Training Log Archive: ColmM

with CillínC

Middle Distance on Magilligan
Gorgeous area. Forgot that it was this nice.
Started well enough, and was almost on cillín pretty quickly but let myself get distracted by him a few time on 7, 8 and 9 and lost valuable seconds on each. Maybe ~30-40 seconds between them.
To number 10 it was reasonably straight forward, and a but long, so mainly running. I went to catch Cillín, which was fine, but then he veered left early, I knew he was wrong, so I continued on my route, but I soon came to a path, which I took to be mine, assuming Cillín had actually been right, and we were further than we were. Hit number 1. Realised quickly, but as I got nearer to 10, I turned in early too, and lost yet more time. Easily 45secs lost on the control. 11, I just wanted to make up for it, but I hardly read my map, and messed up, another 30 seconds. The next section went well. And up to 15 I was clean again, but a bit slow.
16 I wanted to take a nice running route, and went wide left through less hills, and onto a path at the end of the leg. But the flat section turned out to have poorish runnability early on, and I was unwilling to turn off the path at the right spot, because the terrain looked bad again, and had to loop back. This meant that the extra distance just became extra distance for the sake of it, and no speed advantage, so I lost a minute on this route... The final section was okay. Surprised that the big pole wasn't mapped at 19, threw me a bit, probably 20 seconds, and 21 appeared to be on a fence and not a small hill so I was a little thrown again, maybe 10seconds, but not too bad.

Overall the run was pretty poor. A lot of mistakes in hindsight. I was able for the terrain I think, because of early on, but let myself get thrown a bit. Finished 3mins down on conor, in 5th.
Also not fast enough, or strong enough at the moment. The others weren't faster really, but I can tell, I felt a weak.

Sprint Prologue
Found this really easy. It was really really easy. So I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have. The idea was cool, 2 loops, head to head start, but it was just running as I'd planned both loops, by number 2 on the first loop. Still good to be back running, and on a map. But I really struggled to run well. Legs were really feeling it, and I couldn't run at a nice pace. Really struggled.

The break between the races was short, but I used it pretty well. Rested a little, but still kept the legs moving around a bit. Got some protein in to me pretty quickly. The first race helped to really flush out my legs, and during the warm up for this I felt a lot better, and was looking forward to it.

Sprint Final.
A much better course than earlier with a very cool forest section in the middle of the course. Had a few misses in the forest, lost ~30secs total, not more anyway. But my flow was pretty good and I was planning ahead quite well. Felt confident in the forest. Was running better than earlier too, and when I finished the forest section I really opened up, and was able to pick up the pace a little. Nice through the last section, but it was pretty easy.

Came 2nd in the end, 30secs behind Shane Lynch, and just ahead of the main pack. This was a WOC Selection race, so that was a big positive. Sprint-o is still decent enough even though I've lost a bit of speed I think. Or I'm not running as well anyway. I'm not going for WOC, but it's really positive to know I'm not too far off making our team.

warm ups and downs mainly with jonny

Body still totally drained. But generally a lot better than yesterday.

Puke. Shit. Puke. Shit.

Shoulda run yesterday while I had the chance. On the bright side my calves are getting some kick-ass recovery time. And I'm having some really cool dreams.