot left, losing nearly 2 minutes... Doh.

Took the spectator control very slow so as not to miss it :)
Walked back up the hill. Walk/jogged the next couple of controls, Then from 30 to the finish I decided to lead the guy who had appeared at 29... since he didn't particularly want to. Upped the pace a little (to a jog!) and navigated well. Nice way to finish the course. Pity about dying physically and the butterfly mistakes.

Didn't eat very well the day before. Wonder how big a difference that made. WC race was similar distance and won in 1h41. I might have done it in 2h30 for a little over 900 wre points. Not able for a classic yet. 2h08 would get a WC point (compared to 3h12 in the women's!!). Next year!!!

PS running fast for the first 27 minutes with HR in the high 180s.
PPS Garmin distance: 18.96km

O-Festivalen
Craft Cup H21E

Fun! Didn't orienteer too badly, despite only spiking 7 controls... I reckon total time lost to mistakes was around 5 minutes, so it could have been way worse. One big mistake of 1:30, stupid. One bad route, some bad lines, couple of zigzags. Actually, I thought the orienteering was relatively easy (for scandiland) with lots of good visibility... I could do it a lot better with practice. Only got help on one control.

It was mostly white forest and not too steep, unlike anywhere I'd been training in the past week. Winner ran 32... 37 was feasible, 35 with a little more training is definitely possible. HR didn't go over 191 until heading into the finish.

WC was on earlier in the day. I reckon orienteering similarly I'd have been somewhere around the 50 minute mark. Not great, not awful.

Garmin says I ran 5.71km

WC model course. not too fast, not too good. In hindsight, very useful to make a couple of the mistakes I made - had some very similar hill/cliff combinations in the weekend's races a couple of times which I dealt with much better.

As ever, I orienteer much better in race situation than in training...

Staviåsen, near Eidsvoll.

Nicer forest this, more ike Sweden, that is, much physically easier... still 5m contours but not so man of them, and less cliffs to cimb.

only one real mistake and the map was a little dodgy. easy day tday.

same time again cycling there and back

5*4
844m, 165 AHR, 4:44/km
1.06km, 168, 3.47
.98, 169, 4:06
.99, 166, 4:02
1.01, 169, 3:57

on trails in staviåsen, reading the map occasionally. uphills and doznhills...

almost 4hrs mowing a "lawn" earlier in the day... fun :)

legs a little rickety after, esp windscreenwiper rt knee

to abnd from staviasen plus 4*2recovery during the intervals

ulfsbakk trail run... time was limited as i had to pack bags, catch a bus to catch a train... and it´s a tough place to orienteer... to i settled for a run, not especially fast but at least I was moving.

vestmark syd
Larvik

Cycled there and back (10km total?). Hid the bike and bag and went orienteering in sporadic rain. Up till now had glorious sunshine.

Nicer orienteering thqn the previous two days, probably the same amount of climb but spread out a bit more. Couple of mistakes near the circle.

Conversation of the day was with a 90 year old woman in a big raincoat who wondered whether I needed help as I studied the map at a trail junction looking for a place to hide the bike. She haad excellent English, knew how to read a map and was out for her daily constituional.

running from bike to the start.