Training Log Archive: martin(uk)

Harvester relays. Leg 4, SYO Mens A Handicap team. 1st.

Arrived by 9:30pm despite being in Perth only 5 hours earlier, but the journey down from Scotland went to plan, so nothing to stress about. Felt reasonably confident in my night orienteering ability, despite making a right mess of the British Nights earlier this year.

Tried to get some sleep between 10pm and 2am, but only managed to actually be asleep for about half that time. Mark and Dave ran to plan on legs 1 and 2, and came back with stories of controls being hard in the bracken, but otherwsie no problems. Charlie was a bit longer on leg 3 than he should have been, but we were certainly still amongst the leading runners when I went out at about 3:20am. I knew I'd have Tom Beasant not far behind me, who was still waiting for Dave Schorah to get back (his light had failed).

Took the first control very carefully, and had no problem. Route to #2 was back out the same way as I'd gone in, and I passed Tom going the other way about 2 mins behind me, as I'd expected. #2 was tricky but I spiked it. #3 was in a very shallow re-entrant in some semi-open, but also reasonably close to a ride junction. I thought I'd got the angle right as I went in from the juntion, but as I came into a re-entrant no control. Started looking around, perhaps a bit further in, perhaps a bit higher up, perhaps a bit lower down, still nothing. Headed back out to the junction and passed Tom again, who'd now caught me up. Back in more carefully, but still no control. Getting a bit concerned now, but really sure I was in the right patch of map, so started looking a bit more carefully behind trees and clumps of grass, in case it was well hidden and I just kept missing it. Eventually ended up right down the bottom of the re-entrant, on a track, and decided to just run all the way up the re-entrant. Bingo! Found the flag, probably 20-30m further up than I had looked at any time in the last 5 minutes. Grrr.

Carried on, feeling a bit annoyed, but determined to attack all future controls really carefully to make sure I didn't lose any more time. Didn't feel like I was running especially fast, but my watch told me I was doing 6mins/km, so I didn't let it worry me. No problems on the remainder of the course, especially as it was getting light from about 2/3rds of the way round.

Tim and Dave ran well on legs 5 and 6 to keep us in contention with the leaders, and Nick B had a flyer on last leg to overtake DEE and SLOW and get us back into the lead.

C • Good effort! 2

C • You mean there was actually a re-entrant there at all?? 1

Event: Harvester Relays 2013 - Longmoor Camp
 

Yoga.

Halifax Urban, UKOL, MV, 4th M45.

A bit of a race to get there in time, after being in the BOF Board meeting all day, but I managed to clear my head and focus on getting the navigation right and picking optimum routes. When I finished I thought I'd done that pretty well, though I'm still feeling sluggish in my running.

Turns out I made a stupid mistake running from the last control to the finish, when I'd basically put the map away. I thought I just had to reverse the route back out of the last control, turn left twice and down the road to the finish. In fact there was an earlier left turn, which I completely missed. Doh!!

That mistake cost me 30 seconds, which dropped me from 1st M45 to 4th M45, and from 4th to 8th on the course.

C • Doh! 5

To Endcliffe Park

To start

Horwich Sprint Race Prologue, Lever Park, MV, 1st.

Certainly not a perfect run, but good enough. Felt much more sprightly than yesterday, when I'd just felt sluggish.

Horwich Sprint, Horwich town centre, MV, 1st.

Really intense complex urban sprint, with lots of butterfly loops. Great fun, and for once I managed to go to all the right controls, without navigating to any wrong ones. Only time loss was having to spend about 15 seconds standing still after the final butterfly loop looking for control 21 on the map.

Running much better than yesterday, despite being tired.

Prologue B - Splits

Mass Start Final A - Splits

Manchester to Salford Urban Race (NUL). MV, DSQ (missed #8).

Felt as though I was running slowly, and maybe I was. Navigation ok to start with, but then on the way to #8 I went round the dock and ran straight on to #9, without even realising. Also had a couple of problems with course crossovers, where I ended up navigating to the wrong control. The second of those (going to #31 instead of #34) will have cost me quite a bit. So generally a bit crap.

Course 2 - Splits

Warm up

Railsport 10km.

Felt pretty sluggish. Had spent the previous day umpiring cricket for about 5 hours, standing in the sun, so legs were pretty stiff.

Parkrun