Training Log Archive: Old Daniel

Travel day

Warm uo on beach for WMOC long

WMOC long on a different set of dunes, probably a bit less complicated and more undergrowth. 43rd at 15.41 A return to a 1:10000 map. Started quite well but did make a small mistake at 6, I did not find the attack point and ended on wrong hill. Loss was probably about 3 mins (and 15 places) was a bit 'scrapy' in the last 25% and as a result went from 3xth to 43rd.

Overall thoroughly enjoyed the forest orienteering both racing and training but the urban sprint was a bit 'ordinary'

Delightful but flat and unrepresentative warm up forest

Warm up -long run to WMOC middle start

Middle, back in the idyllic forest, just the humps this time with pretty much the first start. 62nd +17.44. Hit no 1 one well with good control but missed no 2, a little left but lost over a minute. For most of the rest of the course navigated and ran really quite well. Alas there were a couple of exceptions, seeing the block of green adjacent to the control I abandoned map reading and ran to it. In retrospect its neither in the right place or direction and bad went to worse...…..10.43 taken and 6.25 lost. Going to 6 the easiest leg I ran on the compass to a feature adjacent to a path and stamped 90, sadly my control was 80. Relocated but was a long, long, way out. Post race it was clear I had set compass on a pesky invisible ride rather than a north line -another self inflicted wound, with 4 mins lost and 75/80th. In the end the good bits did mean I had avoided relegation......just

Warm up for WMOC Qualifier

Forest qualifier in a fantastic lumpy pine forest with good visibility and clean under foot. 39th +25.53. The standard of competition was very high and I had decided that the only chance of making the 'A' final with a 'one off' qualifier and a very early start was to go for it from the gun, which with my technical competence was ridiculous - any other strategy would have been better. A quirk of this map was that it had a straight ride grid marked with the dashed line symbol, difficult to see on the map but very prominent on the ground. It was difficult and a bit frustrating to get passed the traffic to the start, but I then set out into the terrain on an unaccustomed 1:7500 relying on accurate compass and seeing intermediate features to know where I went from flat to a control sited deep in the humps...….the intermediate was wrong, a ride I had not seen on the map rather than the path I had, but the map seemed to fit -no control then I overshot, hard to relocate and lost 4.30 mins in 52nd place. Next few were in the very flat forest and I did not rely on the one contour ridges enough so although running quite quickly had only got back to 46th. I ran well to the next control but misread the description and went away to return 3 mins later. I did get may act together and by running quite quickly and navigating ok -(I did lose time on the penultimate one getting on the ridge ) squeaked into the B Final. In actual fact if you look at other results this was probably an ok result and would prove to be difficult to better

WMOC middle warm up in idyllic forest adjacent to the area

Warm up for WMOC Sprint Final

Urban A final in central Riga, 68th + 3.36 -yes the winner did 9.54. Mistake at short (simple no 1) misread building and ended up with map upside down, lost 70 secs which in the concept of this race was a bit of a disaster. Alice started at the same time as me and said there was a van we had to avoid which could explain how I missed the early turn and ended in parallel location. Also ran passed 11, avoiding tour party group did not help and stamped next flag (there were flags everywhere- for some reason checked code and had to return -surprisingly lost 30 secs. Elsewhere clean but in what was actually just a foot race around wet cobbles. Take mistakes out and miles off the necessary pace.