Training Log Archive: Psuba

Planned as a long double loop over two hills above Balatonszepezd - ended up doing one only.

Several things went wrong in the planning, wanted to go out early to avoid the heat ended up starting almost an hour late. Also M came along for the first part (which is good), that meant way slower jog than planned so by the time we got to the lookout of Fulop-hill I was almost an hour and a half behind my originally planned schedule.

Got on from that point with controlling the HR zone so a slow tempo anyway, but it got weird when I diverted from the "usual" route to the one I planned for this longer loop using the web to find tracks. These turned out to be long unused tracks, did not see a soul the whole way but did have to fight about 1000000 spiders and spiderwebs - ended up running about 5K with my hand in front of my face to collect the webs there and not with my face. Very unpleasant. That then coupled with the fact that due to me being late it was 33 degrees and baking sun by the time I got down out of the forest to the section by Balaton, and much of the morning was gone at this point so decided to abort the session and finished with the single loop instead. Not that big a tested for the legs in the end but the body got an overall workout anyway.

Upside: seeing a grey fox (?) and a deer up close in the forest.

To start

Hungaria Cup day 4, M40 Long distance.

7th/15, 12 min down on winner.
an OK run, although accumulated about 6min mistakes throughout. Physically managed well except for the long climb at the start of the long leg which was more about willpower than physical ability.
Mistakes:
2 - both a route choice mistake and a confusion - decided to climb down into the reentrant and run up it but it was very muddy and lots of fallen trees to climb over. Climbed back up a bit later and followed its side but then the map did not make full sense and took a while until I confirmed where I was. No problem finding the control itself but lost over 2 min here if not more. Should have run up and traced the edge of the reentrant which had better runability and control.
4 - faffing about in the control circle, climbing over stuff as I was taking it from below. Should have run up around the crag again avoiding fallen trees, slippy mud etc. In control navigationally but poor decisions on route costing about 1 min.
6 - poor direction on compass bearing ending up above the control so had to correct - about 20s
7 - got near the control circle OK but lost confidence figuring out how high I was in the reentrant, should have used the clue in the visibility of the semi open ear near the control to guide me. I did that in the end but lost almost 1 min faffing about.
9 - long leg, happy with my route choice but lost time at both ends of the leg fighting the green / undergrowth, probably about 1 min. 18:53 (mine) vs 15:23 best time on the leg, with the losses at both ends the rest would be easily down to my lack of willpower to push running all the way up the first hill...
16 - surprisingly won this last long-ish leg, which included climb as well as compass bearing, so clearly not pushing hard enough in the early parts of a course.
18 - poor direction out of control taking a long fighting route out to the track through middle green instead of going out direct, so losing probably about 40s here.


Enjoyable, varied course with true long distance character.

Hungaria Cup day 3, M40 Middle distance.

5/15, 5:30 down on the winner.

Slow start, strong last 2/3rd of the course. Once again an enjoyable varied course with differing challenges.

Lost about a minute each on controls 2 and 3 without an actual orienteering mistake so this was mostly about running speed in difficult terrain (rocky/green) and lack of pushing harder where I could have.
Then a few micro-routechoice mistakes were accountable for the lest of time loss as well as pure running speed, but from about control 3 I managed to race MZ who caught me up there, he sometimes disappeared only to appear from somewhere. We both ran our own race but it was reassuring to see that most of the time I was able to match his speed uphill and in the clear, should give me confidence.

Hungaria Cup day 2, M40 Sprint in Lillafured

2/16, 46s down on the winner.
Good performance, it looks like lots of good quality sprint races in the UK prepared me well for this race. It was also physical though, lots of climb in a sprint which contributed to my only really poor route choice (probably caused by oxygen debt) to 18 which lost me about 40s, almost the full difference to 1st place.

But great area, very complicated and enjoyable challenge ran right after the WOUC race.

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