Training Log Archive: Old Daniel

North along CW from Old Sodbury, surprisingly warm yet cloudy day. Running seemed quite hard work 4115 to the turn. Working quite hard on the way back

Compton Dando, run around Jackie's route with Pete and Jo. Surprisingly muddy. Nice to run with my team mates

Final got to the dentist and then did the first effort session for ages on the Downs. Pyramid 30 secs to 3 mins x 2 and back down with 2mins max recovery. Seemed ok on the way up but had to work hard onm the way down the extra 3 mins seemed testing. Tired afterwards

Warm up

BAOC event at Hollands Wood (was Denny Lodge). Dead flat completely white if very wet forest. Unusiual event with only 10 controls none of which was hidden. Unfortunetly going to 2 a long leg with a section of forest road running, I decided irrationally that I had gone too far and went to look for a pit. Had to return to track and complete leg -will have lost 3 mins. Don't supposed anyone else made an errors it was that sort of a day. Don't think I would want to do this every week but very good training

Blaise Castle. Had intended to do intervals after dentist but appointment is actually Thursday. So went to Blaise and did full run. Nice sunny day not too muddy, so positive and started quickly chasing another runner, kept up pace in middle section and knew I was surprisingly quick at start of end section so pushed on.Don't think I have run sub 70 for a very long time. I would have been happy with 75mins today

Westonbirt big day, representative time, good weather

Decent warm up

Sarum Saunter at Fonthill - felt first time in ages that I was running normally.
Early course (Short Brown) could be considered easy and so could start quite aggressively. Went fine to control 10, route started along edge of forest where I was met with driving, horizontal hail. Almost reduced to a stand still, reverted to forest. Approaching control ran through obvious flag into open forest as attackpoint but no compass . Forest open but enough rubbish on floor to hide a pesky pit and lose ages. (Also fell - I now do this regularly but quite rare to land on head!), a bit stroppy and lost some momentum in particular at 13 ran through a tower (attackpoint) but ignored compass to search amongst bushes. Again spent a while sorting out. Perhaps a lessons on using compass to support even on 'easy' areas. Also lost time on last leg due to poor (i,e. no) route choice .
Chris Kelsey lost loads of time coming back across the road (7 mins) - its a big advantage that whenever organisers say never / not used for 20 years I have run there before so knew it was a cutting/ tunnel. He is clearly going quicker but I was more competitive than of late on some legs