Training Log Archive: HGaston

I spontaneously woke up at 6am this morning, so figured it would be a good time for a run. I explored Central Park. There were a lot of joggers and bikers around, and it's really nice to have a huge park like that in the middle of the city.

- There are a lot of dogs in central park
- People at cafes here ask "to stay or to go?" instead of "for here or to go?"
- Next time I should check the subway direction before getting on :)
- On hostels: I am going to get very good at sleeping in bright lights and in small spaces--8 people in a room about half the size of my dorm at UNC! Not bad.

C • HOLLY FREAKING KUESTNER. 5

Around the park and streets after the run.

I hope the volcano ash does not make it impossible to travel tomorrow :-/.

The seconds and the climb are a guess.

Long distance.

mmm...somewhat messy/unspectacular.

Felt very tired in the last 30-40 minutes. I should really run longer in training.

I need to work on micro-orienteering/navigating in the control circle. On a handful of controls I mushed around in the control circle before finding the control. This is silly and careless, and I think could be fixed by slowing down close to the control.

Anyway, great training, courses, weather, and company :). Congrats to everyone who made the team!

C • "I should really run longer in training. " 2

Red Long - Splits

Event: 2010 US Team Trials for WOC
 

Middle distance.

A decent race. I was a little nervous about having the first start so tried to really focus at the beginning so as to not be caught right away. It'd probably be best not to think about it at all though :).

Anyway, here's the race:

1: Good. Curved around somewhat coming into it, so it could have been faster with a more direct route. But no problems finding the control.

2: No problems.

I bobbled control 3, though. I came into the reentrant but didn't see it for some reason. Came out to the trail and went in, got it.

4, 5, 6, 7: Pretty clean as far as I remember.

8: Yikes! Overshot the control going downhill. The hillside was covered in boulders/"cliffs", and the control was on one of them. I saw the lake and relocated off a short peninsula. Had to go up a couple of contours to fix it, which was a little annoying.

9: Flustered from 8, so I ran off without being very careful. Too low for the control, so lost some time (30 seconds?) hesitating before going higher.

10: Still being sloppy. Ran straight past the control, looked over my shoulder, saw it, came back ~15 paces to punch.

11: Again sloppy. Came over the hill, hit the ridge too far to the left, poked around in the laurels briefly before realizing that was not a very effective strategy, then looked over the side and saw the marsh and took a short bearing in.

12: Erin caught me here and punched ahead, I think.

13-14: Fast. I was a little ahead of Erin, but didn't space out and overrun navigating, which sometimes happens when there are other people around.

15: I ran by on the wrong side of the cliffs, missed the control. Stopped when I saw the marsh coming. Erin had gotten the control, so she went on and finished. I turned at the marsh and went back for it.

17: Good. The marsh was a lead-in from far away.

18: Also clean. This one was fun because I saw the boulder from a distance and knew it would be on the other side. I guess that's probably how they're all supposed to be...

19: Clean.

Overall not bad. Definitely had errors, but there weren't any really enormous ones. Running felt fast, which was exciting because it has been feeling very slow.

C • Yay! 2

Sprint.

jskjsjksmkls

Lost most of the time on the first control. Ran straight to the guys' control, got confused, kept going for some reason instead of figuring out which feature their control was on, messed around in the woods, finally came back out into the rough open and saw the control. Siobhan was punching it, which was somewhat frustrating because she'd started after me.

The rest of it was pretty good. I lost a little time at 10 or 11 because it was on a thicket near a building corner and I didn't check the control descriptions...so I thought it was on the building corner. Didn't see it, so checked the rest of the corners (?!?! not logical, but it seemed like a good idea at the time), then saw it on the thicket. There was a couple out walking who stopped to watch me run around the building and then punch the orange flag on the bush.

I need to work on sprints. There's not a lot of opportunity to make up for errors.

Red Middle - Splits

Red Sprint - Splits

Around my cousins' house. They have a dog that sounds almost exactly like the baby. It was good to see them again, since it's been ~8 years.

...the Akron airport has free wireless!

Around Oberlin :). I met up with Arianna afterwards, which was awesome!

Also need to add running the last couple of days and then last weekend's O'ing, but not sure there will be time since I'm on a library computer.

Time and distance are made up. Out from my grandparents' apartment and around Oberlin college and the neighborhoods around it. Everything is very flat and the houses are all very quaint.

5x 1-min hard somewhere in the middle.