Training Log Archive: Anna

warmup a couple of controls in woods, cooldown a bit after race.

while waiting for shower, first 10 minutes of Greg's team's "core o'clock".

My goal was to not think of my knee, even if it hurt. It hurt but it didn't bother me, and it didn't affect my running.
Running without clue descriptions felt awkward, but it was good to have a procedure to try to follow, and I focused on that for a lot of the race. I felt slow, but at least I was tired at the end. After the first few controls, the navigation was not difficult, but my course was still not perfect.

At the beginning I had one large error because I was trying to take the "safe route", the trail, but the trail was small enough and the elephant tracks were bad enough that I thought the trail was just elephant tracks. I recovered too slowly and didn't have enough confidence in my mapreading even after I decided where I was and left the larger trail. The rocks around there were really fun, but I wish I would've been able to run the middle final to get some more practice. With how good my knee was feeling today, I think I might have been able to run both. But I guess it's always better to be too cautious.

Oh yeah, and I ignored other people really well.

cooldown with Alison. Very muddy in event arena. Knee did not hurt.

Would have liked to run the middle today because I really felt like I could have focused better, but Sandra took me to talk to the Swiss physio and we decided it would be better to run the relay and get the extra day of rest in between. It is okay to run the relay because this injury won't become chronic and has been healing quickly when I rest it. It was a shame to miss all the cool rocks I'd been looking forward to, but Alison and Greg said the footing there was really rough.

C • Was wondering what happened... 1

Also included about 5 controls in the woods on the way to the start. Knee was fine on trails, I was very careful stepping over branches and stuff, and it hurt very little when I took small steps up the hills. (It actually hurt more walking than running, because I took bigger steps.)
I think one of my biggest accomplishments today was getting myself into the right mindset to race after only deciding this morning and thinking all day yesterday that it was doubtful.

test run on asphalt after breakfast to see if my knee hurt. It didn't. There was a slight incline.

Felt very ready at the start, was doing everything right at the beginning. Was very slow because I had to stop and walk where the ground was rough, but it didn't upset me until a gigantic downhill after #4. One of my goals was to not worry about my knee, but that wasn't really realistic since I needed to be able to judge if I should continue the course. Even though I was upset after the hill I thought it would probably feel better after I was done so I kept going.
But then I planned my route to 7 instead of to 6 and from 5 I was reading the map as if I were going to 7, and also turned 180 degrees. It took me a minute or 2 to realize the second mistake, and another minute or 2 to realize the first. Then I decided it wouldn't be smart to to keep going but did anyway because it was almost as fast to do that as it was to go straight back. I did some legs well but wasn't very focused.
The flat trail and field at the end didn't hurt at all and I got to race a South African girl.

At first all I could think about was what a disappointing day today was. I completely bombed an easy control, all because I didn't learn from my mistakes yesterday, which I shouldn't have made anyway because I knew I was supposed to make a plan and not change it but for some reason I did. So it happened again today and I got to spend an extra half hour falling into mud puddles.
As if that weren't enough, 5 minutes after I got back the back of my knee started hurting and it still hurts whenever I lift my knee higher than I do shuffling along on the asphalt roads and so I went to the first aid tent and asked them 10 times if I should ice it or heat it and they said that since it doesn't hurt when they twist it sideways I should do neither. And then I got back and asked other people and everyone's telling me 10 different things.

Except now I don't feel as bad as I did before because I started remembering good things about my race, like how I wasn't distracted by other people at all. At one point, right after I messed up, there was a train of girls running through and maybe last month I would've been tempted to join them. I hadn't had a chance to plan all of my route to the next control, though, so instead I stood and did that for what seemed to be a painful number of seconds. And then 2 controls later I saw 2 of the girls wandering around looking confused when I knew right where the control was. Hahaha! That made me feel really good about myself.
Also, for the most part, I felt smooth going through the short controls in the rocks and I knew what to use along the way and what I would be able to see.
So I feel really ready for the middle on Thursday.

C • The Long course map was imp... 1

After looking at the course with Alexei, we found the two mistakes I made on control 4. The first was not going back to the large stream all the way to the cliffs to find the second trail (I hadn't even considered them in my route choice), and the second is when I got to the marsh where the 2 trails meet and took the one I hadn't originally planned on. I think that mostly everything else was an improvement on my recent orienteering.

The only times I messed up were when I changed my plan.