Training Log Archive: Ralph

NORT Over. Staying in Turku for a bit to train

I went for a morning jog

Easy jog from TuS club hut on the area of the NORT Model. Training with the Danes and we just jogged in the forest.

NORT Chasing Start

Started a bit on my own, a bit off the pack in front and a small gap to the pack behind. Missed the 2nd control a bit and was caught by the pack. This group then missed the 4th control and I was leading again, I think this might have got me into the mindset of pushing the pace on. Coming out of the butterflies again tried pushing the pace but was focussing too much on the run in and missed the feature I was looking for, lost some time and found myself a bit off my group. Began working to catch these guys up but I had a thorn in my foot and eventually it got too irritating so I had to stop and take it out, this took a while and I lost a bit of motivation after this. Was caught at the end of the first loop my Sedivy and tried to use him to motivate me again and I ran with this group for a while but in the end they were too strong and I was too tired and I fell off the back and crawled the rest of the way round.

Lesson from the race, when it is hot and the end of a tough week, trying to be the train driver early on in the race is maybe not the best idea.

NORT Qualification.
Had a bit of a wobble early on and lost a fair bit of time. Really tried to push hard today and maybe that was the difference between this race and the one in Sweden.
"Safely through"

After the disappointment of both the Norway sprint and Sweden Quali I knew that I would have to run well and hard to get myself into the final. Really tried to attack the course but made a small mistake early on, I tried to forget about this but in the back of my mind it was still there so I just tried to run harder and focus even more on my orienteering. Was not happy with myself at the end but as the rest of the times came in I knew that I had actually ran well enough. I wonder what the difference between this race where I did not run so well and comfortably qualified and the one in Sweden where I think I actually ran better but ended up outside.

NORT Final

Oddly enough not the best race ever, 2 major time losses (Not spotting an uncrossable fence and then having to go round, and deciding that a passable cliff was an impassable wall and so avoiding it). A couple of hesitations about and maybe some bad routechoice decisions. All this aside I ran hard and am very pleased with the result.

Really did "race" this, maybe this is the difference...
7th at a World Cup Sprint.

NORT Forest Model Map.
Had difficulty picking out the contours from under the bare ground (grey), bit uncertain in some places as well.

Change of country. Finland

Hard first section through the estate (3min) and then just cruised round the rest of the course.

Ran back to the accommodation

I ran a pretty decent race, I hesitated a bit in some places and maybe got a couple of routes wrong. I was much more ahead of myself in the first part, then I got a bit tired and things became sloppy.

Missed out on qualification by 6 seconds, 48s window today. It is a close game.

Felt this was alright today

Cruise around the model map