Training Log Archive: Mark3In the 7 days ending Oct 29, 2017:
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Sunday Oct 29, 2017 #
Orienteering - Forest race (OMM A-Class) 7:00:09 [5] 29.44 km (14:16 / km) +2168m 10:26 / km
ahr:114 max:160 shoes: X-Talon 225 (July 2017)
http://www.omm.routegadget.co.uk/rg2/#101&cour...
Slept pretty well for an MM. Might've been due to wearing a hat? Don't know. Don't think I changed anything else. Warm enough with sleeping bag+liner, and wearing baselayer and fleece. It helped that once Mark is asleep he doesn't move at all.
Various body parts not happy in the morning. Right knee sore from all the descending, extensor foot tendons hurting in both feet, hips aching, plantar hurting in left foot, achilles hurting... my shin, however, was totally fine. Score! I think that the entensor thing might be my feet not liking the 225s as much as the 212s. It only started happening after LiaD where I wore the 225s for 50k, and I'd only worn them for short O races before that. I think I'll get myself another pair of 212s instead! But back to the race...
Took it fairly steady on the path at the beginning; didn't leave long enough for stretching enough really (despite getting up 2 hours before we needed to start) so thought a gentle warmup was a good idea. Started in full waterproofs again just because it was cold and I thought they'd keep the wind off, but it was pretty glorious weather. Gloves still on most of the day, but visibility for miles and miles - it was like a different area. Stunning views right from the start and for the whole day.
Struggling with my knee down the steep hill to 2 and Mark pulling away a bit. Then struggled with the climb up to 3 as well; I think I was probably calorie deficient after the ludicrousness of yesterday. Mark had two 1000-cal Expedition Foods which I'm going to go with next time.
Map pretty dodgy contouring round Slight Side to #4, extremely rocky with none of them mapped. The sheepfold was basically buried in rocks. But we used our altimeters well and nailed it. The navigation was trivial today compared with yesterday, we only really needed to discuss macro route choice and the detailed bits were straightforward...
...which was fortuitous, as somewhere just before Black Crag on the way to #5, my map blew away. I had been removing my gloves, and trying to find somewhere to put my compass while I did that, and generally faffing; and once I'd finished I realised I no longer had a map. Bummer. Basically rule #1. Must think of a solution to avoid this happening again. I mean, I already have a solution - let your partner hold your map for a bit. Hindsight. Anyway as I said, the navigation was trivial so I was more than happy to let Mark do it! But with the rockyness of the terrain and my slowly declining body, I was starting to really slow Mark down. I felt pretty bad about this because yesterday we'd been so well matched.
There was definitely less route choice today. On #6 I elected to come down to the path and back up, as I thought that would be faster than trying to contour out of #5 through unknown terrain as it was pretty rocky everywhere; hard to know whether that was a good call in general or not but it was a good decision for me. Then #7 was straightforward and then a long slog up to the ridge and down again into #8, then straightforward controls to the end.
Looking at it now, day 2 is significantly easier and we should have been faster; my fitness and bodyparts let us down quite a lot. The whole day was either rocky (where I'm not confident) or steep downhill (which hurt my knees) or steep uphill (which was steep uphill). However - we were 34 minutes behind 4th, and I'm not sure I slowed us down that much. And an hour ahead of 6th. So a comfortable 5th place overall
https://www.theomm.com/results/TheOMM2017/multista...
7th today. It looks like 42 teams started the day and only 16 finished, so clearly the physicality took its toll on the other teams too (and most of them didn't have much motivation due to not having finished day1).
I'm happy with the weekend as a whole. It was a shame not to be in better shape on the second day, but the first day went near-perfectly in extremely bad conditions, so that was a real positive. But I learnt that I really don't want to be out for longer than that and so Elite at the OMM is probably never going to happen. It also put me off attemping the Dark Mountains in January as I really don't want to be out in yesterday's conditions but 10 degrees colder and with snow, and in the dark. But already looking forward to next year's MM season, despite not being able to walk at the moment :)
Slept pretty well for an MM. Might've been due to wearing a hat? Don't know. Don't think I changed anything else. Warm enough with sleeping bag+liner, and wearing baselayer and fleece. It helped that once Mark is asleep he doesn't move at all.
Various body parts not happy in the morning. Right knee sore from all the descending, extensor foot tendons hurting in both feet, hips aching, plantar hurting in left foot, achilles hurting... my shin, however, was totally fine. Score! I think that the entensor thing might be my feet not liking the 225s as much as the 212s. It only started happening after LiaD where I wore the 225s for 50k, and I'd only worn them for short O races before that. I think I'll get myself another pair of 212s instead! But back to the race...
Took it fairly steady on the path at the beginning; didn't leave long enough for stretching enough really (despite getting up 2 hours before we needed to start) so thought a gentle warmup was a good idea. Started in full waterproofs again just because it was cold and I thought they'd keep the wind off, but it was pretty glorious weather. Gloves still on most of the day, but visibility for miles and miles - it was like a different area. Stunning views right from the start and for the whole day.
Struggling with my knee down the steep hill to 2 and Mark pulling away a bit. Then struggled with the climb up to 3 as well; I think I was probably calorie deficient after the ludicrousness of yesterday. Mark had two 1000-cal Expedition Foods which I'm going to go with next time.
Map pretty dodgy contouring round Slight Side to #4, extremely rocky with none of them mapped. The sheepfold was basically buried in rocks. But we used our altimeters well and nailed it. The navigation was trivial today compared with yesterday, we only really needed to discuss macro route choice and the detailed bits were straightforward...
...which was fortuitous, as somewhere just before Black Crag on the way to #5, my map blew away. I had been removing my gloves, and trying to find somewhere to put my compass while I did that, and generally faffing; and once I'd finished I realised I no longer had a map. Bummer. Basically rule #1. Must think of a solution to avoid this happening again. I mean, I already have a solution - let your partner hold your map for a bit. Hindsight. Anyway as I said, the navigation was trivial so I was more than happy to let Mark do it! But with the rockyness of the terrain and my slowly declining body, I was starting to really slow Mark down. I felt pretty bad about this because yesterday we'd been so well matched.
There was definitely less route choice today. On #6 I elected to come down to the path and back up, as I thought that would be faster than trying to contour out of #5 through unknown terrain as it was pretty rocky everywhere; hard to know whether that was a good call in general or not but it was a good decision for me. Then #7 was straightforward and then a long slog up to the ridge and down again into #8, then straightforward controls to the end.
Looking at it now, day 2 is significantly easier and we should have been faster; my fitness and bodyparts let us down quite a lot. The whole day was either rocky (where I'm not confident) or steep downhill (which hurt my knees) or steep uphill (which was steep uphill). However - we were 34 minutes behind 4th, and I'm not sure I slowed us down that much. And an hour ahead of 6th. So a comfortable 5th place overall
https://www.theomm.com/results/TheOMM2017/multista...
7th today. It looks like 42 teams started the day and only 16 finished, so clearly the physicality took its toll on the other teams too (and most of them didn't have much motivation due to not having finished day1).
I'm happy with the weekend as a whole. It was a shame not to be in better shape on the second day, but the first day went near-perfectly in extremely bad conditions, so that was a real positive. But I learnt that I really don't want to be out for longer than that and so Elite at the OMM is probably never going to happen. It also put me off attemping the Dark Mountains in January as I really don't want to be out in yesterday's conditions but 10 degrees colder and with snow, and in the dark. But already looking forward to next year's MM season, despite not being able to walk at the moment :)
Saturday Oct 28, 2017 #
Orienteering - Forest race (OMM A-Class) 8:05:37 [5] 37.83 km (12:50 / km) +3094m 9:07 / km
ahr:128 max:168 shoes: X-Talon 225 (July 2017)
http://www.omm.routegadget.co.uk/rg2/#96&cours...
First attempt at the A-Class at the OMM. Nervous but excited. Based on my LDMT experience I was overdressed at the start; hat, gloves, full body waterproofs. The weather was light rain, wind and fog, but relatively mild.
The hat and gloves came off up the first climb (just a casual c.400m or something) as it was quite sheltered, but once we hit the ridge the wind picked up and the gloves were right back on - and there they would stay for the rest of the day. Mark nailed the control (which was to become a theme for the day) and we were feeling good. Straightforward #2; no issues.
We had been debating route choice to #3 a lot; up and over Bowfell and Crinkle Crags, with path running most of the way and maintaining the height, or down, along the stream and up again, which was shorter but the terrain was more questionable. We had both initially thought up and over, but once we felt the wind were in two minds - I made one of my few navigational inputs over the day and pushed for down/up; which we did, and it seemed like it was a good choice.
Easy macro route choice to #4 but finding it in the fog was tricky. Neither of us were 100% sure but Mark thought it was probably to the right. We went right. We nailed the control. I was about 80% sure it was left. I picked a good partner for the conditions.
I also made the call on our route choice to #5 and navigated most of it as well. Actually finding the crag at the end however proved to be challenging in the fog. We both thought we'd gone too high and must have missed it. We'd seen various looming shapes to either side but both agreed they looked too small to be mapped, but we were a bit unsure. Were it up to me here I would probably (?) have gone to look at some of them. But Mark said the other than the crag, there were no features on the hillside to relocate from, so we should have confidence in our bearing and if we missed it we'd come out at the top and then could attack from there. This was excellent logic. We continued with our bearing; 30s later we were at the control.
#6, enjoyed this control as it was the only one where Mark had a navigational wobble but I was both confident and correct. Weather-wise this was probably the low point of the day (appropriately on Wetherlam); literally gale force winds and rain; starting to get a bit cold now although nothing like LDMT.
We'd debated #7 a lot because it was so rocky and steep around the control. I wanted to approach from Low Water which is what we did, and I think that was a reasonable route, but will be interesting to see what others did as I've just seen a route to the N of Levers Water and up the path/stream which looks good, that we didn't consider at the time.
Lucky on #8 to pick up and indistinct path, which was such good running we followed it for further than we intended to and so contoured more than I wanted; I think gave us a worse AP but Mark nailed the control again. I couldn't add a lot of value here because the ink on that area of map had worn off; also just beforehard there was a lot of picking our way though large, damp, greasy boulders and we discovered that Mark is a lot faster at that than I am and it was the one time of the day he was getting uncomfortably far ahead. Luckily that terrain didn't continue for too long.
#9 we tried to stay on a bearing for a mile but when we were pretty much at the control realised we didn't have an AP and had a bit of a crisis. But this one was some good teamwork; I identified that we were probably at 1 of 2 spurs, Mark chose the one he thought, then I identified what I though was the mapped marsh, from that Mark identified the mapped knoll and then to the re-entrant and we were back in business.
Nice to get out of the wind for a bit down and up through the forest. Then I picked the contouring route round to the control so as to approach the crag from below; Mark thought this was a good shout and we did it well. From this point I was tired and didn't add a lot of value, other than noting that we'd come out too far E on the road and that I thought we'd followed the fence-line rather than the mapped path (which turned out to be true). Then as per, Mark nailed the control ('crag', which wasn't even a crag on the map, just 1mm of grey contour. It was a 20m high [at least] cliff). Easy run down the road to the end.
Given our lack of mistakes and the conditions, I actually expected to be better than 4th; I certainly didn't expect to be 1.5 hours down. I don't think we could have been more than 10 mins faster over the whole day, which isn't bad for an 8 hour race. Mark and I were pretty well matched apart from when it got rocky. Basically really pleased. I could feel lots of niggles but none that would keep me from starting day 2.
76 teams started the day. 8 teams finished. Enough said.
First attempt at the A-Class at the OMM. Nervous but excited. Based on my LDMT experience I was overdressed at the start; hat, gloves, full body waterproofs. The weather was light rain, wind and fog, but relatively mild.
The hat and gloves came off up the first climb (just a casual c.400m or something) as it was quite sheltered, but once we hit the ridge the wind picked up and the gloves were right back on - and there they would stay for the rest of the day. Mark nailed the control (which was to become a theme for the day) and we were feeling good. Straightforward #2; no issues.
We had been debating route choice to #3 a lot; up and over Bowfell and Crinkle Crags, with path running most of the way and maintaining the height, or down, along the stream and up again, which was shorter but the terrain was more questionable. We had both initially thought up and over, but once we felt the wind were in two minds - I made one of my few navigational inputs over the day and pushed for down/up; which we did, and it seemed like it was a good choice.
Easy macro route choice to #4 but finding it in the fog was tricky. Neither of us were 100% sure but Mark thought it was probably to the right. We went right. We nailed the control. I was about 80% sure it was left. I picked a good partner for the conditions.
I also made the call on our route choice to #5 and navigated most of it as well. Actually finding the crag at the end however proved to be challenging in the fog. We both thought we'd gone too high and must have missed it. We'd seen various looming shapes to either side but both agreed they looked too small to be mapped, but we were a bit unsure. Were it up to me here I would probably (?) have gone to look at some of them. But Mark said the other than the crag, there were no features on the hillside to relocate from, so we should have confidence in our bearing and if we missed it we'd come out at the top and then could attack from there. This was excellent logic. We continued with our bearing; 30s later we were at the control.
#6, enjoyed this control as it was the only one where Mark had a navigational wobble but I was both confident and correct. Weather-wise this was probably the low point of the day (appropriately on Wetherlam); literally gale force winds and rain; starting to get a bit cold now although nothing like LDMT.
We'd debated #7 a lot because it was so rocky and steep around the control. I wanted to approach from Low Water which is what we did, and I think that was a reasonable route, but will be interesting to see what others did as I've just seen a route to the N of Levers Water and up the path/stream which looks good, that we didn't consider at the time.
Lucky on #8 to pick up and indistinct path, which was such good running we followed it for further than we intended to and so contoured more than I wanted; I think gave us a worse AP but Mark nailed the control again. I couldn't add a lot of value here because the ink on that area of map had worn off; also just beforehard there was a lot of picking our way though large, damp, greasy boulders and we discovered that Mark is a lot faster at that than I am and it was the one time of the day he was getting uncomfortably far ahead. Luckily that terrain didn't continue for too long.
#9 we tried to stay on a bearing for a mile but when we were pretty much at the control realised we didn't have an AP and had a bit of a crisis. But this one was some good teamwork; I identified that we were probably at 1 of 2 spurs, Mark chose the one he thought, then I identified what I though was the mapped marsh, from that Mark identified the mapped knoll and then to the re-entrant and we were back in business.
Nice to get out of the wind for a bit down and up through the forest. Then I picked the contouring route round to the control so as to approach the crag from below; Mark thought this was a good shout and we did it well. From this point I was tired and didn't add a lot of value, other than noting that we'd come out too far E on the road and that I thought we'd followed the fence-line rather than the mapped path (which turned out to be true). Then as per, Mark nailed the control ('crag', which wasn't even a crag on the map, just 1mm of grey contour. It was a 20m high [at least] cliff). Easy run down the road to the end.
Given our lack of mistakes and the conditions, I actually expected to be better than 4th; I certainly didn't expect to be 1.5 hours down. I don't think we could have been more than 10 mins faster over the whole day, which isn't bad for an 8 hour race. Mark and I were pretty well matched apart from when it got rocky. Basically really pleased. I could feel lots of niggles but none that would keep me from starting day 2.
76 teams started the day. 8 teams finished. Enough said.
Friday Oct 27, 2017 #
Note
(rest day)
Ommommommommommommommomm
Thursday Oct 26, 2017 #
Note
(injured) (rest day)
My foot still hurts a bit so walking on eggshells until after the weekend. Usually I'm not so tentative but I don't want to let Mark down :)
Wednesday Oct 25, 2017 #
Cycling (Commute) 45:00 [3] 17.5 km (23.3 kph) +233m
(injured) shoes: Specialized Sirrus Sport [bike
Running - Road/Track (Evening run) 17:38 [3] 3.37 km (5:14 / km) +49m 4:53 / km
ahr:133 max:143 (injured)
Decided not to risk anything this week!
Tuesday Oct 24, 2017 #
Running - Road/Track (Evening run) 23:41 [3] 4.84 km (4:54 / km) +90m 4:29 / km
ahr:136 max:155 (injured) shoes: Nike Pegasus 32
Put in some effort on a segment to see if any body parts fell off. Seemed to suffer no ill effects (although 2s short of winning the segment dammit).
Definitely starting to get back to normal. Might do the fell session tomorrow as a final thing before the OMM. TBC. Starting to look forward to it; weather forecast for Friday looks pretty good, and how different can Saturday be, right?
Definitely starting to get back to normal. Might do the fell session tomorrow as a final thing before the OMM. TBC. Starting to look forward to it; weather forecast for Friday looks pretty good, and how different can Saturday be, right?
Monday Oct 23, 2017 #
Note
(injured) (rest day)
Wrapping myself in cotton wool...