Training Log Archive: Kat

Spinning session at the Ekeby gym. I thought that it would last just 45 minutes, but the instructor kept going for 60. There was no ventilation in the room and it was HOT! I was glad when we finally finished.

Stretching and some push-ups afterward.

My knees hurt, so I am going to take a break from running for a week and try to do alternative training instead.

Travel back to Uppsala - car, boat, tram, bus, train, bus. I'm tired.

Running to the start.

EVENT: WOC Tour Day 6 (Final Day)
COURSE: D20E, 4.4 km, 13 controls
TERRAIN: Himmelbjerget was very hilly and very green. The navigation was not particularly hard because the contours were big and obvious, but the presence of so much green meant lowered visibility and slower going. It was quite easy to make a parallel error.
MY RUN: I was tired right from the start and planned to just get around the course with as few mistakes as possible. I started off slowly but carefully and managed to have an ok race. I made a few errors, but nothing disastrous. My one regret is that I went relatively straight on the long leg (through hilly green terrain) instead of going way around on a trail. I decided to go straight because the around option seemed too ridiculously out of the way, but afterward, I wished I'd done that instead. Looking at the splits, it doesn't look like any of the other girls on my course went around either. That's too bad, because I think we could have saved at least 3-4 minutes by doing so.
RESULTS: 8th out of 15. Winner was 41:31.

EVENT: WOC Tour Day 5
COURSE: D20E, 4.3 km, 14 controls
TERRAIN: Same map as the WOC middle final was run on - Gjern Bakker. Very technical terrain with lots of small reentrants, hills, and other contour detail. The southern part of the map was covered in heather and was especially difficult with surprisingly low visibility.
MY RUN: I was debating whether to run at all today because my left knee hurt after yesterday (tendonitis) and I've developed a cold. But the chance to run on the middle final map was too good to pass up, so I decided to give it a go. I knew that doing a middle distance course on this terrain would be tough and I was determined to be careful, but as it turned out I wasn't quite careful enough. My split to #2 was 13:20 and my split to #9 was 16:37. So I had some pretty big mistakes. Nonetheless, I had fun out there and enjoyed the technical challenges.
RESULT: Last on my course.
NOTE TO SELF: I need to get better and quicker at translating between map and terrain.

Jogging to the start.

EVENT:WOC Tour Day 4
COURSE: D20E, 8.0 km, 15 controls
TERRAIN: We ran on the same map that the WOC long final had taken place on yesterday - Londal Skov. The terrain seemed pretty typical to me - the white parts were pretty runnable, the green parts had extremely dense coniferous trees, and there were big hills and reentrants everywhere. There were also enough trails and rides that the best route choice was not always obvious.
MY RUN: I started out a bit tentatively because I knew this was a long course with significant climb and I didn't want to burn out before the end. I saw the girl who started one minute ahead of me at #1 and then caught sight of another girl who'd started ahead of me at #2. It only got better from there. As I was approaching #5, I saw Camilla (the girl who'd won the previous three Tour days). She started two minutes after I did and I was surprised she hadn't caught up to me before then. Then I got stuck in the green there (which was so thick you couldn't see more than a few feet in front of you) and thought I'd lost her for good. But I went on to have an excellent race, with virtually no mistakes after that. After racing down the finish chute, I happened to glance back and saw that she had come in right behind me! I already knew I'd had a good run and would have been happy no matter where I ended up in the results, but this was a very nice bonus.
RESULTS: 3rd out of 16!!

C • Congratulations... 3

Today was the WOC Tour rest day, so instead I went with some others to do the Model Relay course. It was nice in the woods and despite the course being 4.4 km with 200 meters climb (which used to seem like a lot), it didn't really feel tough or physically challenging at all. I think I'm getting better at running up hills!

After watching the WOC sprint qualification races, we didn't have much time to get over to where the WOC Tour races were being held. I changed in the car while driving there and then ran to the start immediately after we parked.

EVENT: WOC Tour Day 3
COURSE: D20E, 5.2 km, 13 controls
TERRAIN: Same terrain as yesterday - we ran on an adjacent part of the map and used the same finish.
MY RUN: It was really flat today compared to the last few days and I felt like I was flying! I still made about 8+ minutes of mistakes between a few controls (mostly due to not going on proper compass bearing through light green woods), but most of the legs went ok and I was happy to be going fast for a change! In the past, I've often felt that my speed was hindered by my meager navigational skills, but nowadays I'm beginning to feel like I can go fast and navigate at the same time. I still make mistakes, sometimes quite big, but then again I made big mistakes then as well. The difference is now I can go faster without necessarily increasing the chance of making mistakes. The only times I've ever felt so fast while orienteering before were when I was following people (such as Abi Weeds in the spring), but this was all me! That's pretty cool!
RESULTS: My time for the course would have put me 9th out of 15 starters, but because I was 5 minutes late to the start and my result time includes this, I am listed as being last :( On the bright side, if I'd had a clean run, I think I could have beaten the #1 girl! I was going fast enough...

EVENT: WOC Tour, Day 2
COURSE: D20E, 6.6 km, 20 controls
TERRAIN: Not as hilly as yesterday (contour intervals were 2.5 m), but not exactly flat either. It was quite muddy in places, especially near the marshes and streams. Lots of paths, some quite wide, provided multiple route choice options on the long legs.
MY RUN: After yesterday's run, I had several goals in mind for today: (1) find all of the controls, in the right order, (2) do not climb hills unless it is necessary, (3) be careful on the short legs. I had small mistakes on over half of the controls, but no disasters. Also, to avoid being too tired at the end, I walked up a few hills (no more than 10-15 seconds each time) and read ahead.
RESULT: 12th out of 13 starters in D20E. About 13 minutes of mistakes in total, counting only the most obvious ones. (I didn't include the legs on which I was going slower to read the map or had a non-optimal route choice, as long as I executed them cleanly.) Without these mistakes, I would have been about 5th, in the middle of the group.
MISTAKES:
(1) 2.5 min
(4) 1 min
(8) 3 min
(9) 1.5 min
(10) 1.5 min
(12) 1 min
(16) 2 min
(17) 0.5 min

EVENT: WOC Tour Day 1
COURSE: W20E, 7.1 km, 18 controls
TERRAIN: Hilly and physical. There were many green sections and at times, there was no choice but to go straight through them.
MY RUN: I messed up on number 1 (perhaps thrown off by the 1:15000 scale), but relocated reasonably quickly. I stopped to drink water at #3, but got a really bad stitch immediately afterward and decided not to drink water again on the course. This ended up killing me - I was running really well all the way through control 12 (over 5 km into the course) but then I began to feel very dehydrated and started making ridiculous mistakes. None of the controls after that were clean. I climbed several hill tops unnecessarily on #13, then accidently skipped #14, then went to #16 twice. I was so out of it!!!
RESULT: DSQ
THOUGHTS: Despite not having a result, I was satisfied with today's run. At the beginning of the year, I was happily surprised if I found a control that was mine. In the middle of the year, I was happy if I managed to have a few clean legs on a course. And now, I'm happy since I can run the majority of a course cleanly. In the future, I expect I'll be able to have solid runs and perhaps even totally clean races, but for now, today's run was good enough.

C • Water 3

After the WOC middle qualification races were over, spectators were invited to do some open couses that closely resembled those the WOC runners just ran. I did the women's course C, 4.4 km, 210+ meters climb. I didn't run full-out because my own races start tomorrow and I don't want to start out tired. However, even going at a jogging pace, I made some mistakes. Almost all of the controls were in reentrants and there were a lot of them out there! What's worse, most of them had orange and white flags in them, and only some were mine. It was confusing, to say the least. What made it tougher was that none of the legs were very long, but I only had control descriptions printed on my map, so I had to constantly fold and unfold it. This proved to be very inconvenient given the short, technical legs!

I'm glad I had this chance to run a course with flags out in the woods before the WOC Tour starts. Hopefully now that I have made my mistakes today, I will not repeat the same ones tomorrow.

Running to the start.

Event: WOC 2006
 

Today we moved to the official WOC accomodations. I actually went with the others to the middle distance model event, but then decided not to run because I felt tired. I would have map-walked, but the rain made that thought seem somehow unpleasant...

Today, Tom set up some courses on the Silkeborg Sonderskov map. I opted to do the slightly longer course (5.5 km) because it was on the 1:15,000 map and I wanted more practice with this scale. I made a few minor mistakes and twisted my ankle going into #7, but felt good about my navigation in general. Time includes 3 minutes jogging to start and about 61 minutes doing the course. For the most part, I knew where I was and knew where I was going. Also, it was beautiful out in the woods - I felt like I was running just for the joy of running rather than for any higher purpose.

I reran a course I did in November (during the USA training camp in Denmark). It's a nice course on the Silkeborg Vesterskov map, designed by Tom. It took me about 5-6 minutes to navigate to the start. Then I ran the course (5 - 5.5 km in length) in about 57 minutes. I wasn't racing - it was just a training run - but even so I did it faster and better than that time in November. It is nice to see improvement!!

Middle-distance training in Ryekol. A very short line-O followed by some control picking. I got close and personal with the green today...

In the afternoon, I walked a sprint course on the Botanisk Have map with Suzanne. It's amazing how quickly things come up on a sprint map, even when walking!!