Training Log Archive: Psuba

Event: Wessex Night League - Sarum event
 

Salisbury Night race, Wessex Night League.
1 hour score, 2nd.

Some suboptimal planning but not messed up the strategy as much as I usually do. Hesitant in a few places and messed about in the control circle a few times wasting time. Felt good running even though 3rd day in a row racing. Can speed up more from now on.

Event: November Classic and Southern Championships (UKOL)
 

November Classic, course 2 (M40L)

Great day out, but terrain as usual New Forest with lots of bogs, so got very wet very fast. Which I hate. But at least I am getting used to it.
Decent course, made about 6 mins worth of mistakes adding all together, so considering I wasn't giving 100% not a bad result (about 17 min behind winner). Felt quite OK actually especially considering the consequent days trainings. Probably be worth upping the pace after I am back from vacation in December. Lost most time (apart from where I made mistakes) on legs with uphill so as expected need to strengthen legs & do hill training more.

Navigation largely OK, recovered OK from the mistakes as well:
#3 - imprecise compass bearing, ended up right of the control with not much to go on, unfortunately an M18 starting a minute ahead did the same so I wasn't adjusting immediately. Did a bit of a roundtrip but at least did not hesitate much, all together about 2 mins
#4 - just was doing a few rounds in the green, instead of going around it which would have been faster, about 30s
#10 - hesitant attacking the control and pulled left, bounced back from the road, about 30s
#12 - misjudged the distances on the map (been a while since I ran on 1:15000), saw the vegetation that hid the control from afar, but thought it is too far - also saw an unmapped track before it - so stopped early and tried to locate it nearer. In the end convinced myself to the reality and lo and behold... 1 min
#14 - Not sure the map was 100% here, attacked from the veg boundary but ended up rounding another veg strip further N of the one which was mapped with the control. As there was no control there, I went back and found the control, but either it was more to the S of where it should have been, or there was another unmapped veg N of it. 1:30
#21 - bad choice of going more or less straight out of control, probably the worst option to get out on the track. 30s

Startled a pack of deer in between 5 and 6, there was about 5 of them jumping away around 2 m from me!

Event: Southampton City Race / November Classic and Southern Championships (UKOL)
 

Southampton City Race, Mens Vets.

As this whole stretch is part of training and not target races, I thought I'll try out the new gimbal with the GoPro on my head. Ah well, what a mistake. Too heavy, kept bouncing all over so I ended up adjusting it all the time, until it messed up my forehead so much it hurt, so I took it off an carried it from about 2/3rd of the way. What's worse, as I was 1 min late to the start I did not have time to verify the GoPro settings, so instead of taking a picture every second, it was on single shot - which means it had 1 picture at the start and then switched off. So much ado for mothing.

OK so speed was terrible, but I felt quite OK to be honest. Made a few route choice mistakes as I was distracted by the headcam (I'll blame it on it anyway) and got to the wrong side of the wall once as I wasn't paying attention to the control description sufficiently. Lovely day out, though and a decent course.

Supposed to be 4min/km mile reps, but too many dogs in the park attempting to eat me so I stopped more than I would have otherwise. Not in the best of shape for this anyway so would not have lasted the full session anyway.

4x full circuits

Good outing with the Wessex bunch - Alan, Gavin, Tim, Dale, Jason, Becca, Becca, Julie, Sheila, and I suspect I missed someone... Got there a bit late as usual (work) but did the whole training 4/4/4. Can't help but get back to feeling this is a bit shorter than what I need though, so maybe next time I'll add 1/1/1 more at least...

Paces:
36-35-36-34s
1:17-18-16-16s
36-34-35-33s