Training Log Archive: Magic

Warm up, again with Greg.

JK Day 2; Braunton Burrows, M35L. Even more grumbles than yesterday about print quality – found myself repeatedly hitting my attackpoint and then blundering into the circle hoping for the best as I couldn’t decipher the detail. Otherwise quite a nice area but the course was too long for me today and I really suffered on the latter half. Not surprised by that and actually very please that I managed to get around in a sort of respectable time.
http://www.jk.routegadget.co.uk/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi...

Warm up with Greg.

JK Day 1, Cookworthy Forest, M35L. Was surprised by this; it was just like an Irish forest but about 4 times as big. Was also surprised that it was used for an event with such a high a status as the JK. Surprised too that, despite the warnings, at just how wet and muddy it was. But mostly surprised at how well I ran – Felt like I could actually run hard and race for the first time (admittedly quite slowly). Liked the mud, liked the forest, liked the short legs and liked the lack of big hills, but very disliked the map. Vegetation was very badly mapped and map had an attraction to mud (which changed its colour permanently), but what got me most was the 15,000 print quality. Planners/organisers/contollers out there; you CANOT laser print a map at 15k on waterproof paper and attain acceptably legible print quality – please do as FVO did last weekend and print them properly and put them in a bag – blue was nearly impossible to see on this map when a little dirsty and in the forest.
http://www.jk.routegadget.co.uk/cgi-bin/reitti.cgi...

C • map printing 2

Event: JK 2010
 

JK Sprint Race. Only I didn’t do it, which I wasn’t upset about. Ran a few loops of the area with Greg to loosen the legs out (they needed it) and was surprised by how muddy it was and (on looking at the map later) how poorly mapped the vegetation was (particularly in the woods) – the college bit looked quite interesting though.

JK tomorrow, only I appear to have decided at the time of entry that I wasn’t going to be fit enough or rich enough to run all days so I’m not entered for tomorrow. No real lose there as as last night’s performance showed, I’d only be there to make up the numbers.

Sprint session around the Botanical gardens with the Sheffield boys. Four courses of about 500m with 6/7 controls, a lot of fun but by gum were my legs refusing to move. Usually felt great for the first leg but by half way through each I was struggling to keep any sort of momentum. Lots of work needed. Fun session though and a decent warm down (unlike warm up, which was for sure part of the problem) around the Edge and then on down to the end of clubnight.

Rest, glorious rest. Not that I’m actually all that tired, still it was a minging evening (the rain completely ruined my hair on the walk home…) and I do of course have to taper for next weekend…

Final drills session at the EIS with Mrs Candy. Mostly quite easy (which was a good thing) aside from the time trial (which was not so good), however as I’d missed the first week I didn’t have a time to compare against. Was 300m broken up into 50m shuttle runs; first half felt lovely and easy; the second didn’t. 57.1 seconds, no idea how bad that is but I’m pleased as it’s the first time that I’ve actually tired running flat out (and as with all my fitness at the moment, the lack of strength and endurance was all too obvious).

Great set of classes and well worth doing – so good to have the opportunity to do them but very envious of those still young enough for it to make a real difference in their running career.