Training Log: Thompass

5x6[1]

Knee was niggling on Saturday, and raced and trained through it and it has become quite irritated. Today fully off, then we see tomorrow how it is and probably will be cross training. We'll see. It doesn't seem too concerning, likely just inflammation. Just taking care.

WU and light plyo

Fully off running is what I meant to say

Put focused effort into attacking the course. Even so, my level is aggression is magnitudes away from the Wozzles or GGs of this world. Not sure how to approach this yet. My instinct is that I'm scared of that level of aggression, maybe not trusting that my stamina will last or that I'm fast enough or that my brain won't turn to mush. Need to think on this.



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Routegadget

A bit more of a fun one to look at.

1: +14s, makes sense. compass was off, and it's clear on reflection that I didn't climb two contours. But I saw the vegetation boundary bend to my left and slowed and let my gaze wander a bit. Probably half of that on bad compass, the other half on being slow to work it out. Start a bit more focused boss, we've talked about this.

3: -22s, don't think I did anything special but line was very good, open was rapid, pace was good. I'll certainly take it.

5: Just happy with the good line to the path, looks clean.

6: Surprisingly not too far from expectation, slowed a lot coming into rocks and I was a bit too high. I think there were a few more rocks around than mapped? Would cause everyone to be a bit scrappy.

7: +20s, genuinely not sure what's happened there. I did miss the ride coming over it, that could easily be 10 of those seconds. Perhaps others managed to pushed harder on the ride than I did, I wasn't particularly flying but I didn't think it would be that bad!

I've noticed that I've got a lot of time loss in the first half of the course and a lot more time gain in the second half of the course, so that could be playing a part here. I was in 10th at 11 before working my way back to 5th, so could be some truth in that.

8: +57s. I did take the wrong route, that's fair, it's better to contour around to the reentrant before crossing the wall. That doesn't really excuse the piss poor mapping, all the white on my line until I managed to cross the ride should be riddled with windblow, it was at least equally as bad as the parts of the map where it's mapped. That should be 10s, 15s at worst.

9: +14s, hesitation? Won't think about it too much.

10: +8s, similar deal, maybe not perfect micro choices. Others must be moving really well through this part.

11: +10s, I think this is a bigger reflection of the stage of the race for me. Start was stronger, end was stronger, middle I was missing a bit. My technique in these past controls is fine. Missing aggro.

13: +12s, should've come back up to the ride, way easier and probably quick. Contouring was fairly garbage, and less confidence.

14: +24s, didn't cope well after crossing the wall and coming into the final stretch. Reading the map, I thought there would be some up and down, but turns out it's mostly form lines. Climbed over the first big spur thinking I was maybe just coming over the smaller spur between 16 and 17, then climbing the second one I crossed the yellow, took a good 5+ seconds to process, then corrected. That first little hill, I did see it in the terrain, there was even a control on it, but for some reason I was really struggling to make myself process the details under the pink line, couldn't really make sense of it. Poor.

18: +28s, similar actually to 14. Compassing a bit off to the right climbing the hill, then look left and see the vegetation boundary and think, oh wait, that's me isn't it. Corrected, but obvious loss. You could get there taking almost no climb on the straight line as well.

21: +15s, route isn't aligned perfectly, that little knick in my line to the northwest is where I hit the control. The terrain staying a little lower was just a bit grim. I hear coming over the top and hitting from above was good runnability. Ah well.

24: -30s, apparently the open section was my time to shine? Not sure what that's about, it was so grim, but I do know that I was actively reminding myself to attack for most of this section, so maybe that was quite effective when the going got tough.

26: -23s, hear people were saying this control was super hidden. After coming around the vegetation and seeing the hill with the rock in clear view in real life, just cruised through the reentrant to the left of it and bang. Interesting.

28: -21s, line was good, and some people came lower contouring and got stuck in some crap on the yellow strip, people I've talked to did that because they didn't really want to climb. So good to see.

Okay, sound. What are the takeaways? Find a way to tap into more aggression. Read that chimp book Alison mentioned. Struggled when the detail increased and didn't read the details enough, I've been doing better at that when I use the magnifier; I've found that in a funny way, it has actually helped me a lot in that when I look up in the terrain and look back down, I immediately see the relevant section that I need to see, and when I don't use it and I look at the terrain and back, my eyes don't zero in on where I was looking that quickly and my attention to detail is much worse. I'm not thumbing well enough?

C • Not sure if this will help 4

Fact that I outran my expected time and ran a poor time is a good reflection of today. DOMS from deadlifts on Thursday making the hammies feel rough, and ankles/feet complaining much more than usual. Sometimes get that feeling with poor sleep, but who knows. Not too worried, didn't have the drive in me for a 95/5 physical/technical course with today's feelings, happens and more important to get into strength rhythm again, just remember to keep things easy before big races.



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Routegadget

Missed my turn off to 6, was struggling to make sense of the twists and turns at the time. Cumulative ~30s on 9 and 10. Hesitated a lot to 9, people were saying that coming down the hill the little bits of green made a lot of sense. I was right at the time about the green patch I came around, but thought it would be pretty clear from there and I just saw loads of little bushes. To 10, maybe didn't do so well on the climb? Better to come further around the contour on the attack? Probably a mix.

No real other comments really. Wasn't aggressive at all.

Gorgeous one with Spenny, Wozzle, and José. They're still our there, but I didn't feel I had space in the mileage for the week.

Nice wee session, legs a bit meh on last few.