Training Log Archive: fluceluce

Back home, no broken bones, turns out I dislocated it and put it back together in one fell swoop! some good bruising....5 days to teach my index finger to move again!

Hole in knee and broken finger ??

MTBO WOC - sprint final. This was the best race of my life, found the hill in the middle hard going but so did everyone i think. Start intervals of 1min, started just ahead of the red group and only caught by 2 riders. definitely on for a top 30 but then at 17 I had a total wipe out, dent in my knee with a good flap of skin that needed removing and as my finger was attached via my si card to my handlebars, a possibly broken finger.... I still maintain it is just badly bruised until somebody tells me otherwise as I still want to ride the keilder 100 next weekend.....lost time and places and finished 35th

Judging by pre crash splits and final position of the 2 riders I was racing with I think I was on for around 29 minutes as a finishing time (hard to judge I know and anything could have happened yadayada but whatever) which would have put me somewhere between 21st and 31st.

C • Youve had a great WOC, well... 4

WOC MTBO - Relay - 3rd leg. Em flew round to come in 3rd/2nd, Helen then brought us back in somewhere 7-9th?? Just after Sonja and Ingrid had set off so no chance of me catching them really....

1 almost clean, small wobble with choosing the wrong orange line to follow - legs definitely feeling the last few days now. 2 was a nightmare, lost 3 mins as an orange line on the map actually resembled a track and my route took me 3 sides of a square after I never hit the road I was meant to. Almost thought I'd gone wrong to 3 but couldnt work out how so lost a min or 2 there - should have been confident - but then the rest was clean. Much less mistake time than yesterday! Overall we were 9th. Still waiting on the clean ride - nothing quite as good as the middle last year yet, last chance in the sprint tomorrow. I am nackered!

MTBO WOC - Middle final. 1st starter.
Ooooops (but replace that word with a ruder one). I don't know what I was doing up until number 3 but whatever it was was not orienteering and took me half an hour - not ideal in a race with a winning time of 58minutes. Mistakes all over the place including taking one route choice only to discover I had actually taken my other route choice and therefore overran my turning as I thought I was somewhere I wasn't. At number 3 I tried to pull myself together a bit and took 4,5 and 6 (close together controls) very steady but racing with 2 women who had caught me. 3rd fastest split to number 6 :-D
To number 7 I enjoyed the downhilly bit but then - head still not on fully straight, took a route to 8 with a big climb and track instead of flattish road.

Karolina caught me here (started 12minutes behind) and now I was actually in a race, my head worked!! I was planning ahead and cycling fast and getting things 100% right (except a small blip at 13). Overtook Karolina again (who was not enjoying the heat) and made it into the finish still in first....that lasted all of about 3minutes...

Now to get it right in the relay tomorrow!

MTBO WOC Long Final - rough distance I rode and very rough climb estimation... - well I had some really really good bits, but a couple of appaling bits so need to iron those out before the middle and sprint.

Positives, was moving well, even at the end (although the last climb was evil). I managed to stay hydrated in 38 plus degrees and even managed to pedal in the heat!

Negatives - the 15minutes I lost on controls 4 and 8 combined.... number 4 threw me as I turned the corner of my track to find tape across it... checked the map, decided I must have not gone far enough down it so continued down, only to find single track. Rode over the single track before working out it wasn't where I was meant to be and meant I was origninally in the right place so back up the hill a little then found an alternative 'track' (track on the map, grass on the ground) with yappy dogs to contend with, then was away! 5mins lost at least....

Worse was number 8 which was a loooong leg, where initially I lost about a minute after refolding the map. Then on my route choice there was meant to be a really obvious track to take (although I need to tripple check this when I get the map back) and it was actually only a track because people had ridden over it, off a bank through grass, across a little ditch and eventually became the track.....binned 10minutes on this leg and added on some bonus climb searching to check I was on the right track...

Lessons learnt for the middle, if I am confident of a route and it looks to be impassible/not there, STOP! I'm probably in the right place....

35th overall so my highest WOC result to date regardless of the errors!

MTBO WOC - Long Qualification. A bit of a formality for the girls, as long as you didn't mispunch that is. So used it to get used to racing again. Fluffed the route to number 1 as was too excited and charged off up the road - just meant a longer route choice but heh ho. Took it pretty steady without completely not trying and was feeling good on the hills, especially as I wasn't overtaken by one female whilst going up them. Started to lag a little as it got a bit hotter towards the end of the course but a nice downhill to finish sorted that out! Not sure my route choices were best today, could really have done with some splits at the end! I took a lot of long routes around roads (then chose the wrong point to not do this) but think I got the jist of it by the end...Just need to sort the nav a little better for tomorrow and I'm sure there is more in those legs to hammer the hills with!
Will be interesting to see how far I rode when we get the maps back this evening - 16th in Heat A...so a bit too high for my liking but not a lot that can be done now apart from going to buy a bag to put the camel back bladder in (yes I was that clever and forgot half the equipment :-) )

Ride from quarentine to the start - pretty flat and all road

Warm down via the sport shop to buy a camel back for the long final tomorrow - much more useful than a 2L bladder without a bag.... Then food shopping...

MTBO Model - Castegnero-Nanto, Italy.
Boy was this hot! 38 degrees ish...I forgot what hot in Europe can be!

Planned to go out for 45mins to an hour however I got 1/3rd of the way up the 200m of climb to my second control (after the 80-100m of climb to get to the first) and decided it would be detrimental to the race tomorrow if I got all of the way up to the second control. This limited me to 7 out of the 12 controls so got them all (not in a logical order as had planned to get a few on top of the hill) and this is how long that took.

Didn't feel very far so glad to see it was at least more that 5km...Effort was probably 2 but heat made everything seem harder!

Event: WMTBOC 2011 - Vicenza, ITALY
 

4hr drive down to Montecchio Maggiore....well it actually took 10hrs as everyone from Germany and Austria chose today to go to Italy...

Helens Birthday - went swimming at a lake - we made it all of about 400m actual swimming but there was plenty of relaxing