Training Log Archive: Lizzie

Lordagskjappen

Wasn't hugely motivated to begin with but managed to get myself in some kind of semi race mindset by the start. Survived 50m into the forest until I put my foot down a hole in rocks and took a chunk out of my heel. Absolute fricken agony.
Actually, the race went ok. I was a bit with direction on 1 and 2 (blame the heel? ;) The long leg 5-6 was the main post race topic of discussion. I think I actually did it pretty well, just a little less fast than Sabine and Kine. Unfortunately I blew the good long leg by making mistakes on the following 7 and 8 :/ Was relatively smooth from there to the finish, with my once-per-race stuck-knee-deep-in-marsh moment(s) happening en route to 12 today. Only took 3-4s to get out this time.

Was worried to find what state my heel would be in when I took my sock off. Was expecting a chunk of flesh to be hanging off or something. Don't know if I was disappointed or relieved to find it was a pathetic little cut. But now I realise, it looks pathetic cos it's right on the bone - there isn't any flesh there to be hanging off. Anyway, point is: it hurts.

So a reasonable run. Disappointed to turn out 4 minutes behind Sabine, and no idea how the heck Andrine was 6 minutes faster than me. Maybe I wasn't moving as fast through the terrain as I thought!

My training motivation is struggling. As it often does when i have niggles and can't train as freely as i'd like :/

Here comes attempt no.20 or so at getting back into a s&c routine.

Relay. 4th day of racing. Went out in the lead after a good first leg from Jo. Overshot the 3rd control, on one of my fave earth walls. I swear they're like 30cm tall. Started suffering after the heathland and struggled to drag myself through to the finish.

C • Earth Walls 2

Found my Uncle and family in the arena before racing...which lead to a tempo pace run to the start.

hmm. Bit of a trail race to be honest. And yet I made a heck of a lot of basic errors. The first part was in the kind of forest where running straight through a white block is not necessarily the fastest. Then we crossed the road into an area where the white was super fast, yet going straight through green actually wasn't a bad option. Twice in this area I overshot controls to the extent that I bounced off tracks beyond...
After the spectator I had a better control of things and had a good final third of the course. Lost upwards of 6 mins on Tessa and Megan in the first part, and less than 1 min on them in the latter part.

After my sidestep in the finish yesterday, today's challenge presented itself in an elderly man in front of me who was struggling to get over the halebales on the final fence. Like really struggling. As I ran down toward the fence, he was lying spread eagle (sideways) across the top bale, and going nowhere. Luckily he managed to disengage himself just as I got there - and I managed to squeak through on the side of the bale without too much loss of speed, and without taking out either of the others who were waiting behind him.

Lucky break both days - there's probably nothing less forgivable in orienteering than a big bad elite taking out an elderly person in the finish chute!