Training Log Archive: ken

been a few years since I regularly did morning recovery runs, but I'm probably ready for that again.

Event: Jukola
 

Jukola! follow it here (live exchange and intermediate times) or listen (updates between music)

lacking willpower, I cut it short.

from oak grove over to pine hill, around the orange trail and back. won't be able to do much orienteering there this summer, it's pretty thick. though maybe I'll start a map of the west side.

spending some time making upgrades to the site. I've added some more fields to the training entries that I thought people (and myself) would like to use. I think they're mostly self-explanatory.

mom and daddy-o have scored a new house in Vermont. they move in next friday. the place "has 43 acres of very mappable terrain, with plenty of adjacent forest." a good neighborhood to visit for some hill-training. no, it's not that close to where the relay champs will be..

on the river. nice and coolish today.

faster for a short section.

I'm back in boston after the world cup. I'll be gradually filling in some comments for the previous week. if you followed the results, you are probably wondering why I sucked so badly. the short version is that I'm not so good at compass/pace and make more mistakes orienteering in "easy" continental terrain. I physically peaked too early because of my end-of-semester work. I wasn't really happy with any of my races in the world cup, even though I'm almost always satisfied with my performances (regardless of placing). my goals were to be <25% behind the winning time and/or beat 25% of the runners. I didn't make that in any race. I was close in the long b-final, and might have made it in the short qualification if I had seen that control I was standing right next to 3 minutes earlier..

spike says we should do more technique training. he is partly right; technique training never hurts, and the easiest way to improve your time is to reduce errors. similarly the easiest way to finish last is to make errors. I don't think I urgently need to do more technical training; or [since I can always use more technical training] at least thats not the main problem.

during a normal week in the o-season, about 60% of my training is orienteering, not counting mapping. that's a relatively high amount in the US (spike does around 40%, still pretty high), and as a result, I don't usually make a lot of errors. excluding the spring-cup relay (see below) and night events, I made about 10 total minutes of errors in 16 races this season march-may. I would consider 9 of those 16 races "error-free." that seems pretty good.

why then did I have 8 minutes of mistakes in the spring cup relay and 4+5+2+5+3=19 minutes in the world cup events? did I get psyched out by the pressure and run too fast? I don't think so; big euro-events are nothing new, and often my expectations are lower for obvious reasons.

I think the real problem is that I don't practice continental orienteering, which is a lot different than what I'm best at. contours and rock features: no problem. welcome to new england or scandinavia. the maps I had the biggest problems on (sc relay, wc1 final, wc4 relay) had hardly any contours I could use for navigation. the primary features there were trails and veg boundaries; both subject to a lot of interpretation in places.

fine compass and pacing are not things that I practice much at all. instead I usually run the right direction and read the map a lot. I always know where I am. that doesn't work very well when there aren't many features on the map. in belguim there were charcoal platforms everywhere. these were usually about 1/4 the size of those at french creek, and much less visible. there were a lot of new trails created by logging bulldozers. thick green was sometimes not shown on the map. visibility was sometimes low. many of the controls might be considered "bingo" in the US. on a few occasions I think I would have done better with a blank map (then I would have just run on a bearing and pace counted, instead of trying to get close and attack from something e.g. trail junction, which turned out to be unreliable or vague. relocation on a vague contourless map is also understandably difficult.

a lot of other runners were also making more mistakes than usual. Pasi was winning the short final until he made a mistake near the end. Troy deHass was 2nd until he made 5 minutes of errors in 2 controls near the end. mike smith saw bjornar valstad pass him twice when BV couldn't find a control early in the short qualifier. these guys do plenty of technical training.

If I'm going to run well in switzerland next summer, I'll have to practice a bit differently sometimes. I'm not sure where to find boring terrain around here, but contours-only or no-compass training (among my favorites) probably won't help. probably the best thing to do around here is to run courses designed to force the use of "continental techniques." for the moment, I'm switching back to pre-season mode training (more volume, less races)