Training Log Archive: Ollie

Race the Castles - final event on Forvie NNR - a large area of dunes, mainly covered in heath. Very few paths. Really enjoyed running on this tricky area, with lots of contour detail but an excellent map. Made a couple of small mistakes near the end but nothing significant, so good to have a near clean run for a change. Generally, it made sense to run very straight, as the terrain was uniformly "slow run" and there were few useful paths. I ran 9.0km. Route: http://www.strava.com/activities/209836944

Slow cycle from Maryculter to Stonehaven, mainly via the unpleasant B979 but with a very nice detour partway along, onto NCR1. The original plan had been to push on to Montrose, but there was a strong headwind (I had anticipated a crosswind instead). Slowed right down after realising I would struggle to make a planned train (and was tired and overloaded anyway) and then had an hour to kill in Stonehaven Route: http://www.strava.com/activities/209836941

Race the Castles event at the Balmoral Estate in Royal Deeside. Finish line in view of Balmoral Castle.

This was my first (and possibly last) classic distance race - running Men's Elite, so I took three energy gels, and ran slowly and carefully - perhaps a bit too slowly and carefully as my time was a little slow even by my standards, and my peer group were generally 10-15 minutes faster. As it was a World Ranking Event, I ran without GPS.

Despite pacing it slowly I still made numerous mistakes. The terrain was pretty physical in places - some big areas of boulders and brashings, and there were some very technical sections too. 1:15000 map, brand new, but it was slightly vague in places, with simplified contour detail and many small boulders missed (fair enough - but then don't put controls behind the 1m boulders that are shown!)

A killer climb near the end, coming out of the specator control, followed by a technical section when we were tired - classic trick, and resulted in me making a six minute mistake on the third from last control.

Event: JOK Chasing Sprint
 

JOK Chasing Sprint - Prologue. Very nice area - physical and technical, and attractive to look at too. Made a number of dumb mistakes which meant I wasted at least 5-6 minutes. Finished pretty much last. Route: http://www.strava.com/activities/209837179

JOK Chasing Sprint - Chase. Decided to run it after all, after lining up most people at the chase start. Gave up fairly early on after fighting through brashing and other very physical terrain, only to end up nowhere near my second control. Jogged to the fourth one and then 8-9-10 and then to 12 and the finish, where the prizegiving had already happened. Oh well, saving my legs for tomorrow. Route: http://www.strava.com/activities/209837196

Dunottar Castle to Maryculter. Along the B979 (full of trucks), fading light, and very overloaded. Not a pleasant cycle at all. However - loads of Strava segments, yay! Route: http://www.strava.com/activities/209837057

Wussed out of Munroing as tired/dehydrated (and didn't get back home until nearly before 11pm). Shame, it was a nice day today. However, I have realised that I potentially have quite a few potential Munro days from Braemar - at least five - so this would make an excellent base for a Munroing trip soon.

My "ticklist" map is at http://oobrien.com/map/munroist.php - blue = still to do.

Slow cycle in on the estate road from Dalwhinnie along Loch Ericht, then climbing a little to Lock Pattack. Stopped just after the loch.

Three Munros, the middle one of which was Ben Alder. Climbed Ben Alder via the slightly scrambly Long Leachas, which is in a spectacular situation. High cloud and some sunshine, dry - lovely day for Munros.

The Lancet Edge of Geal Charn, which I passed beneath from Munro 1 to 2, looked amazing, and stags were bellowing throughout the glens, the whole day (and into the night).

Route: http://www.strava.com/activities/207592994

Back to Dalwhinnie from Loch Pattack, in twilight. Slow as had plenty of time to wait for train at other end, and it was cold. Also going carefully to avoid potholes and rocks. Last bit was pretty much in darkness.

Race the Castles: Stirling.

Straight into the castle for seven controls - fast, fun. Then sections through a hilly park and then a flat, post-industrial wasteland/surburban housing area "Forthside" before into the main city centre, out to a field with a series of ditches, then the big climb up to a graveyard beside the castle, and finally around the old town - the classically interesting, urban technical bit. So all in a good bit of variety and an interesting map to run around. Personally I prefer Edinburgh with its closes and intricate housing estates, but Stirling was certainly very pleasant too.

GPS says I ran 12.3km, an impressive 64% over the straight line. Strava says I only did 260m of climb which I can believe, in fact probably quite a bit less than that. Certainly not the 320m posted. Finished 9th of around 50. Route: http://www.strava.com/activities/206505853

Much better map printing than yesterday's. 1:4000 scale helped but no pixeling visible at all and features were clear and sharp. Same printer, but looking at the two maps side-by-side, the difference is huge.

Only problem was unnecessary white buffering beside the magenta course lines, meant that I thought there was a crossing point in a wall in one place, and there wasn't. White buffering is debatably useful for control circles but I don't think it's ever needed for course lines, especially if underlying black bleeds through the line anyway (which it did here) - the "overprint effect".

C • printing 2

Event: Race the Castles
 

Race the Castles: Edinburgh. GPS says I ran 9.5km. Big home advantage - I was familiar with most of the map. The map also tended to avoid some of the most technical sections. The planning was good though with a good tour of several sections of the Old Town, a section through the steep part of Princes Street Gardens below the tunnel, which was fun and new, and a couple of classic long legs with lots of route choice - most failed to spot the best route on the first which was flatter but longer. Finished 11th out of a big group, six minutes behind the winner - very happy.

Special note/grumble: The quality of printing of the map was extremely poor - e.g. in some places, steps had blurred to the point they were not visible, and uncrossable walls on either sides of some passages had bled across each other. There was also an overabundance of form lines - essentially these formed a 2.5m contour in much of the map rather than just "showing form" as they should. The map has been overly rasterised and individual pixels can be clearly seen on the map, the DPI looks very low. The 1:4000 map used by the sprint courses was less affected (though still blurry) so something has gone wrong with the switch to 1:5000 for the main courses.

C • Map 6

Edinburgh Waverley thru Loanhead.

Race the Castles Prologue, around the West End of Edinburgh. Complete disaster for me - I fell into all the traps, and near the end just took irrational decisions and changed level repeatedly where there was no need. Finished well down in the results - bottom third.