Training Log Archive: martin(uk)

York City Race, Course A, Men's Vet, 4th.

York race is always good fun, and so was today. A bit of dead running early on, but then it was good technical stuff all the way round. A couple of legs later into the course had some river crossings with apparently 50/50 choices about which bridge to use, but I have a suspicion I made the wrong choice, both times. Certainly Simon's splits are better than mine on those legs. Will be interesting to see Routegadget.

C • Erm ... 4

Ludlow Urban, Course 2, Mens Vets.

Hadn't run at Ludlow before, but I had spent a while studying the map, because they kindly put it online before the race. Was having a reasonably good run, but two things caught me out, and cost me the win. First, I didn't spot the "over or round" choice on the long leg #15. All I saw were a couple of different ways of runnning through the centre of Ludlow (over the hill), when in fact the best route was probably round the town on a contouring road that avoided quite a lot of time.

My second error was a tricky one in the castle, where I only read the beginning of the control description (bridge), rather than all the control description (bridge/tunnel - underneath). So, a bit of wasted time spent on top of the bridge before realising and running down into the moat.

I only lost the race by 14 seconds (from Quentin), so frustratingly the 100 NUL points still eludes me. Still, he's M50, so I guess I'll get 50 UKOL points.

Urban Course 2 - Splits

Walkley Urban Race, MV.

I was organiser and wasn't sure whether I'd get a chance to run. However, it all seemed to be going smoothly, so I did.

Chesterfield Urban

Parkrun

Dorking Urban Race, Men Vet, 5th.

Pretty good technically, but quite tired after racing hard the last two days. 2.5 mins behind Dave Rollins, and 2 mins behind Tessa Hill, who were fastest on Men Vet and Womens Open.

British Relay Champs, Holmbury, M40, 2nd leg, winners!

Based on yesterday's results I shouldn't have been in the top M40 team, but Charlie's injury meant I got promoted. Mark took first leg and came back 3rd, 2-3 mins down (it turned out he'd had the long 5.8km gaffle, while others had had 5.5 or 5.6km). The top women's elite teams (inc SYO) were just behind him, so I knew I'd see them if I made mistakes.

Objective was just to run cleanly, check codes very carefully, and give Bill a nice lead to take into third leg. It went pretty much to plan. Control #1 was on a path so I kept it really simple and just ran round tracks to it. #2 was a pit that could have been tricky, but was reasonably visible on approach. Somehow ran past #7, which looked like it was just after a path bend, but actually the path didn't seem to bend, so I ran too far. Lost perhaps 30 secs. #10 was in a gully and well hidden, so lost another 15 secs, but apart from that it was easy through the last few. Back first on M40, and well ahead of the Womens teams. Job done.

Bill ran a fast leg, so we had a comfortable victory in the end. After TVOC got DSQd, our second M40 team got 2nd place as well.

Event: British Orienteering Championships 2013
 

British Champs, Winterfold, M45L, 9th.

Normally technical mistakes involve not finding the controls, but today's technical mistake was not seeing that there were far better route choices for the long leg than the one I took. I got caught in some bramble at the end of the leg, but that only accounts for 15-30 seconds, whereas I was over 4 minutes slower that I should have been (18 mins vs 14 mins).

Apart from a slight miss looking for a rhodo bush in a sea of rhodo bushes at #7, I was pretty clean technically, and actually felt happy with my run, until I looked at the splits and saw I should have been much better. Four minutes quicker would have been 4th, which I'd have been happy with.

I need to do the basic things, like planning ahead, better!

To start

Course 13 - Splits