Training Log Archive: rcro

Bath urban race. 7.2km long. Didn't really notice much of the climb apart from at the start.

Not running very fast - still aching a lot from Thursday/Saturday, but going fairly steadily.

Left 7 for 11 so took east route without much thought when the west route was at least as good. Through the tunnel may have been better on 11 - I went up the steps. Over the bridge and along the canal to 14 seemed best.

Caught out on 15 - not sure that "above a canopy" is a valid control description - but it was clearly visible and didn't cost me more than a few seconds.

Went straight on 22-23 when south out of control and along river was shorter - didn't see the uncrossable line continuing along road. Managed to slightly overshoot turning for 24.

Put good effort in up hill after road crossing but surprised just how far it was east to 27.

Was quite nice, and weather was good - not running as well as I would have liked but I probably wouldn't have been much faster if I wasn't tired. Only real criticism is from a publicity perspective - web address printed on the bibs was wrong.

http://www.strava.com/activities/187926465/overvie...

Event: BOK Blast
 

Event: Chairmans's Challenge and Barbecue
 

Last FoD parkrun for a while. Still achy from Thursday, and having to prepare for the possibility of going around Highmeadow Woods 3 times after - planned to take it easy. Then, Tom, who I finished just behind last week, said with some confidence that he was aiming for sub-20 so I decided to try and stick with him - so it turned into a fairly hard run.

Got to 1k marker matter of steps behind Pete Ward.

Didn't feel as good a run as last week but the time was pretty close. After all the rain would estimate it at 20-30s slower than last week so I think it's a pretty good result. 16th place, in a record largest ever attendance, so 1 better than the last two!

Arrived late so didn't have time to salt up much. Suffered for a few hours afterwards.

http://www.strava.com/activities/187447582/overvie...

Putting out and checking controls on western side of Highmeadow Woods.

Collecting eastern controls.

Seems nobody took what I considered to be the obvious route to clear them all. I estimated that I would have done 50 mins, but it should have been possible for some to clear in 45. Only two cleared - Joe in 55, Andy Stott in 59, both appreciating that their control orders weren't efficient.

As is the case with NGOC maps, need a lot of updating. Might happen one day, as Pat has plans for using HM for something bigger in 2016.

Lots of police on the bridge when heading back. And police cars parked on every overbridge. Anybody would think something was going on.

Westbury Harriers - short sprint efforts in pairs.

Hard session - particularly with having to turn around half way. Roughly 12 efforts per 6 min block. 3 blocks.

Pairs mixed each time - with a junior coach first, then Pete, then a lady who normally does 18 min 5ks - nice a sociable and everybody worked well together giving encouragement. Still a hard session!

Should be quite relevant to the running I do, but in the very short term, suspect walking to work tomorrow will suffer! Thinking of (trying to) take it easy at parkrun on Saturday - I may well be going out around Highmeadow Woods three times afterwards as helping check and collect controls and possibly going out during the score as well.

http://www.strava.com/activities/186636602

Nobody else turned up today so planned to stick on the tarmac - turns out to have been wise based on how overgrown and nettly path behind church was in places. Got to edge of Coalpit Heath just at the same time as a running group started but seems my 4:40 ks was enough to drop them pretty quickly.

Picked up the pace a lot for the last 5k and put in some good efforts up both sides of Church Road followed by a struggle to get back as quickly as possible.

Seem to have found some Strava segments on the way - if you strip out the cyclists that have pretended to be running I've done quite well!

http://app.strava.com/activities/185726252/overvie...

Event: TVOC Didcot Urban Event
 

Didcot urban race. 7.2km Men Open course.

Foul weather driving across but seems was very lucky for my run as it didn't seem bad at all.

Pace was good, maybe didn't take the best route on 1-2 or 7-8 but was pretty good on the rest. Suspect fairly direct on 11-12 would have been quicker but had misaligned cycle tracks so committed to a southern route.Had trouble with the emit cards not giving any feedback - waiting a full second on many and had to go back and punch two again since there was still no flash after 3s or so.

Nice to not spend ages in the middle part of the map (around control 11) like the previous two times. Good route choice legs in places but did start to get bored of the N-S path west of 14 by the last time.

Clearly running well if did 10k in about 48 (despite stop-start emit punching/nav etc) and still felt like I could keep going.

3rd of 18 finishers at download (91s down on lead) - might be chance for some ranking points.

http://www.strava.com/activities/185154748/overvie...

Event: (Cancelled) Urban Event
 

Helping at Severn Bridge HM - there by 6.40, helping set up goodie bag tables, bag storage/management, and clearing litter after. Managed a 2 hour break in the middle to go out and watch the start on the bridge, and see the finishers up to 90 mins.

Bown led the orienteers in 1 hr 24, Matt Leathwood 1hr 26, Ben 1hr 29, Tim 1hr 34. Didn't get to speak to Mark but the other three seemed really happy with their results.

Lots of smiling faces today, and clear that lots of hard work had been put in by Andy and Paul to put the race on. Hope they are able to do this again next year as, watching the finishers, something inside me was wishing I was competing -another year of decent training and I might even get a reasonable time.

Ran from subway up to the finish on way back from watching start - so the last 250m of the course. It was a hard climb for my current fitness - maybe I'm glad that I didn't enter this year..!

Legs weren't in the mood for running today, but I was. Good field today as I started well but was down to 15th or so by first corner. Managed to keep the pace fairly steady and got me to a fairly good course PB - 50s faster than last week. Think I could do it faster if I really wanted - just don't know if I'd ever put the extra effort in. We'll see how I do next week...

Everyone still seems agreed that FoD course, even in good conditions, is much slower than most other ones - I suspect today's run is equivalent to about 19:45 at Little Stoke.

Pleased with my run regardless - wasn't expecting from GPS to be so much faster but I felt as though my running was much stronger this week.

http://www.strava.com/activities/184177286/overvie...

Finished off with 1 hr 45 mins mapping Lydney, 15 minutes cowering under tree and an hour helping set up for tomorrow. Productive day - but tomorrow should be really good too.

Event: Street Challenge
 

Last NGOC street O of year, in Cheltenham.

Much better than last time as made use of the actual Pittville Park o-map. Also got to take in some new indistinct (but overgrown!) tracks across the old railway line - connects the park with the good bit of urban better.

Going quite well but feeling yesterday in my legs. Put a reasonable amount of effort in and happy to be just ahead of 5 min ks actual distance.

Still think it will be much better if/when we have the rest of the area mapped properly to 1:5000 scale. We'll probably rest it next year so plenty of time to get it redone!

http://www.strava.com/activities/183515417

Collected in controls east side of Pittville Park as starting to getting dark.

Crook Peak Cake Race

Thought I'd started out fairly slowly - managed to keep pace going but it did steadily start feeling harder. Pleased to get to the top of Crook Peak.

Not very quick going down as queued a bit and then it took me a fair while to start going again after the rocks. Ran most of way up hill 2 but fell in to a walk a couple of times for short bits.

Pushed from the trig point harder than I really wanted but nice to feel like I've put in a proper effort. May have lost out to Keith, Matthew Owen and Ifor in the final stages but fun all the same.

Bit too fast and flat a "fell" race for me to get a good result at current level of fitness - looking forward to next year already now I've got a time to beat!

http://www.strava.com/activities/183050474/overvie...

Westbury Harriers - the whole club running together, supposed to be a sociable run but I found it hard to get the right pace when back with slower people if I wanted to get through to the front - hence pushed it quite hard at times.

Took the first 1k fairly slowly with Ifor, then started pushing, and then was getting light headed and struggling to feel my legs by 3k. Still seemed to be going ok despite this.

After car park at bottom of Blaise put in a bit of an effort with Chris Beck and Pete Barnes to get up the first hill - had just caught Ifor and then he challenged me to race him to top of Grove Road, which wasn't totally appreciated. I won of course :-) - due to the way that Strava works, because I went back down the hill a bit from the top to rest then passed the end of it again, it's included my rest time so looks fairly slow - was actually 1:24 - which would put me second on Strava, behind an Ifor hill-rep.

Reasonable effort up to the folly too but a little bit congested.

Good, hard session for me. Shows that I can run through the light-headed phase and can do a pretty good job ignoring the tiredness when I want. Suspect that the amount of road hills helped me a lot as I felt much stronger on the ups than I did on the flat.

http://www.strava.com/activities/182078729/overvie...

Event: Maize Maze Challenge
 

FoD Parkrun. Best time yet here but also my worst position. Conditions were very good - if anything a little disappointed there wasn't more mud as I used to do that bit quite well! Seems that hardcore is being put down now so the deep mud will be gone for good soon.

Given the conditions had hoped for sub 21 - I certainly felt like I was pushing very hard for the first lap - and kept it going for the second. Still should be pleased with course PB - it's very possible that, even in good conditions, it's a minute slower than Little Stoke.

Everyone at finish given a note saying that we all have to volunteer to keep the race going - sadly I normally do parkrun only because I am then going on to do some form of volunteering at orienteering after. May have to look for a date when I'm in the forest for competing in orienteering and put myself down for then.

Couple of orienteering kites hung up in various places.

GPS turned itself off without beeping a warning so lost the first (fast) kilometre: http://www.strava.com/activities/181061517/overvie...

Gloucestershire Maze-O Championships.

Headline from today is that I am still the Maze-O champion!

Heat 1 Attempt 1 - 13:53, 1.98km
Pretty hopeless - got confused straight away and binned 30s. OK after until 6-7 where I missed a turning and almost ended up back at 5. Tried to be clever on route to 8 and went north route - it didn't go well and I had no idea where I was, eventually found myself at the bridge so found control from south - 3 mins lost. Rest was ok, but long way down on Mark's 1st go.
http://www.strava.com/activities/181061502

Heat 1 Attempt 2 - 9:26, 1.59km
Much better this time as had a feel for how quickly junctions came up. Stuck with same routes 1-6, then on 6-7 went the long way south given how I messed first time - very little in it for distance. Then on 7-8 played it incredibly safe by running right past the finish and to entrance of maze and along the bottom. Easy running on fairly straight routes so is probably fastest. Finished ok. 11s up on Mark.
http://www.strava.com/activities/181061501

Heat 2 Attempt 1 - 10:28, 1.64km
Mark had said this one was harder and seemed very pleased with his 9:40 time on his last attempt - even believe he said that if I beat that time I deserved to win! On the first attempt though, wasn't going to happen. North route to 1 (via bee's chin), north again to 2 (bee's head), southern route to 3, shortest route to 4, but with a bit of dithering mid way and then accidentally planning route to 8 and going wrong way at end! Past 35 and along side of kite to 6 - all going well so far, then big mess on 8 - didn't match and met Alan MacKenzie coming the other way - I'd just left him at 7 so know I must have done almost a circle! 40s binned. Didn't realise north route 10-11 until after I left 11 so dawdled. Encouraging result as knew I lost some time and could recover second go.
http://www.strava.com/activities/181061496

Heat 2 Attempt 2 - 8:26, 1.43km
Stuck with same routes as first time as was happy with them - it was the execution that was bad. Repeated and had an absolutely perfect run - maybe lost a few seconds on thinking but nothing significant - had got my head around the problematic hummingbird's beak and the rest was trivial in comparison! 1 min 14s ahead of Mark so beginning to think I'd stand a chance.
http://www.strava.com/activities/181061485

Final - 9:35, 1.55km
No pressure then! Went to 1 via finish and took middle path - retraced steps to 2. Bee's chin to 3 only option, retrace via bee's head to 4. Got a bit confused around 9 as lots of people around blocking the way - as all the paths rejoined not too much trouble but still small overshoot - maybe 10-15s lost overall. Having conquered the beak had not trouble in picking it as best route 11-12. Quite a heavy crash leaving 12 got my knee a bit - luckily it was with another fairly young orienteer who didn't seem to mind, but was so close to the finish the watch told me I was definitely going to beat Mark overall - spurred me on to keep going. 13s up on Mark in the end.
http://www.strava.com/activities/181061484

C • maps 3

Collecting the 13 controls around the bumble bee. Short distances and easy underfoot so jogged. Found the control stakes were snagging on the crops a bit.

10x 90s with 60s rest.

Given how tired I was after Lakes decided to concentrate on getting the recovery right today - and it seems to have worked as was pretty consistent across the whole session.

Interestingly, was also consistently doing 20m or so more on the clockwise (odd) efforts than I managed anti-clockwise (even).

Pleased with the session as have been known to struggle getting the pace right for 90s in the past.

http://www.strava.com/activities/180245693/overvie...

Still tired out. Should try getting out on Thursday.

Lakes Day 5 at Hampsfell. 8.9km (425m climb) M21L.

Knew I was tired for this, pouring rain just before start soaked me, but was going to try anyway.

1 very easy, 2 shouldn't have been much harder but lost 2 mins. Then things picked up as it was all quite easy - just I didn't have the energy to run all of it.

Things went badly wrong in the woods. 10 ok, 11 - planned a route that looked good, executed the first 95% of route perfectly, then found something that looked like mapped feature (crag on edge of limestone pavement) - went to investigate but found no control, back up to where I was and the hill side turned into a bit of a gully - rising both sides of me - couldn't see on map so started worrying I was in completely wrong place. Relocated from control 15 to same place as I was first time, and same for going from crag to south. Kind of gave up and started exploring NW as towards the gate for home and found it - well over 10 mins lost. Split time says 180:57 so it could have been several hours. Fed up of struggling on wet, steep loose stony hill that I could barely walk on, and knew Joe must have overtaken so opted out of going down to bottom of hill just to come up again - turned out to be wise as the drips off the trees and lack of pace meant I was getting pretty cold and it wasn't far off raining again.

So, having skipped a few, still managed to balls up 16 - patch of white between bare rock, but I read the bare rock as open and not forested - so spent a few minutes looking just parallel to control site. Small miss on 18 and then made no effort at all up hill to 19.

Joe caught up at 21 and were together for the descent through the steep bramble field (I had seen southern wall crossing point but didn't see gap in wall between blocks of wood!). Found controls in last wood ok-ish but really didn't know what was going on - felt there was a lot more contour things than mapped. Thought 23 in particular was too far north and too far down the hill but not at all certain I had gone right way - turns out remainder of course from 21 onwards was voided after a complaint.

GPS battery lasted until just a couple of paces from the finish so at least got all of my mistakes.

Can be pleased that I did work out my error, but after 6 days I'm exhausted and still not feeling particularly keen on orienteering. Think the best thing for me to do is to have a bit of a break from competing (non-urban at least) - I suspect I'll get a lot more enjoyment from volunteering than I would from struggling through summer grot for 90+ mins - and start back properly in the autumn.

http://www.strava.com/activities/177821085

Event: Street Challenge
 

Lakes Day 4 at Pike O Blisco. 7.8km M21L.

50 min rest after walk up and was just about ready to start. Clean to 1 was good, same for 2 and 3, albeit not quick. Caught Mark up at 4 but sadly he didn't notice. Steadily slowing in to 5 and then not quick at all across boulders and up hill into 6. Re-entrant seemed a bit lower down than I was expecting.

Climb up to 7 was tough, barely even walking and had to stop to catch breath at control (having almost missed it as it was so hidden - and I had the benefit of seeing two other people go up to it ahead of me!).

Slow across boulders to 8, stopped in right place for 9 having seen Ed overshoot, but for some reason looked up the hill for control rather than down and wasted a couple of minutes. Beautiful elephant track down to 10.

Overshot 12 - managed to miss crossing the stream, but able to relocate from crags to south. Really pleased to have realised where I had gone wrong so quickly - the big crags being so visible helped a lot.

Clean for the final few controls which was good as felt the map was a bit more vague here and less to work on. 16 wasn't quite right to me but I'd followed a bearing and found the marshes, but went into control very tentatively (i.e. slowly) as was constantly reading map to confirm. 17 a bit tricky as crags before went further up the hill. Ed got me on the big descent into final control.

First time all week where I felt I was in tune with map, and knew where I was, and could relocate quickly. Certainly preferring the open areas even if today was a bit too rocky for me to run quickly - had this been at start of week with fresh legs could have been a very good run

http://www.strava.com/activities/177821081

Lakes 5 rest day urban in Ulverston. 7.9km black.

Despite having expected this to be my best run of the week (and it was), I suspect this was also the biggest disappointment.

Good town centre with lots of little covered alleyways etc. Our course didn't seem to use any of them. Got a little bit confused by the absence of any contour lines on southern part of map as road from 7 to 8 went up about 25m and for a moment I did expect this height gain to have been mapped.

Almost skipped out 13 as was on a straight line 12-14. A shame really, as cutting out the control may have made the route choice a little less obvious.

Didn't take best route 19-20. Unaware of the staircase that was boxed in between course overprint and north arrow. Had I actually looked I would have seen it, but glancing whilst running I just saw gap as a continuation of the said lines.

Walked a lot of the route up the hill to the monument. There wasn't any route choice and just didn't seem worth the climb. Slow descending after.

Lost time punching 23 as first one I tried didn't beep or flash - so tried a few times and then moved on to next - splits say 8s but was enough to distract me into running down the wrong path for a little way - soon realised.

Pretty tiring - maybe not the best rest for Pike O Blisco. Pie in the pub after too much for me to eat.

http://www.strava.com/activities/177821118

Lakes 5 Day 3 - Grizedale NW. 7.7km M21L.

From all the stories I had been told beforehand was ready to write off this run. Having navigated perfectly to 10 yards before control 1 before hitting impenetrable windblow it was pretty obvious the terrain was going to be tough for me to do. Slow but steady on the next few controls, really not liking the amount of fighting I was having to do, particularly out from 5 - all the ducking not doing my back any good at all.

Overtaken by Mark just before 6 but he dithered. Got through the low viz fight to 7 and then 8 ok before getting overtaken by Mark again. Helpfully he corrected his mistake on 10 before I had got there, so my time loss was much less. Not convinced by the veg mapping there, but the water seemed about right.

All set to give up from here so down to a walk for 11-14 before a massive stupid mistake. Planned route out of 14 based on the overprint line 17-16 (this was parallel to 14-15) so went east, down a hill and back up it again when best route was clearly track to west. Not just costing me height, also meant I ended up on wrong side of massive patch of windblow and couldn't see any nice way through - so decided to skip on to 19 anyway.

Low speed orienteering in such grot was an experience, but I can't say it's my idea of fun so pleased to cut the course short as it meant finishing with a smile on my face when I just knew that spending more time in the terrain, on a course that didn't look very exciting, was just going to frustrate me.

Found more ticks on me after this run than I've ever had over the whole of my orienteering career.

Thought Mark's time was pretty good for the terrain - thought it should have deserved far more than just 1243 ranking points.

http://www.strava.com/activities/177821098

Lakes 5 Day 2 at Simpson Ground. 4.6km M21L (Middle).

Complete disaster - things started to go wrong after 2 but I didn't think I was even on course for first two until I accidentally stumbled on controls.

Poor route to 3 over crags in open - bad bearing. Went up to the end of the wrong bit of marsh on 4 and lost a minute. Clean for a few but then 9 was terrible. Couldn't seem to match much other than the elongated knolls in green some way to the south. Ended up fighting through windblow and got my leg ripped open by a tree trunk for my efforts - will make a good scar. Eventually relocated from the north west (where lots of other people were also looking for same control) and found it some way higher than I would have expected from map - GPS plot seems to agree.

Followed Jay-T into 10 and elephant track to 11. Lost a bit of time on 12 - I was too high, again led in by JT. Had assumed that this part of the map was out of date so ignored the vegetation and it seemed to work. Confused on 14 as found lots of other re-entrants and didn't know where the mapper had defined the top. Eventually relocated from marsh to east - 2 mins lost.

15-17 ok but 18 was the worst mistake of them all. Navigated very well to the control in [what was arguably] a re-entrant - just 30m away from the correct site, and confused why the number was wrong. Did lots of looking around and couldn't really match much - apart from the ride to the east and the ride junction, which didn't seem too far away (was thinking in 10,000 scale). Went round a couple more times, kept ending up in same place before relocating again from the small hillocks to west and asking Katy Dyer to confirm I was right. Eventually found control literally the other side of a big fallen tree to where I had kept ending up all along. 6 mins lost. Straight line to 19 across windblow was, in hindsight, a terrible choice!

Rest of the course went well, but mistakenly went to control on south end of eastern hillock on 22 rather than the correct south end of western hillock - but it was only about 20m extra distance and I worked out quickly what I had done. Didn't realise controls could be so close together, let alone on identical features.

Very frustrating run. Not enjoying the orienteering but at least the wood was mostly pleasant going. It was somewhat reassuring to learn I wasn't the only one whose navigation was hopeless - for the number of mistakes I had expected to (and deserved to) be dead last.

http://www.strava.com/activities/177821109

Event: Lakes 5 Days 2014
 

Day 1 at Swindale South. 10.6km M21L course.

Grim weather, but was enjoying myself for much of it.

Cautious to 1, tried avoiding most of marsh to 2 (little realising just how blue the map was later on...), didn't get confused by the tough warriors at 3 but got to feature and lost almost a minute looking for the control.

Didn't mess up 4 - did well to tick off features and identify that the first control I found was just 100 yards before the control, on the line, and on an identical feature - made for a good attackpoint.

First real mistake at 8 - went too far. Saw the control but decided it wasn't mine and did a tour of two other controls before deciding said control had to be correct. 2.5 mins lost.

10 - went fine, got to within circle and found hundreds of large boulders, but only two were mapped. Was within about 10-20 yards on control but couldn't see it and had to again go around everything until I found where it was hidden.

11 not good either - had a poor bearing and then managed to put a 90 degree kink in it without realising. Then noticed I was going north and corrected - only to find was going north again. Found myself alongside vast expanse of marsh, so should have been easy to relocate but ended up stood still for almost a minute before going again. Probably 4 to 5 mins lost.

Got "marshed" up to my waste coming out of 11 and took half a minute to free myself. Was about now where the enjoyment of running in torrential rain started to tail off and tiredness creep in. Had David Maliphant for company up until 15 which spurred me on a bit but didn't have enough energy to run against the wind back up the hill.

Pleased about the thigh deep stream crossing to wash off marsh muck, but Burley had finally appeared (4 mins) at 18 and was catching fast. Walked the marsh to 19 and then started going down the hill - quick enough to drop him again.

Think it was an ok performance overall - suspect that my running stile is better suited to marshes than others as it doesn't seem to slow me down much. Pleased to have Mark on my tail towards the end to make it interesting

http://www.strava.com/activities/177822420