Training Log Archive: Magic

Event: British Orienteering Championships
 

What a day for FVO at BOC, so many course winners. Map and terrain looks like it may have suited me, but quite happy not to have traveled all the way up north again. Feeling tired and not wanting to overstretch myself so a day off.

C • What a softie - you would h... 5

IW. Made it.

Evening run with Jules from Caerphilly Mtn. Went exploring and had a grand old time. Started sunny and warm until Jules said he was expecting it to rain... Rain it did, not enough to be miserable but enough to cool the body down and appreciate getting dry at the end. Easy pace, felt good and enjoyed it. Heel only sore for the last wee bit on a road.

IW. Legs still a bit stiff and GPS being totally special, setting itself beeping randomly throughout the night. Still not working either.

Opted out of circuit training as I didn't know how my heel would cope, instead ran on the grass as much as possible on the way home. Heel was actually grand, just a bit bruised. Quds were more than a little tired from yesterdays downhill. Managed to time it perfectly to run in the rain. Was still being a spaz.

Kentmere horseshoe with Chris and Dave. Plan was to go caving but rain last night dissuaded us otherwise (involved a trek and camping) and it turned out to be a good decision. Nice day in the hills, not madly sunny but great running weather and good visibility.

Struggled on the big climb up (but not as much as the others as they'd done Jura on Saturday) but happy out running along the ridge. Impaled my heel on a stone on the descent which went right through my shoe, but thankfully (I think) only just broke skin. Legs not used to so much down hill. Lovely day in the hills and excellent food and Wilf's afterwards.

Event: Scottish Championships - Relays
 

SOC Relays, Newtyle HIll, 5.8km, 285m. 2rd leg with Daniel S and GG. A few wee misses from Daniel put me out about 3 minutes or so down on INT and with little hope of catching Oleg. Started well but struggled on the hilly section, just about caught Grump here but couldn't get past. Played safe on a few legs with mixed results through the thicker woods but the body didn't really come alive until we got out into the open.

Eventually got past Will here and got a little gap on him (and the EUOC guy) in the butterflies, saw Oleg on his second loop when we got got there to start our first so knew that we were some way down. Felt pretty good running down the hill from there on, the best I've felt running for some time.

Happy with the second half of the course but not so much with the length of strength on the first half. Work needed there. Despite the tough climb, the course was much more fun than the JK relays here.

Excellent run from GG on the last leg, unfortunately Murray was almost as good and we ended up in second about a minute down. Nae bad but it would have been nice to be better!

Run round the forested section of the M40 course at the Scottish champs. Not pre entered and Light Green was as much as was offer for the day, worked out nicely though and it was very enjoyable trotting through the surprisingly dry and runnable forest.

Easy run with GG around Cambusbarron and Polmaise, not a route that I ever did while living here. Nice easy pace and chatting throughout. Only problem being that I didn't have any non O shoes so borrowed some Inov8s, with the expected result of them not getting on with my heel (not the sore one), end result is a wee blister. Small enough not to be a problem I hope. Nice to be back in Stirling and remembering some old trails.

HFW. Managed to miss the mighty thunderstorms of earlier and the conditions were lovely and cool. Felt hard work running for this long. Have got massively out of shape very quickly. Need to kick start things again.

IW. Expecting lashing rain but was treated to warm sunshine. Much appreciated as I wasn't much in the mood for running. Now to go and see if I can find some spare motivation from somewhere to run home.

Rest day. No time. Not when food needed to eaten.

Fun evening run around Kenfig with the MDC crowd. Just made it after sitting in traffic in Cardiff for an age. Lovely evening to be out and enjoyed myself. Not much in the way of hills but there was a fastish mile along the beach in the middle.

HFW. Not motivated, especially as it started raining as soon as I left work. Thankfully turned out to be dry rain and despite my body feeling a little tired, it was moving along nicely enough. Heel sore to start with but not so bad thereafter. GPS still acting like a complete eejit.

Event: Black Mountains MBO
 

Warm up, feeling surprisingly good for the time of day. A badger nearly ran into me, thought better of it and legged it down the track in front of me.

Harvester Relays, Winterfold, Leg 4. Despite Nixon having to pull out with injury we still had a good strong team with lots of 'experience' (old), with a running order of: Grump, JonX, GG, me, Rosco, JonM and RogerG. Thought we should be competitive but BOK also had a looking competitive and NOC and SYO will always put up a good fight.

Steady enough start from will to back back second, great second leg from Jon to give GG a small lead, who did the business on the long night to hand over to me with about a 13 minute lead. Didn't know it was that much but knew that GG had run fast so it was unlikely that anyone was chasing me that closely.

Had an acceptable run, never felt very good but orienteered okay (done no night O this year), lost time on three, maybe 3 minutes in total and hit all the controversial controls spot on (depressions in the middle of nowhere). No speed or strength in the legs but was just about quick enough to extent the lead by a couple of minutes.

Don't really know how Ross and Jon ran as I went back to bed, but it must have been pretty good as Roger was set off with the best part of a 30 minute lead. He ran the last leg perfectly, not being stupid and keeping it together to give us something like a 25 minutes win over NOC.

Great team performance, solid runs throughout and significant errors not being present in anyone's run. Made even better by the girls winning the women's relay.

Event: Harvester Trophy
 

Quick spin out on the new bike to see if everything is in working order. A few wee adjustments needs and I think the rear hub could do with a bit of grease, but otherwise a nice ride.

Irish Championships Maps:
Sprint
Middle
Long
Relay

Went to get my sore heel looked at. Lots of pain. Hopefully progress.

MDC Alternative Waterfall run in the Rhondda, and a very nice run it was indeed, somewhere I've been wanting to explore for a while and I'll definitely be back to see a bit more. Body was still complaining and not feeling good, should be well rested by now but have learnt in the past not to do too much when feeling like this.
(Distance data nicked from Marktwo's log as my GPS was still having a paddy - didn't use GD44's as he waves his arms around too much and is living in the past with his measurement units!)

C • Oi! 1

IW. Not a good start to the week; took me 5 minutes to lock the front door and then my GPS went wonky and wouldn't work. However it was a wonderfully sunny and mild morning and my body for once didn't entirely hate me for dragging it out at this time.

Event: Welsh League Event 2014 (& YBT Qualification Round. Also Cwpan Y Ddraig com
 

After the way my body felt yesterday I opted for further rest.

Event: League 8
 

Exploring our round Abercynon and Mountain Ash. Felt tired and slow from the start so took it really slow. Lovely sunny and warm day in Cardiff but windy and ten wet in the valleys, resulting in a pretty cold me for much of the run. Nice route and fun to explore but didn't enjoy it feeling the way I did.

Still feeling tired, so having an extra day off. Time to pick it up again tomorrow.

Was planning on a hill session but still feeling jaded so opted for rest instead. Right option I think.

C • Sensible call then 1

IW. Tired. Left heal sore.

C • Maybe you should let your heel heal 2

HFW. Left heal more sore. Tired and hungry.

MDC run around Cwm Lickey. Tough, tough route, three severe climbs which were mighty hard work on tired legs. Nice route and evening but don't know if I'll have the energy required to do the race on the weekend.

IOC relay. Good run, only a few 10 minute mistakes today. CNOC were just too good, like last year. They are so youthful *sigh*. I'm thinking about joining CNOC for next years championships. Well done guys. Race report to follow.

IOC Relay, 5.0km, 3rd leg with Boyzone and Dooby. Boyzone got us off to a spectacularly unbelievable start, unfortunately it was spectacularly unbelievably bad, which gave Dooby 16 minutes to catch on CNOC. He did a good effort and was quicker than I was expecting (I wasn't ready for the changeover) but without ColmH on the last leg I didn't think I had much chance of closing a 14 minute gap!

Slow at the start (no warm up) and was finding it all rather hard work. Failed to find two crags in the open cleanly (another mapping fail in that only selected features were mapped) and lost about 2 minutes in all. Lovely bit of forestry at the start and end of the course, shame it wasn't used more really.

Happy with the time considering, it certainly would have been quicker had I had other teams around. Having said that, CNOC did put together three very good runs and it would have been hard to challenge them all the way today. Next year!

C • haha 4

IOC Classic, M21E, 12.7km, 530n, 30 controls. It turns out it wasn't misty yesterday, not even a bit. Today was misty. #26 and most of the leg to #27 was the only place below the mist, everywhere else had at best 30m visibility, often only 20. What epic conditions to hold a classic race in!

After yesterday's disaster I opted for the 'be very safe' option and went out with the plan to take safe routes, take the time hit in doing so but hoping that it would pay off in the long term.

Not a great start, hit yesterday's #2 on the way to #2 but misidentified it's position and therefore started looking far too early. Stupid.

May not have had any luck yesterday but I got collect some of my deficit on the way to #4. Failed to hit the fence but kept running on the compass (ish) until I hit some peat hags, when I did I headed west to the stream and then hoped to head west to the detailed area to relocate. This is what I thought was happening but in reality I had made a parallel error and was some 500m lower than I thought. Realised soon enough that something was wrong so headed up hill. It was a long hill so I knew I was very low. Very lucky to hit a recognisable peat hag and able to navigate into the control from there.

Super safe route to #5, dropped two minutes to the fasted time in doing so but the consequences of missing the control would have been far ore costly and the only thing to relocate on was the lake and that wasn't very easy to find!

Clean and safe, though slow, through #6 and #7 (saw Josh, Shane, Laurence and someone else all lost in here) and thought I had the route to #8 sussed by my route to #6, but was slightly too far to the north and had to relocate and come back to it, lost a minute or so.

On route to #9 I heard someone behind me and was a little surprised to see that it was Roar (with Boyzone - apparently Dooby was around as well but I never saw him), who had caught 6 minutes on me. However we (and many others if you look at Routegadget) faffed around at an unmapped crag looking for it, Boyzone worked it out first and I followed him into it with just enough of a gap to put the boot in.

I knew that it would be nearly impossible to run away from someone in these conditions as you had to slow down so much to see/find things, so with the little opportunity I had I made a break from Roar and headed as fast but as controlled as I could towards the lake. Lucky to hit a bit of bare rock which meant I could cut the corner a bit and then found the indistinct path to lead me toward the control.

Next loop through #12 to #17 was good, not especially fast but mostly in control of things, a little lucky on #12 which I hit just about straight on and a little miss on #17, but I knew where I was.

Safe route to #18 (the only one to do so?) and running really well to #18, but got into the circle and couldn't find the peat hag that the control was on among all the other peat hags, lost maybe 90 seconds.

Safe again to #21 and took the opportunity to have both a gel and a drink and the water point (can't imagine they were all that busy!). Getting too confident at #22 and and headed to #23 expecting to see the big marsh as an attack point.

According to Routegadet I was in 4th place at this point, just about having caught my 6 minutes back on Roar but still well down on both ColmM and NDobbs.

The problem with #23 is that nothing either on the leg or below the control had been mapped, so trying to tick-off boulders and crags that don't exist isn't very easy, neither is trying to relocate off them! Only option was to head to the top of the hill to relocate, in doing so I bumped into my control. Lucky, lucky, lucky. 4 minutes lost but another 4 minutes saved.

Found the next few controls straightforward and appear to have chosen the best lines, again not very quick but keeping the odds in my favour.

Beast of a leg to #28 and I didn't have the strength to run more than about a third of it, that proved to have been been enough as I was in forth and a couple of minutes down at the bottom of the hill but right in contention at the top.

Safe (out to the path) to #29 and then just was careful but didn't push for the last two short legs. I would have had I known how close it was!

So win number 9 and my second 4 in a row. Very pleased with that. Also pleased that I mostly held it together today. #2 was stupid but my other two major times losses (#10 and #23) were due to the map not being mapped and the conditions exaggerated that.

Can't help but feel a little sorry for Colm, to loose by so little after so long was must be hard, but he does have the satisfaction of doing a similar thing to Dooby in the Sprint and knowing that at least two Irish titles have been closer than this!

Looking forward to going back here in good weather, don't think I'd find it quite as special but it would be nice to know what it looks like! Now the problem is that I have to try and defend the title again next year.

C • Much better... 10

Long 1 - Splits

Event: League 7
 

IOC Middle, Camaderry, M21E, 5.3km, 200m, 16 controls. Really excited about this as the mist came right down shortly after we arrived at the area (right on top of the Wicklow Mountains) reducing visibility to a maximum of 50m. Started conservatively ensuring that I hit the first two safely, then things went wrong. A brief gap in the mist and I thought I spotted my next control site across the valley, off I set, got half way and realised that the distance wasn't right, but had committed myself by that stage. Wasn't surprised to find myself some 300m from my control when I did make it to the wrong boulder. Idiot boy.

After that I decided to be steady and clean, hope for a decent position but conserve energy for tomorrow. This worked well for the next leg but dropped another minute of so at #5 (a boulder amongst many, many other boulders). That was as good as things got though...

After #6 we crossed the valley and headed into the peat hags. These looked clear enough on the map (well they would have been had the printing been good enough to real them) but in reality there were many more (admittedly smaller) ones on the ground. Spend many a minute running around in circles (with Allan Bogle for most of it) trying to work out what was what and where I was.

And that still wasn't the worst of it! Things got a lot worse a few controls later and drastic bailing out to the top of the mountain was the only option. Despite the mist (visibility for most of the course was 100m or so) it wasn't the deciding factor, not being able to interpret the map was. Even being careful with the compass and trying to mark off features didn't yield any results towards the end of the course.

So an unpredictable day, I didn't have any luck but I obviously didn't make any for myself either. David ran a very clean race to take a surprise victory in 42 minutes, whereas I finished all the way down in 15th with the kind of mpks that I haven't done since 1985!

The random results have also completely messed up the Attackpoint rankings! I think a 1:7500 map would have helped, the mist didn't make all that much difference (to me at least) but adjusting the the terrain and the mapping style is what was really needed (peat hags generally had to be about 1.5m to be mapped). Fun, but not in the way I was hoping.

C • ??? 4

Middle 1 - Splits

Event: Irish Orienteering Championships (4 days)
 

IOC Sprint, Maynooth campus, M21, 2.1km, 22 controls. No intention of putting too much effort into this and nor did I, enjoyed it though and ran at a nice steady pace so that I could keep on top of everything. Although having said that I did fail to realise that two controls were on the opposite side of an uncrossable feature, however the area was straight forward technically so it only resulted in a few seconds of time lose on each occasion.

The course made as much of the limited options that were available and the map was beautifully drawn. Enjoyable, and at the price I was happy to run around for a warm up. Finished 11th, 1.42 down on ColmM (who stole a victory off Dooby on the run-in!). Possibly the shorest (non training) course that I have done sine 1985!

Sprint 1 - Splits

A bit stiffer than would be ideal after yesterday, but it was so worth it. Now to rest for the weekend.