Training Log Archive: AliC

Plan for rest of the week:
W: 1h25 trail run
Th: Intervals, half gravel road, half trail
Fri: rollerski, 45 min easy; Core
Sat: Camping weekend NRE, Red, hopefully also WHNO, but depends on how being a parent is going
Sun: Camping weekend Blue, probably then also going out with Sylvia on Short White
Mon: Rest day, core only

Core on an other wise rest day. But legs don't actually feel *that* bad. Nice to be in good enough shape that racing three days in a row didn't totally destroy me.

Details to come, but had a blast at Eastern Canadian Orienteering Champs! Entered M21E for all three races and really looking forward to analyzing where I did well and less well.

Biggest takeaway: need more practice at 1:15. Orienteered very timidly and I think some it was more difficult orienteering than the middle, but a good portion of the being timid came from not reading easily at 1:15...

Warmup around the camping field

ECOC Long RouteGadget

1) So hesitant at the 1:15, gotta get my confidence back at this scale. Just running in the right direction, then used the field and a bend in the stream to lead me in.
2) On bearing, looking for the steep slope, didn't see the nook of cliffs I hoped to see along it, but when I came up on top, it was clear I was a little left of the line (once I stopped and saw the tag on the contour), so adjusted.
3) On bearing, looking for marsh to the left after low, used trails close in, but had to really slow down to make sense of them - maybe need a magnifier again.
4) The really long leg. Really lost some time here. I was intimidated by it. I didn't feel comfy letting go of utmost contact with the map, was trying to stay quite close to the line. Saw #14 about 2/5 of the way through, then got a bit more out of contact in the junky next bit. When I was heading up the reentrant to the NE close in, realized I really needed to go up the hill, so bent right and sent myself to the control. I think rougher bearing, faster running and finding oneself on the hill before the control is the way to do this.
5-9) Kinda picked it up, slope of my splits graph versus winner shallowed and theses all went pretty well - shorter and mostly pretty easy controls (distinct features to use on the way in)
10-13) Not quite as good - still easy controls, as mostly right off trails, but looks like I was losing a bit more time, maybe just needed to run harder!
14) Blandish running most o fate way, but on a good bearing and the slope close in was a give-away, especially micro reentrant just right of the line.
15) Looks like others had a mistake here. I didn't do anything fancy, ran on a bearing, cross the stream, found the hill right under the line half way through, kept going.
16) Bearing, couldn't go too wrong because obvious slope.
17) Kinda went through the marsh, wasn't too terrible.
18) Used the trail just left of the line, which seemed good. Surprised Eric didn't.
19) Bearing, then just right of hill to slope.
20) Following white course streamers.

So yeah, just need to get used to 1:15, planning on using bigger features to speed things up for super-long leg and not focus on every last thing out of fear...

White course with Sylvia - 20 controls on it! Legs were tired for sure.

Model map from the campground. Only did 4 of the controls.

Warmup at the abandoned golf course.

ECOC Middle - pretty good!

1 - Super easy, mostly a trail run in the open, should have read ahead more.
2 - Still easy, just slightly off the open. Required deciding left or right of small pond, I should have decided that while running to 1, first aimed left, then went right for probably a small loss.
3 - Compass knowing I could accurately locate based on big trail versus stream crossing. Then just up stream around the hill to the knoll.
4 - Compass to go the right direction up the hill, hit the nose with a cliff right under the line which gave good confidence to pop up + over hill top to the cliff I needed on the back.
5 - There was a blob of dark green right under the line, seemed like a good reason to duck onto the nearby trail. Easy to attack from a trail bend after a distinct boulder.
6 - First one I was a little iffy on, uphill on a bearing without much else to go on (bland contours) - what there was in the contours was a bit obscured by the non-standard blue stripes indicating maple sugaring pipes. They were easy enough to duck under, but did require ducking.
7 - Should have more confidently contoured over, but was hesitant, attempted to locate the one downed tree/rootstock on the map, but there were many in reality.
8 - Almost ran too far down the hill to the left. Again, very bland hill contours and some other cliffy things that I was wondering about but are not on the map (probably are under mappable height), but weren't facing there right direction. I corrected rightwards, uphill, because it looked like the land might be able to give a cliff in the right direction that way - true! Could have been a much bigger mistake.
9 - I was pulled off the bearing downwards, but at least I knew I needed to be up in the flat, so corrected. (Theme of drifting down it seems...)
10 - Pushed by green left of direct line, but big trail let me correct easily, went W on it to a stream, then down to control boulder.
11 - Good compass, and knew I needed to keep open to my right after the trail, so easy.
12 - Slight hesitation on an earlier smaller boulder that didn't seem to have the friends it should have indicated on the map.
13 - Used the open areas for a bit of easier running on the way.
14 - Should have thought about needing to go one contour up. But bearing + seeing the other yellow field below helped me to the right place even with wanting to drift lower.
15 - Used fields for a bit, then bearing.
16 - Fields, used stream/linear marsh leaving the field to help guide me.
17 - Back to easy field controls
18 - Again (although honestly, the streamer to finish helped)

So, a takeaway: especially need to mind bearings more against being dragged downhill, that seems to have happened a lot!!! Also, try to plan ahead if at all possible!!

White course with Sylvia, she didn't feel like running this time, so almost all walking. She was really good checking the number again and mostly could follow the plan on her own once we made one together at each control.

VeloVolant at Au Diable Vert

Pretty cool! A recumbent bicycle that you peddled to take yourself around a zip-line style path in the tree canopy. Probably would have been even awesomer on a non-rainy day with views!

Course 8 - Splits

Event: US Corn Maze Champs
 

Event: Eastern Canadian Orienteering Championships
 

ECOC Sprint

White course with Sylvia - she ran almost all of it, super cool!

Why does part of my strength keep being logged as Zone 3? Is it because some is below my Zone 0 limit? Super-strange... EDIT: Yep, Zone 0 was set to end at 70 bpm and much of this was below that. Have now moved the mystery 6 min in Zone 3 to Zone 0 manually, but from here on out should be fixed!

Anyways, did core. May or may not get my easy rollerski in, because car is in the shop and I have to drive to a paved road. But in any case, want the day off running going into the weekend.

Thinking about goals. I've edited my control goal before nationals to be 500 instead of 750. It still will be challenging, but perhaps possible if I work hard to get some extra o-training in besides scheduled races. And that's the aim, to get that practice in before LA nationals.

Also, I need to be training at least 300h a year. And I haven't been, which is largely because of kids, but I hope I can at least make 300 aerobic hours happen before WOC 2023. It really should be more, so hopefully it's a goal I can exceed.

Testing out the new shoes! Didn't want to do the whole workout in them, in case body needs a bit longer to get used to. But holy moly, such better grip on the gravel roads! Otherwise comfy enough. Women's 10.5 def means I have adequate room in the toe box.

Most of this was a 20 min tempo. (Not first 2 min or final 30 s) Felt pretty good, didn't worry tons about pace, because just too gosh darn hilly, even seeking out roads that aren't crazy hilly.

Post 2nd day of kindergarten paddle with Sylvia. It was windy, took a bit to control the canoe with essentially only my power.

Wahoo! Just yay for trail running. This is a great hour loop. I started by terrain running to cut through to the trail entrance off of Logging Trail (a road). Worked well enough, but some dense hemlock in places, would have been faster with leg protection. But skirting the across-the-road neighbors and the marsh of Logging Trail can be done!

And otherwise, just a great trail run. Trails are of varying technicality. The section along the lake is the most technical, then the snowshoe trail. The ski trails are comparatively easy running.