Training Log Archive: Billenicus

Oceania Long M45

Fairly brutal race. Going well for most of the first part but legs just died after a couple of the steep climbs and was pretty slow over the second half. Technically fairly sound. Lost 15 sec at no. 3 as thought it was on the re-entrant rather than the spur. Didn't spot road route 9-10, which would have been quicker.

Major time losses were caused by vegetation. Lost a load of time (2 mins?) climbing the hill into 8. Also lost significant time 9-10. In both cases the terrain was shown as slow run, but should have been fight. Annoying to lose the race through randomness.

Knee seems to be holding up very well, though today was fairly stressful - still holding back a bit down the hills, particularly on tracks.

Legs very tired afterwards - tomorrow will be hard!

Long Champs - 3 - Splits

The big day.

Putting out controls, collecting in, running various errands at different speeds depending on level of panic.

All went smoothly in the end. Winning times long as expected, though Women's winning time longer than hoped until realising that the winner had lost so much time.

Hope anyone who ran the courses and reads this didn't mind the length too much - largely forced on us due to spectator / media / logistics considerations, and the courses could only really have been shortened by making them a lot less interesting. Ideally the Women's course would have been the Men's course!

A relaxing round of golf with Martin and Charlie. Had intended to play Judgeford but there was no-one there to hire the clubs from so went for the Silverstream 9-holer instead. A good decision as we were all a bit knackered. 39 shots each!

Running around Government House checking that nothing had changed. Ran nearly all routes that runners are likely to take and had to remove an obstacle or two. Also a quick loop of Wellington East checking on gates etc.

Oceania middle distance H21E. Fairly awful run. Minor misses at 2, 5, 17 (1 min total). More major mistakes at 7 (45 sec), 13 (3 mins), 14 (2 mins) and lost time en route to 12 (45 sec). Mostly my fault - not careful enough, particularly on 13. On no. 14, the map was at fault - coming in from the beach the control was the far side of a major ridge that just wasn't shown correctly.

Felt generally rusty technique-wise for this level of difficulty, not helped by the heat. Physically coped OK, but was finding the big dunes tiring late in the course.

Middle Champs C 1 - Splits

Oceania Day 2

Just jogging parts of the course since I'd been on the area at the World Cup trials. Took the shortest route up through the runnable stuff and did the whole of the second half (5.7Km of 7.8 Km). Treating it as practice for tomorrow and handled it pretty well apart from one 1 min mistake in the dunes when I looked in a depression but didn't see the control.

Would have liked to have raced it.

Event 2 C 3 - Splits

Event: 2013 Oceania Carnival & WC Races
 

Oceania Day 1 - Fusilier

Nice fast sand dune forest.

Felt a bit weird doing a proper race again after such a long break, and no idea how it was going to go. First 3 controls tricky so took them more slowly than usual to try to get back into it. Thereafter course was mostly trying to keep going hard on the red line. A few wavery bits and hesitations and some fairly small misses (6, 7, 14) but otherwie fairly clean - glad to see I can still do this.

Physically, probably went a bit too hard after 3, and found it tough to keep pushing. Felt like I was too slow for much of the course, but the result suggests I wasn't going too badly. Forgot about the knee, which is a very good sign (though it didn't feel so good later in the afternoon).

Event 1 C 3 - Splits