Training Log Archive: ParkSchool

Event: US Team Trials
 

Warm up lap around my brother's neighborhood trying to work out the kinks after drive down late last night.

A solid run after the first few controls. Needed some time to get acclimated to map (particularly with regard to recognizing stairs) resulting in some slow legs on #2, #4, #6. After that, I was pretty happy. Had been caught by all three runners starting after me (Dylan Thies, Ian Smith, Eric Bone) by #10 which was a bit demoralizing, but then did at least have the satisfaction of recouping the lost time on Dylan on the lower half of the course. Ran most of the last half of race in sight of Ian. I had the brief pleasure of choosing a better route to #20, but then he sprinted by me again on the way to #21. Was happy that route was essentially all downhill as my uphill running is clearly a weakness. Finished comfortably out of last, which had honestly been my expectation going into event.

Blue Sprint - Splits

Usual jog in place with dogs. A few extra sprints up hill at end waiting for Sidney to catch up.

130 lb, 120 reps (25, 25, 25, 20, 15, 10)

130 lb, 115 reps (25, 25, 23, 18, 15, 9).

Event: NEOC--Houghton's Pond
 

Very pleasant day with many good legs,but the mistakes/problems were killers. Most egregious problem was trying to execute eastward compass leg from #2-#3 after punching #1. There were many clues that I was making a serious error, from the thicker vegetation ("curse the mapper for not updating better") to the steeper and longer climb ("I really thought my conditioning had improved, but maybe yesterday's race took more out of me than I expected") to the fact the the top of the hill was on my left, not my right (no, I didn't have a rationalization, so I finally stopped and figured out my mistake). But the damage of 5:00+ was already done. Rest of run was fairly clean with the exception of small hesitations at #5 and #10, and a 9:30 problem at #11 which was due at least in part to an inadequate map/poor control placement. I managed to navigate to just outside the circle when I was drawn off by a flag on a small knoll. I correctly figured out that the knoll could only be one feature on the map about 50 m N of my control, but when I ran down the re-entrant, there was no flag. I then wondered if perhaps if I had simply run by it, so I climbed back up above the wrong control. Finally, I bailed out S to the trail, hitting it near a mapped boulder that seemed to be in the right place, but chose to run the trial to the nearest intersection before making the next approach, this time hitting an apparently unmapped reentrant E of the circled area. Although I cannot take all the blame for this problem, it did seem that others probably dealt with the problem more efficiently than I did (10:05 from the time I hit the wrong flag). During each of my last four major errors, I have circled over the same area for far too long before firmly relocating myself. I think I will have to bail out earlier in the future to avoid throwing good time after bad. Oh well, at least it was a good work-out, and the conditioning held up reasonably, even if Ian Finlayson again left me in the dust.

Red - Splits