Training Log Archive: Craig

Walked to City Park then Cataract Gorge and home with extended family. Covered about 8-9km including some steep hills pushing pram.
Starting to feel a bit sick.

Run to the start very slowly plus a couple of times up and down the hill. Felt pretty strong on the hill.

Final day of Easter at Brookstead. I was looking forward to pushing hard today, trying to improve on yesterday and move up into the top 6. Felt slow and out of breath on the first couple but hit them cleanly and tried to tell myself I just needed to warm up more. Struggled up the hill to 3 feeling as though I was running on empty and got there just ahead of Piotr Czajkowski (6 minutes). I could hear Piotr coming up behind me quite quickly and hoped he was surging hard to try to latch on but I suspected from the way I was feeling that he was probably going to go past and he did. Feeling a bit negative for the rest of the course and not really pushing hard but navigating well enough to beat Piotr into most of the controls.
Lost a minute or two to Bryan Keely and Matt Parton who were just ahead of me at the start of the day and lost 10 and 30 seconds to Blair and Ryan Smyth who started the day less than 10 seconds behind so slipped to 10th overall with 15th on the day.
A disappointing end to Easter.

C • Introspection time... 4

Did a little running earlier and leg felt good to start with but got worse as I went so just jogged slowly to the start as a warm up today to try to minimise the damage.

Long day of Easter at Windfalls. Had a better day today. Didn't start very well but kept the mistakes fairly small and went pretty well apart from the first control and the one before the spectator control. Leg was a bit sore on the downhills but was fine the rest of the time so didn't slow me much at all. Finished 7th well ahead of 8th and fairly close behind 4th but a long way behind 3rd.
Almost had to jump over a wombat half way from 7 to 8, I think it was a bit scared, shaking like a leaf.

Warm up for Easter day 1 with 3 minutes of harder running near the end.

Day 1 of Easter at Benbullen. Had a shocker today. Made my biggest mistake since 2006 Aus champs on the 4th control after some small mistakes and hesitations on the first 3. Punched 4 just behind Eoin who started 2 minutes after me and didn't catch him until he missed 5 slightly. Got out into the open heading to 7 and saw Blair who had started 4 minutes after me well ahead. Rest of the course was not too bad but felt slow and a bit inefficient at times. Lacked the motivation to really chase Blair hard and hurt my left thigh quite badly when I ran into the end of a log at full speed heading into 9. Still got close to Blair going into 11 but went a bit off course heading to 12 and spent the rest of the course trying to catch up again.
GPS shows I passed within 35m of 4 about 5 minutes before punching it. At the time I thought I might be going a bit high but actually passed below the control and then crossed a ride, powerline and long log pile without seeing them.
I was a bit surprised by how high Blair finished, I guess lots of people had problems today.

C • powerline 3

Attempted warm down. Limped about 500m before giving up and walking back. Leg started to feel stiff and sore as soon as I finished and wasn't improving on the warm down. Very sore attempting to walk up the steps into the house when we got home. I suspect I am going to be nowhere near 100% tomorrow which is disappointing as it is the only day I really cared about.

Event: Australian 3-Day Orienteering Championships
 

Easter Prologue, Deadman's Knob. Course with 4 loops and groups of 4 starting together. A bit demoralised to find myself already off the back of my group (Rob Walter, Piotr Cz, Neil Simson) the first time I looked up from my map despite feeling as though I was starting quite fast. Reasonably steady run but felt as though I was hesitating a lot and not running all that fast so a pretty normal sprint for me. Got my hopes up a bit when Rob was not for ahead of me on the final common section but it turned out to be a bad sign for him rather than a good one for me. Average sort of result in the middle of the field (about 18th I think).
On the positive side I had no soreness in my legs and I think I can probably go faster on the longer days to come.

Fairly short warm up and down mostly jogging very slowly around the quarantine paddock both before the start and while waiting to do a drug test after finishing. First time I have had to do blood test as well as urine.

Another failed attempt at a run. Tried to go for a nice easy loosener jog around Launceston after the midnight flight hoping to find all the soreness gone and regain a bit of confidence for Easter. Felt just as bad as yesterday so gave up and walked home after 20 minutes. Thought about trying to switch to M35 for Easter.

Tried to do the usual lap of KP after work but felt so awful that I took some big shortcuts and walked about half. Felt strong doing a couple of short efforts near the end but still stiff and sore.