Training Log Archive: Psuba

Event: WUOC 2016
 

To start

Hungaria Cup day 1, M40 Middle distance.

11th/15, 22:20 down on winner (!)
Very enjoyable varied course and terrain, unfortunately made a right mess of it. In control for most of the race but the few controls where I wasn't, I lost a lot of time. This duly blew any chances of being in contention at all for the rest of the week in the overall.

3 - 2 min lost. Ran past the control and had to figure out and double back. Several mistakes on this leg - not used to the 1:4000 map yet so ran past my planned attack point and also did not read the control description so was looking for a crag instead of a rocky pit.
8 - lost about 10 mins (!). Poor route choice to start with, ran up to go around the green but lost more time that way an wasn't in control really into the control which I should have been careful about in the middle of the green. Then ran past the control about 4-5 times from different attack points and directions, I suspect there was some mapping inconsistency/errors there: a shooting platform not mapped, a wet pit that was either not mapped or further south than mapped, and a path mapped as a linear white forest in the middle of the green without veg boundary - and the control was next to it. Felt like a bingo control in the end, but clearly others had less problems with it than I did.
10 - just lack of confidence circling about in the green to find the pit now, losing about half a min
14 - 3 min lost, right next to the control but did not understand the map properly so circled around quite a bit until the penny dropped.

The remaining 7 minutes are a combination of smaller errors, lack of confidence and not pushing any more very much. A poor day 1 although not the fault of the course and the area as it was a great middle distance course.

Maybe a bit of a compensation that I managed to place 2nd in the Hungarian TempO Championship that took place during the day. Don't know much more as results are not yet published online and I missed the result ceremony but got handed the medal the next day...

Shakeout run to pick up the hire car

Travel after work so no training

2 loops around Windsor Park.

A mix of techniques for long distance training:
5K with 180spm + 10K in zone control in zone 3 (sub 150, for some reason Attackpoint does not align with Garmin, need to sort it out). This twice, clearly.

Was OK but tight on time doing this after work, so got very dark in the forest towards the end (no headlamp with me), of course managed to kick a root right at the very end with the toe where I had the injury earlier in the year, great.

Faded slightly later than the last 30K training, 20k there, 25k now (clearly visible on the HR/pace combo graph).

Which is not bad considering this was a.) more hilly than the last one and b.) had a fairly intensive few days before even if the last day was an easy run - but not a rest day like last time.

Easy jog to pick up some stuff and back, used this as an opportunity for a recovery/zone control run.
Also first run trying out the Adidas that I found on sale (my road shoes needed replacing anyway), good initial impressions.

6x Canova circuits with warmup / cooldown on Stanwell Moor.

Was originally intending to do 10 (4/4/2) but seeing the distance needed to get to the moor and get back from it, combined with the fatigue from the race yesterday decided to shorten it.
Also somewhat constrained in the fast sessions (500m) as quite a few of the intervals meant running through narrow paths, duck under branches, and in one case trying not to fall off of a wooden ledge above a marsh whilst getting battered by nettle... so quite an orienteering-flavoured interval session.

Event: CROESO 2016
 

Croeso 2016, Day 1, course 2. 12th M40L.

Tried to go out early with an open start to dodge the rain. That did not work - started to rain from about 1/3rd way in so got totally soaked and could not use magnifier which made a difference. Also made this choice conscious of the disadvantage as expected that later runners will find a lot of elephant tracks leading into controls. In my case they were basically non-existent and I had to do precision orienteering. Well, should have.

It was a tough challenge both physically (did not manage to dodge a lot of the sand dunes and could not dodge many anyway) and navigationally - a lot of intricate areas and you could be standing 2m from the control not seeing it. Which means - I enjoyed it immensely even with the knowledge that all my weaknesses showed under this test!

The main time losses were controls 3 and 4 - got 95% of the way to Control 3 OK but then darted left too early in what I thought was the reentrant I needed, then started a treasure hunt in the circle that lasted about 4:40.
Then the route between control 3 and 4 I managed to mess up completely - the plan was to go slightly right around the green then left around the majority of the sand dunes. In the end I tried to recover the time lost before (classic mistake) so ran too hard without much thinking and was pushed too far right by the sand dunes before the green, and never recovered - should have had the mental strength to correct but just ran through the dunes which of course massively slowed me down, not only physically but navigationally as well as I had to slow down/stop/correct often through them. Lost anything between 4-6 minutes there too.

Without this I would have been up there between 3rd-5th place.

There were some further smaller mistakes and suboptimal route choices including a few annoying ones towards the end, I probably faded mentally even though physically I felt OK.

Anyway, good fun and how great it would be to be subjected to such challenges more often, as there is little chance to learn from this sufficiently to put into practice consistently.

Terrain demo for Croeso 2016.
Easy jog around with a Gopro to get a feel for the mapping and terrain.

Some use but unfortunately map was out of date with vegetation in quite a few places - including a control that should have been in the woods according to the map but in fact was in an open area.

Also paths much more prevalent than Kenfig the next day so in terms of planning strategy it wasn't much help. It did however help getting used to 2.5m contours and how they were used.