Training Log Archive: Lizzie

travel to annecy

middle dist. 12th place. couple of tricky areas and an insane last km or so flat out down hill. more on it later hopefully. couple of mistakes and more importantly a couple of vital route choices missed.

Gregs version: nailed it

Over the top detailed version: later when i can be bothered.

C • YEWWWWWW!!! 8

low quality photos of maps from first 3 days are on fb now, along with multitudes of photos

Garr, I feel like i'm making more mistakes as the week goes on!

Today we had to catch a chair lift from the event centre up to where day 2 was, then run 200m vertically down the hill to the start. Was nice to have a race where the finish was well below the start!

Got the 1st control fine in open shrub, and 2nd was another leg running down and across the slope. I sighted what looked to be the open marsh that was my attackpoint and headed for it. unfortunately the different yellows on the map were pretty hard to pick out and it was actually the marsh right next to my control...resulted in me overshooting by a fair bit, and once i figured it out having to trudge back up through the undergrowth - 4mins lost on penny. Bad start!
Decided to concentrate on my nav from there, but in the tight controls 5-6-7 I thought i was navigating fine to 6, picked out the knolls, dropped into the control where i expected it...and found no.7! So checked my compass and headed down to 6, only to miss it! Once i finally got it i headed back to 7...and overshot it! couldn't believe myself! Saw the girl behind me at 7, but she'd just navigated from 5-7 too lol. so got ahead again.
8 was a long leg with not much choice, took it careful and was fine. 9 short leg up the hill, i got a bit too excited with the climb and ended up at the mens control 3-4 cuntours higher.
10-11-12-13-14-15 were good fun tearing down the mtn, then into the pines. 11 i slowed down too early (girl behind me caught me again). 12 was prob hardest leg of the course, dropping across the slope in the forest with no features (clearings were dodge as and hard to pick). Spiked it though. 13-14-15 got some good speed up :)
16-22 were in a blown up 1:5000 rocky part. But way more rocks than mapped, hard to pick up on what was what. 19-20 i should have just taken a bearing to the open and relocated up to the control. But tried to hit it straight off and lost 1.5-2mins on penny. did eventually relocate off the open and it was easy as pie from there.
Rest was good and it felt fantastic to be able to tear down the final hill into the last control and down the chute with no discomfort in my left ankle!

helena did 59.59, I can see 64 easily, even with 2-3mins of mistakes still in there.Pretty damn annoyed with myself. aim is to keep it careful and clean tomorrow, which is up on the nice open stuff below the glacial moraine.

Tane logged this so fair game :)
Dieter took us all up the Pinut via ferrata, pretty much rock climbing but up ready placed iron ladders. Awesome stuff, almost as cool as orienteering yesterday! Wasn't as tiring as i feared heading up, but trek down was tough on the knees and quads.
something like 600m vertically up, wicked stuff, lots of cool photos on fb.

Back down. Saw a marmot, which induced Chris and Em's hilarious stories about lemmings. So so funny. Some tough rocky bits on the walk down, felt a sorry for toby and his ankle

Amazing map, on the recent glacial moraine below the Vorab glacier at about 2600 altitude.
First 12 controls were in the rocks of the moraine and required full map contact. Took the first few carefully and despite losing a bit through hesitating to 2 i was happy with them. But then had a longer leg to 5 and despite following features carefully, i got confused with the patches of ice and water towards teh control and let it really mess me up. Despite relocating off good features twice i still missed the control, losing 4.5-5mins. Really not happy.
Lost another minute on 6 through lack of self confidence before getting back into it through the spectator.
Seem to have a slow split to 9, not 100% sure why. 11 I misread the cliffs and ended up one hill too low, had to reclimb 4 contours. Penny did exactly the same thing.
long leg to 14 was on nice open meadows with rocks, fast running and soft under foot. Followed the map until the two tarns, but then (and others did the same thing) the map seemed a bit warped and i was suddenly way too low?! Again had to reclimb 4-5 contours, losing 1.5mins on penny.
15-16 traversed a large patch of crevassed and pitted rock, which was cool but very hard to run across, took full concentration not to bail or put your foot down a hole. Hit 16 fine though the map within the circle was wrong it seemed.
19-23 was back in the moraine rocks. 19, 20 were fine but got a bit excited towards the end and took the wrong reentrant from a patch of snow. ended up at 22 instead of 21, easily fixed but gave away antoher minute. Had fastest split to 22 then haha.

Overall just far too many mistakes. Was 10mins behind the winner again (ida marie, so we're no longer close in time lol) and down to 19th place. Not happy with my race, but hard to complain given the amazing terrain :) hopefully can iron mistakes out in next few days

caught the cable car up to Crap, at 2200m. then had a good 20mins downhill to the start...so depressing to know you have to make up all that climb again!

So today was long distance with lots of climb and I started in a bad mindset - wondering where/if i should cut the course short. Unfortunately there wasnt any ideal place so i orienteering in limbo for 5 controls until i decided to bite the bullet and do the whole course. Didn't help that the first 5 controls were all downhill and heading away from the finish! 6-8 were around a hill at the bottom of tghe map, then 8-16 were tough up hill legs getting us the 600odd m or so back up to the finish!

Was kind of surprised then to catch up the girls 4 and 8mins ahead of me around no.7. Got ahead of them, but then made a silly error heading into 11, knew the control was 4 contours above the drinks stop, but got pulled low. Lost a min or so and took me all the way to 12 (long leg) to get ahead of them again. Ran (walked) with Louise from Canada for 13 and most of long leg to 14, then she dropped too low and I got ahead again.

9th overall though a couple of the fast girls wisely skipped todays race. Surprised with the result as i really just plugged through the course, never got into it. Legs will hate me tomorrow. Ida Marie got me by 12s today, I got her by 30s yday...this could get interesting!

the running part of getting to the start. all downhill :s

SOW day 1.

Having not raced properly since May this week is just about getting the rust out of my navigation and racing prior to WOC. With that in mind I started off very carefully. First 3 controls were on a 1:5000 blow up of a technical area, so ticked off features the entire way and got the controls ok.
Then out to the first of many track running legs to 4. Lost 2-2.5mins around the circle as I got sucked in to following a clearing further than it was marked on the map, then not listening to myself when I knew I'd overshot the control. Track to 5, gutsed it up the hill to 6 (130m climb). 7,8,9 all good.
Long leg to well i executed well but really it was a long road run with 2 route choices, and the control was 10m off the track at the end! 11 entered a bit early. 13 I read perfectly until the circle, then misinterpreted the knolls and reentrants, must have passed within 5m of the control! Relocated quickly but still 2.5-2mins gone.
Overshot 14 which must have been the smallest rock marked on the map! Bettina caught me here and we took slightly diff routes 14-15-16 but kept leap frogging each other. then 16-17-18-F was all road running. Bettina tried to get past in the finish chute, but I was having none of that, so we punched together.

Results will look like I tagged a ride with her cos my time's exactly 4mins slower than her which kinda sucks. But we were only together on the road run at the end!
Pleased with my run and result, At the back of a tight little group of times, 30s would get me in the top 5. And more pleasing,there's a gap behind me timewise. 9mins behind Helena though. i wasn't pushing it and there were mistakes, but I can't see 9mins! :)

Event: Swiss O Week
 

Travel.

Had a bit of an epic getting to Rome airport. Left home 3.5hours before my flight and by the time public transport got me there i made close of checkin by 2mins! (I can tell a long amusing story about this in person...)
Then had 2-3 hours waiting for Mike in Zurich as he missed a connection. Better than Toby, who was waiting 6 hours for us!
Eventually made it to Laax about 10pm, after stopping in what seemed to be the red-light zone of Chur for a 'burger' on the way. (and i don't mean 'burger' as in we actually stopped at a brothel...i mean the burger actually was just a pretty ave. meat patty and cheese, with salad and chips on the side, no bun in sight (apart from the pic on the menu lol))

Found the map. success!

Sprint around Garbatella. Such a sweet sprint area, so glad I finally made it to train there! The map (pixalated) is on fb along with my nightmare of a gps route. But still enjoyed it which i think shows how good the map is!
Incredibly complex residential area, and one of the rough areas of Rome according to Lorenzo lol. Set off the neighbourhood dogs going to one, scared the crap out of me! The map really lured you into running faster than you could deal with with all the uncrossable fences and identical looking buildings. So there's a lot of funny looking loops on my route where I found my intended route dead-ended.

Awesome awesome map. Worth visiting rome simply for Cervara di Roma and Garbatella (though I hear it has other attractions to?)

pizza afterwards was good too :)