Training Log Archive: Frostbite

Across the Rio Zezere at Foz de Alge, and back again. Lovely. It's actually a very long thin reservoir, with the dam many miles downstream. Saw what might have been an osprey (biggish bird of prey, dived into the water). All very pleasant.

Edit : it wasn't an osprey, wrong colour. Maybe a kite?

With Tasha. Casais, Graminhal, Freixo, Casais. A bit hot.

Casais da Granja, Tras de Figueiro, Cabeco de Tras de Figueiro, Vila Nova, Alvorge, windmills, Casais da Granja.

Warm but not too hot. Died a bit on the last hill. Mostly gravel tracks but also some really nice old paths and a few stretches of calcada.

C • doesn't sound like 1

Bywater with Tasha. very slow, very hot.

Big lap of the Hollies and Meanwood.

Warm up/down

Same as last week, with an extra bit

10 x 10s sprint
5 x bunny hopping steps
2 x uphill high bounding (1:15, 1:27)
4 x 2 x 10 hopping
sprint up the Donkey Steps (34 seconds, despite being held up by a jogger at the top)

Warm.

Scottish Relays, Binning Wood. Scrappy bit of woodland with a lot of rhododendrons. I couldn't keep up with the pack, and made a small mess of number 9 (i think), 30 seconds or so, which left me on my own for a bit. After that I could see people up ahead of me occasionally but never got closer to them, then up the hill out in the open Steve came past and left me for dead.

Only 5 minutes down on the leaders, 4 on Charlie so it wasn't too bad. Natasha, Dave and Amanda had a good race round on the second leg and then Evie was racing Paul on the last leg. She came back a minute down but still a good performance. Evie did faster mins/k than me - we should have put her on the long leg.

C • Put me on the long leg? 1

Scottish Champs, Gullane and Yellowcraig.

I wasn't really bothered about this race and prepared accordingly. I lost time at 2 controls in the beach run section - the first one because it was in the wrong place and the second one because I climbed up beside the wrong crag. This bit of the area was not mapped properly (extensive mature woodland mapped as rough open!) but I should have got it right. Other than that, a minor issue with paths in the first bit of wood cost me 30 seconds or so, and that was pretty much it. Slow and steady.

7th on the course, 3rd M45. 9 minutes behind Martin and Jase.

3 X 1 mile, hospital loop. Aiming for 7:05 to 7:10 but was a bit too relaxed on the first one and straining a bit on the last. 7:14, 7:04, 7:03.

warm up and down and jogging between reps. Very weary on the way home.

Seven Arches with Tasha.

Arseing about in the hollies, incorporating 10 x 10 secs with 20 secs rest on the field by the tennis courts (actually they were taking 11 secs slightly downhill and 13 seconds slightly uphill), 5 x bunny hopping the steps below the tennis courts, about 18 seconds each time, some hopping back through the rugby field, 4 x 10 on each leg, and a flat out sprint up the donkey steps 37 seconds.

My legs will not work tomorrow is my prediction.

Big lap of the Hollies and Meanwood. Not too bad but feeling a bit fat and the pissing rain didn't help. Warm though.

Jogging there quite sprightly, jogging back not so sprightly.

Kettlewell, Great Whernside, Buckden Pike, Starbotton, Kettlewell. Took it very steady and just about kept moving to the end. Can't descend, can't climb but surviving. Took the direct path to Hag Dyke rather than going by Dowber Gill. Very dry underfoot.

Seven Arches. Bah.

digging

C • is... 2

digging

Digging

British Relays, Summerhouse Knott, Ad-hoc.

Such a lovely day, seemed a shame to go out for a run rather than just sitting in the field and spectating. I was doing first leg on ad-hoc, up against a few youngsters on the ungaffled long leg. Freddie Carcas zoomed off the front but I caught him again around #5, then he disappeared for good. Dom was also too fast for me and the last time I saw him was when he lost time at #8. That left me and Adam Conway (no relation and M14 champion from the day before) battling it out for 3rd place. He had the edge on running but he would make a small mistake at every other control allowing me to get back on terms. In the end he just got away from me when there was a bit more track running at the end of the course.

Natasha had a decent run on second leg and Chris Burden brought us home in 3rd (well, 4th but there was a non-comp team - I think Freddie did two legs or something). So I got my first British Relay medal since 1998.

C • Shame to go for a run 2

British Champs, M45L, High Dam.

I really enjoyed this but it was hard work. Spent a lot of time walking up hills, lots of hills, but kept going and managed to pick up the pace a bit when the going got easier towards the end of the course. I was finding all the controls ok but I wandered a bit on each of the 3 longest legs - not going in the wrong direction so much, just failing to assertively go in the right direction.

#2, I was climbing the hill out of the control trying to read the map for the parallel leg #7 to #6. Nothing made much sense until I saw the big tarn and worked out what I had done. Not too much time lost because the parallel line was pretty much where I wanted to go, but there was a bit of hesitancy until I worked it out.

I spiked #2, hesitated 10 seconds before #3, and spiked #4 with the help of a big bunch of people all finding it at the same time. Paul Gebbett was among them and we ran #5, #6 and half way to #7 together.

I was quite happy with my route in the first part of #7, getting quite a good line through the woods and up to the fence crossing. I intended to go from there to the small tarn and along the path through the gap between the hills before cutting across towards the control. What I ended up doing was going too far north and ending up near the big tarn having gone through the marshy gap between hills. Fortunately the big tarn made it easy to relocate and this route actually saved my some climb, but the dithering up to that point must have cost me some time.

#9 I climbed early because I thought I was going to go west of the tarn, but then I decided that wasn't a good idea. I maybe climbed a bit too much hill and could have taken a less steep line further along the slope.

#10 I wasn't sure which of the parallel valleys I was in but when I didn't see a control after the right sort of distance I just had to climb over the knoll to my right and there was the control, no more than a few seconds lost.

Not very sure where I went after leaving #16. I was just aiming vaguely for the crossing points above the yellow field, but realised when I got nearer that it would be a lot easier to aim for the lower crossing point and follow the wall to the control.

I'm happy enough with the result. Not as good as last year I guess but some people who beat me at the JK were a very long way behind on this terrain. I couldn't have got the 4 minutes needed to beat Jase for a medal, but it would have been nice to get the 19 seconds to beat Rich Barrett.

1. J Logue 71
2. B Stansfield 74
3. J Inman 76
4. R Barrett 80
5. N Conway 80

Bywater and the Hollies with Tasha. Verrry slow, so I thrrew in a short near-vertical climb and a couple of hundred metres of faster running in the Hollies. Feeling a bit below par.

West Park fields, Queenswood, Beckett Park

pottering