Training Log Archive: MCrone

Event: South African Sprint Champs
 

I'm not really a fan of all the pressure going into a race like this. I managed to cope quite well through the first section considering that it was the most technical part of the course.

3-4: going south may have been slightly faster.
7-8: rookie error here. Thought that 8 was quite straight forward so hadn't read too far ahead especially through the technical buildings. Easily 20 second mistake here.
15: the map did not make sense to me here (even later when I did the women's course). The vegetation is not very clearly mapped so it was difficult to understand what was happening.
16: followed the green from 15 and ended really close to the building to the east. Very confused I ran along and punched 16 and exited in the wrong direction and went along the bridges. Just before the gate to the west (yes the wrong gate) I wasn't sure if I was in the right place or if I had punched the right control so I went back slightly to make sure... Quite silly in the end. I wasn't as out of touch as I thought that I was and the mapping to 16 made me panic when I should have kept calm. Probably a 40 second mistake which is quite embarrassing.

Thankfully none of the runners really had clean runs so there was still a reasonable gap (30 seconds) to second. Should have run at least a minute faster. The one promising thing was that I was able to really push on some sections of the course, put my head down and just run as fast as I could. I don't think that I will make the same mistakes overseas. Larger features on maps (blocks of buildings) usually make it easier and there aren't as many micro route choices and flower beds.

Reasonably happy overall...

M21E - Splits

18 minutes and then 4 strides

8 x 200m

30-31 seconds, 40 seconds rest.

Warm up/down

600 m fast (1:32)

4 x 150m accelerations

Event: GOC Urban 9
 

2: bit of faffing
3: probably not very adventurous down the hill
5: decided to contour (which was stupid) and it was rougher than expected so ended up pretty much at the bottom path and had to go up to the control...
15: stopped far too early and had to go a lot further down the slope that I had expected.
20: went straight when going on the path probably would have been a lot better.

Felt like I couldn't use my speed except on the really open sections (like 5-7). Difficult to run through some of the rougher stuff, on the rocky paths and up the hills.

Men WRE - Splits