Training Log Archive: nmulder

Did a 2 hour walk from Illgau near the Muotathal, up to St Karl and back. Pretty. Celebrated the halfway mark with a Coupe Danemark.

The organisers woes continue. After original being told that the Day 6 area (originally planned for Day 4) would be accessible following landslides that blocked the road, the local road geologists have said it's not possible - the roads are still blocked.

The organisers have decided to go ahead with a 6th day, but now in the same forest used for Day 5 (Gibel). The amount of work that they need to do to set this up for 3000 runners with 24 hours notice is mind-boggling.

I'm a bit heart-broken. I was really looking forward to this area (Lidernen) as it was the long-distance day at high altitude, something I was relishing and really hoping to do well at. I'm not looking forward to the return to Gibel after my horror run, but at least I can hopefully learn from my previous mistakes.

1220 - It was back to Gibel, yesterday area, but I had a drastically different run. Almost no mistakes, just 1 route choice error, although I was slow and hesitant in a couple of places. I found that I was able to keep map contact wherever necessary although the terrain still limited speed. Made good use of the compass as well. Overall mistakes are under 1 minute.

I surprised myself and finished in 13th place, with Chris Forne 52 mins and Andreas Muller 2nd just behind. However, I was only 6 minutes off 3rd place. Was 123.6% of the winner, so a new PB. Was not expecting such a good run after yesterday. Got the best points of the week (4 of 5 races counting), meaning I dropped yesterdays mare. Next lowest points was the sprint race on day 1. Overall, ended up in 23rd position.

Days results

Overall Results

Was nice to go back to an area that I stuffed up and come away with a good result. In a way, glad that I got a 2nd chance at this terrain, as I was starting to doubt my map-reading in intense terrain. We had quite good planning on our course, all things considered.

The organisers had a few more nightmares as well, after spending to 5am this morning printing and planning courses, they went out to place the controls by the first start at 9am, with many sites never being seen, never mind tagged beforehand. They got 2 placements wrong, which affected some courses, plus a further kids control was stolen. Still amazing anyway that they pulled off the rest.

Footnote: The heavens opened once again, just as we were on our way back off the hill (brilliant timing!). Torrential downpours in the Schwyz area once again, with the rivers in full flood and Lake Lucerne now flooding.

C • Hard work paying off 2

Warmup run to the start

1220 - Today was supposedly the middle distance area, but the green forest and technical, rocky terrain meant it was rather long (for me at least). This was the first and only forested area for the Swiss O-Week, just outside the town of Schwyz. I'd trained on a similar area a few days ago, so I knew what to expect, but it didn't seem to help. The whole forest was low visibility, constantly steep sloped and karst rock underfoot. Benno Schuler won the Elite in a phenomenal time, 6 minutes clear of 2nd!

I had one of my worst races in years, only spiking 5 out of 17, a Personal Worst. Finished a very disappointing 42nd out of 65. I had a fair first half (fair compared to the 2nd half at least - bad compared to normal), where I got as high as 29th at #5. Then it went bad. Big mistakes at #9 and #13 that cost me about 10 mins combined. (Still can't work out what happened or where I was at #13). Otherwise, about a min mistake on many other controls as well. Would have been happy with 55 mins, which would still have been 18 minutes behind Beno (ouch!), yet also 22nd place! Everyone bar a handful of the guys obviously had disastrous runs. Furthermore almost everyone is going to drop today's points in the final calculation due to Beno's flying run.

Results

1320 - The flooding and landslides in the Muotathal area have meant that the road to Day 4's original area is blocked. The organisers made a quick call to swap Days 4 and 6 around, hoping that the road will be cleared by Saturday and we can run on that area then.

Start was delayed by 30 mins today due to problems getting everyone up the hill in time (probably crowd flow surges due to the change of venue). Got a bit sunburnt as a result of the high altitude, we started at 2050m and finished 1250m. The planner still threw in 340m of climb meaning that we had 1140m of descent in the end! Everyone in the category seemed to be complaining of friction burns on their heels afterwards.

I had a great run, probably my best ever in an Elite class, as I finished 126.9% behind the winner, Andreas Muller. Position was 22nd out of 71. I really enjoyed the open landscape and made hardly any errors. Being able to use similar nav strategies as back home seems to be a big boon. My main focus for the day was trying to run faster, particularly on the downhill legs where I had been hesitant of getting up to full speed in previous days. Had a hesitant start, but still almost caught Jouni (Fin) by the first control. Was closing until the 3rd, but then I got too excited and didn't read the map, heading off too low across a slope and being caught below a cliff. Lost 1 minute as well as sight of him. He went on to run a 1h20, so I wouldn't have held on anyway. :-( Other than that, got caught by Chris Forne at #8 (4 mins), but couldn't stay with him (he went onto 3rd place). Made the 2nd mistake shortly thereafter... fast downhill, where I didn't read the map, just went in a general direction and then had to stop and play catchup with mapreading. We also had a surpise butterfly loop, although I don't think it was meant for us (probably for the Euromeeting Race that was supposed to also use the course on Saturday). The last section was very fast downhill into a glacial valley. A very small patch of forest just to mix things up and then a flatout sprint over the last 2 controls.

Results are here.

Didn't want to warmup too much as it was a very hot day and I didn't have too much water on me at the start. Good decision, as I was kaput at the end.

Have posted Monday's (Day 2) map with my plotted route. We had OCAD track devices for the day. They are passive GPS receivers. The plotted route is incredibly accurate and gives some fascinating distance and climb stats. They've even included split times on the print out map. Spoke to the one OCAD developer, they've got some great stuff on the way.

C • accurate 4

The warmup to get to the start of Day 3. 4.5km distance, with 700m of climb up to a hanging valley.

0930 - A high altitude grass meadow map in a hanging valley about the Muotathal. Not a single tree or bush on the map, just meadow on the N side and limestone pavement on the S. I was first starter, but the terrain was nice, with no advantage for a later start. The rain had also stopped overnight and the clouds lifted just before the start. Transport delays meant the start was delayed by 30 mins, so I tried to keep warm with a bit more jogging.

The first half was very fast, with short grassy meadows. Easy control locations as well with no mistakes. I got followed by cows all over the place. Pretty disconcerting. We then moved to the S side of the map, with a long leg to #6. I made a small parallel error entering the rocky area and was too far to the left. Reaslised it pretty soon and corrected, loosing just over a minute. One starter behind me came flying past here, but he would be the only one for the day. Next sequence of controls were very technical and slow running. Trick was to be constantly aware of where the most runnable ground was. I had a few hesitations inside circles, but nothing major. We finished off with 1 small hill back in the meadows.

I finished in 39th, down in positions on what I was expecting as I thought I'd had a very good run, but only 131% of the winner, Andreas Muller. Benno was 2nd and Chris another superb 3rd. Results here. I would have liked to be a couple of minutes faster, which would have put me close to 30th position. Very tight placings in my part of the field.

Very enjoyable area, although planner could have done a bit more over the first half. Glad to get in a run, as the Start 3 courses (old and young) had their races cancelled on the map down in the valley due to major flooding. I've got 1 photo of a waterfall in full flood. Wow! Now for the rest day.

Back down the mountain back to the assembly area.

1248 - Day 2 of Swiss O-Week. This was the first Alpine area. Lots of grass meadows, I don't think we even ran through forest for more than 50m in total. There was also one section of limestone pavement (technically wicked) with 4 controls that was absolutely bizarre. Very slow running, even slower than Hedianga with high grass. Had a lot of grass and undergrowth growing through the pot holes and hiding lots of smaller ankle-breakers. The weather however was dismal (It's still following me around Europe!), with constant rain throughout making for some very muddy conditions, particularly towards the end.

I had a good start, although not spot on for #1 and #2. Caught my 3-min man at #2 however and dropped him by #4. Then took a wrong route choice, never saw a small track through some pavement area and ran round instead. Lost about 1.5 mins. Chris Forne (+3 mins) caught me towards the end of the leg and promptly ran away to finish 3rd overall. Next loop went well, although I purposefully walked on the steepest hills to spare myself. Then into the pavement, then a massive 'straight-up' leg (course planning was iffy) where Francois Gonon came RUNNING past (58 mins for me till then, 43 for him, he got 2nd). I was still going okay, having caught and passed a few other HE competitors in the technical pavements. Then a final loop on top of a hill before the steep drop. From 17 to 18 we dropped 150m in 400m. I only landed on my a** about 10 times on the descent. From here it was a very technically unchallenging downhill back to the finish in a straight line. Very boring, and I ran out of glycogen at this point. :-(

I expect I lost about 5 mins of speed towards the end. Otherwise about 5 mins of technical mistakes, mostly errors in the circle apart from the one RC error.

Results

I finished quite high up, probably as a result of the physicality of the terrain. 33rd out of 71, with 138% of the winner, Benno Schuler. Beat all the Belgians, and came within 1.5 mins of beating Nick Barrable (sooo close!). Still not a great run though, so I know I can do better.


Map with OCAD tracking course. The tracking device says my total distance was 11.309km with 619m of climb! Ouch. So much for the official climb.

C • jet setter 3

Warmup to start.

HE category was nullified today due to a missing control that affected a few of the early runners. One of the runners later found it and put it back in place. Benno and Chris must be crushed, they had great runs today and none of the top guys were affected. The missing control (#8) was one of the most remote, so everyone thinks it was a disgruntled farmer. SOW will now count 4 of 5 in our category instead of 5 of 6.