Training Log Archive: BB

A Red course was set today for Black Mountain North for a selection race for the ACT juniors - many of the control were red, especially number 3 which was a middle gully on a high slope with quite a few other gully systems nearby - which I found out! - lost about 5 minutes there as I ended up finding the nearby control 10 before I found 3. Course advertised as 5.6 km but required some variation to try and reduce climb and avoid green. Great race toward the end with 5 other orienteers charging through the bush. Liz ran same course and I only beat her on 3 of the 13 controls!!

Felt tired in this session after the run in the late morning after watching the world cup Aussie game - indeed I fell asleep in the the final relaxation exercise and had to be woken!! I was a bit too relaxed.

C • Asleep at Yoga 2

Strength and conditioning using various gym machines.

Nice session - felt strong after hard runs over the past two weekends - even nearly master "half moon". Day 3 of QB3 now on route gadget.

Ride around the LBG basins as usual - did not use the garmin so a naked ride. Cool conditions but still. My Day 1 and 2 QB3 route gadget tracks are now up. A bit too revealing!

Day 3 of QB3 was a middle distance race in the great terrain that we were on yesterday. Went into the race knowing I had a 10 minute lead on 3rd place in cumulative time in my class so aimed not to make any big boo boos. Course advertised length was 3.4 kms with 20 controls. Area was on the other side of the assembly area to where we had been yesterday. It was a bit thicker which made the navigation harder than yesterday, albeit the leg lengths were much shorter.

Took a conservative route to control 1 to get into the map and course which paid off as I nailed it. As indeed I did for all the controls on the course - that is nailed them! Leg 6 to 7 was very tricky and a lot of people lost time there - I stuck to a bearing and read enough detail to know where I was all the time - slow but steady. Caught one of the gun M16 runners here who had started 2 minutes ahead of me. Mind you that was the last I saw of him when he charged off. End result was second place - down 1 minute on the winner. The splits should be revealing as third place today made a 5 minute error on 6 to 7 - so I clearly was not going too fast on some of the other legs given I beat him by 1 minute overall today. Just looked at splits and saw I did fastest on two legs and had the lead on the winner with 5 controls to go but dropped 30 seconds on two legs to the winner - one was a hill climb and the other I hesitated a bit to get the right spur.

Surprise result was Nick Dent who lost 5 minutes on a leg that was 100 metres - he still won the QB3 M60 A class in cumulative time by 1 minute 26 seconds from me in second place but the lead he had after the first 2 days shrunk considerably - this is one aspect of orienteer that helps to keep up motivation - the unpredictability of how the good runners can sometimes perform. Another aspect that keep you going is running in fantastic areas like we had this weekend.

Day 3 Hard 3A - Splits

Day 2 of the QB3 event on Malang map - an area used during the 2007 JWOC when they were held in the land of Oz. great area with great weather. Course advertised as 5.2 km but garmin recorded above distance as leg 4 to 5 involved a long wide route choice. Lost at least 1 minute on first control. Took me a while to read the map as the contour and rock detail was finer than usual. As a result I punch just after Nick Dent and then had a tow for a few controls. Next miss was thevcomplicate leg 6 to 7 where I did not have a good enough plan and found hard to relocate on the side of a hill with a lot of cliffs and rock. Estimate dropped 4 minutes. Good thing I sensed I had gone the right distance but was too high. As a result I did not waste energy running around before I saw another competitor heading for the control. Rest of the course ok and mostly fast with nice runnable parts between the rock outcrops. Finished second in my class but down 7 minutes on Nick. Better navigation would have closed the gap by quite a bit.

C • gps loaded 2

Hard 5 Day 2 - Splits