Training Log Archive: robrunner

Garmin data
What to say about this race, one week on? Delighted to have done it and finished it. Definitely the hardest I've pushed myself ever. Orienteering was pretty easy but the terrain was tough in places. Kudos to my running partner The Flan for pulling me through the last couple of hours! We spent 12 mins at the start planning, and Garmin says we spent 04:32 running, which means we spent about 50 mintues not moving! For posterity:

Hour 1: (12pm-1pm) During planning, after marking all the controls on the map it seemed that they were spread out radially with the start/finish roughly in the centre. Made a rough plan to start in the SW quadrant and work our way around anti-clockwise. Took it handy, pacing ourselves up to the first control. Punched after 55 mins -- alot longer than expected!

Hour 2: (1pm-2pm) Climbed up and over to get to control 2. Figured it would be worth 500 points since it was quite far away, but it turned out to be only 350 when we checked afterwards. Rookie mistake not marking the control values on the map! Route to control 3 was back via control 1, which is when we passed the 2 hour mark. Had gone a bit astray in the mist. We weren't exactly flying around!

Hour 3: (2pm-3pm) Up again to control 3 and then down into a valley. We decided to stop for food at the bottom of the hill but it took ages to descend, as it was very rough. This wasn't anticipated! Hit the 3 hour mark as we were eating and we seriously went over our routes again. I was feeling tired by now, despite having been descending for about 40 mins.

Hour 4: (3pm-4pm) Decided against getting the control at the other side of Scarr (it looked very steep as we were standing at the bottom looking up!). Instead we went for a control on a neighbouring peak, Kanturk. Spent most of Hour 4 getting this. I couldn't run uphill, poor Brian had loads of energy but I had nothing in the legs. My lack of training really showing. Getting down from Kanturk was messy. Met a guy climbing up against us towards the control, would have been a rough route.

Hour 5: (4pm-5pm) Arrived at the base of Kanturk and ran over the short distance to a lake (Lough Dan?) where we picked up an easy control and stopped to re-fuel. Should have taken water from the lake here as we were both running low. I had only brought 2 litres. Took my first energy gel here (it was about 4.30pm) and hoped for the best. Revised the plan... maybe we would pick up 3 or 4 more controls. Headed along the river, jogging slowly, crossed it and then up another hill.

Hour 6: Searching for dratted control at the top of a forest ride. Rough underfoot and I felt like a geriatric. By the time we got the control (which was a surprise as we were about to bail out) I was seriously worried about getting back to the finish on time. I was probably only doing 10-12min/km at that stage. Hauled myself over another hill and onto the road. Began jogging the 2-3 km to the finish. Brian picked up a control that was near the road while I got my breath on the road (staying within earshot!). Running in to the finish, it felt like my lungs were going to collapse. My chest was sore from the effort of breathing - I thought I was having an asthma attack! Very glad to get to the finish and sit down.

Setanta put on a good spread for us so I ate and drank well. Great event. In retrospect we picked a rubbish overall route and wouldn't have bothered with those low-yield controls if we'd known their value. Will I do it next year? We'll see... a LOT of training required. The legs need a lot of miles in them to be able to keep going over 6 hours.

More stretches ahead of the Rogaine tomorrow

Combination of passive and dymanic stretches.
Will repeat tomorrow hopefully in prep for Saturday. Ankle much better; no swelling, got full range of motion and just a twinge at the extreme of medial rotation/inversion. God bless Difene!

Still no Garmin....
Orienteering at Corrin. Massive rain shower just when I wanted to do my warm-up so ducked into the trees beside the car-park to do a little stretching. Didn't want a repeat of Sunday's pain!
Results and Routegadget. Bombed it to 1, pounding in the O-shoes on the path but happy there were no aches or pains. Contoured to 2 (up and over is not an option in Corrin), had to swat some kids out of the way. Contoured to 3, may have been a bit quicker to take the path. Mistake at 4, saw the control after running down the hill along a path (not the marked one) and decided it wasn't my control, so turned right instead of left. Caught Dee at 5 and contoured along nicely to 6.
Climb started up the path on the way to 7, which is where I felt I would pick up time on this course (relatively!), then downhill again to the control which was hidden behind a bit of fight. Had thought about straight line to 8, but didn't want to chance the fight being too thick (memories of Watergrasshill!). So uphill again to 8, saw Bobby coming out of it so was lucky. Then steep downhill to 9, bit of congestion but passed 4 or 5 people here. Slog uphill to 10 (hope I won this leg as I worked hard on it [edit: CillinC beat me by 17 sec]) then downhill again to 11 (are you seeing the pattern?)
Took the diagonal track to 11, did well to find it but as I approached 11 I saw a guy punching it who had taken the bottom path. Was sure I'd seen that guy back at 7 and he had taken the straight line to 8. Sure enough he took off like a bullet to 12 so I realised then that I had met one of my faceless Nemeses from BOC :-) Trailed Nemesis on the way to 12, tricky control and I think he nipped in for it too early. Ankle gave way painfully but kept running. Cursed not having taped it up. Contoured out of 12 to meet the path, a bit of a waste of energy in retrospect. I knew exactly where 13 was cos it had been used before, gained on Nemesis and caught him cos he was walking up the steep part (I was walking slightly quicker). 14 was up at the cairn beside the cross, got up and stupidly climbed the cairn, checked control descriptions and control was down a couple of metres at the north foot of the cairn. Then picked my way back over cairn, knew where the last 2 were so just a matter of staying ahead of Nemesis, whom I figured was faster than me on the downhill.
15 and 16 were straightforward. Just about to punch 15 when disaster struck, went over on ankle proper and there was an accompanying crunch. Had to hobble out of control (to be fair to Nemesis, he stopped and asked me if I was ok before blazing past me) and limped to 16. Jogged gingerly down to the finish but pretty disappointed on download as I would have done pretty well in the results if not for the last 2 legs. [edit: came 4th would have gained 1 place, maybe 2, but wouldn't have caught CillinC who got a deserved victory]

Ankle has swollen up but hopefully it's not too bad. It's fairly sore right now but I can weight-bear. This is the Leinster Champs injury back again. Currently elevated and iced.
In a happy coincidence, was cleaning out cupboards the other day and found a full box of Difene, still in date, that a previous housemate left behind. So self-medicating :-)
6-hour Rogaine on Saturday with The Flan. Should be fine to run though I will know in a couple of days if the swelling has gone down. Will DEFINITELY be taping from now on, it's just stupid laziness not to

warm up stretches

Includes 1.8km "warm-up" and 600m "warm-down" jog
Still haven't retrieved my Garmin
Not a good run today, had done warm-up stretches at home but as soon as I started jogging the peroneals started paining me. Had to stop a few times in an attempt to stretch them out. Loosened out only a little so cut my run short. Definitely time to throw those Asics in the bin, too. Might as well have been running barefoot, the amount of cushioning they've left.