Training Log Archive: ColmM

Damn, just missed the big 10. Good week though.

Woc 2013 training. Middle.
Probably the most like a race out of the lot. I was keen to go fast, but the terrain was much more technical than I had anticipated and was very rocky which reduced speed and map-reading ability. I had a mistake to 1, just overshot, which I realised quickly, but took a little longer to correct. 2 was hard, I couldn't make sense of it. 3 was as hard I just followed my bearing slowly and was lucky to have William Lind hit it just before me as a guide. Generally the first 6 or 7 controls went badly, I wasn't concentrating enough on the map reading. I steadied it after this and the rest of the race went really well, reasonable pace, pretty slow, but not really any mistakes, until 13, which was my biggest mistake of the day, I came down to hit off the hill just off line and was faffing around there for a while.

My last 6 or 7 races in Ireland have been near perfect races technically. But since my last one I have had about 20-25 races, and not one of them can I say I felt happy with how it went overall. I think I just amn't adjusting well. I'm having sparks of good orienteering and then losing it, I have had some good trainings, but I think I just amn't adjusting to each new type of terrain quick enough, and I'm not concentrating as well maybe. And here in Sweden the terrain is much more varied, so I haven't been racing on the same type of terrain as training that much. I'm not sure, but it's a problem I'm really going to look into addressing.

C • orienteering 5

Maybe I'll start logging this, if only we had a weighing scales!

WOC 2013 training, Long Course.
I started well, not running too fast but feeling good, but very much in control of the navigation which was really the main goal today. This was fine for the most part early on, to 7 though, the start of the butterfly, I lost a bit of concentration as I began to see people, and knew they had caught me, I drifted and went quite a bit off the route I had been planning on taking. As I did the butterfly I could feel myself struggling, the marshes, which I had avoided early on, were desperately heavy. I again began to lose a bit of concentration and my orienteering through this part was just very messy without any major mistakes, but it was more costly than it should have been too. I also began to resort to a walk at times after this section, it was tough going. I was with 2 people leaving the butterfly but as we entered the more detailed area for 12 and 13, on the 1:15 I did have mistakes in here, I found both first but had a lot of trouble with 12 and a bit with 13 too. From here on was just getting home, walking parts and not orienteering amazingly but not really many mistakes. I realised how this wasn't actually a race before I started when MH and one of the older Swedes said they weren't planning on doing the whole course, even though we had descriptions and SI, so I didn't have a huge amount of motivation to run that much at the end, although I did run the last 2 or 3 controls at a good pace. I also wanted to be okay for the later training! So, I skipped the final butterfly, of 3 controls.

My bus, only 4 of us, me and 3 other guys who were all mates, probably like 23 or 24, decided to get pizza between the 2 trainings, which was pretty cool. Turns out when we got their nobody else had bothered with the 2nd training. So we just bummed around for a while and then slept for a half an hour or so before we decided to actually train...

WOC 2013 training. "Brown-O", just contours only with knolls and brown features.
Unfortunately I had only one pair of O' Gear so I had to put back on a whole pair of wet gear, very unpleasant. But, I wanted to run fast so I could finish and get warm so it encouraged me in that sense. I did too, I ran pretty quickly and navigated really well for the first 6, especially as the 6th was quite tricky. After this I went a little bit off and had a few misses as the contours became vaguer, I also began to walk a couple of bits towards the end as I got more and more tired from earlier. But it was still pretty good, happy with how this went.

Results from yesterday. It's the first thing there.

Mass Start Night-O. Woc 2013 training.
Some members of the Swedish team were down to race, they were people whose name I would definitely know, but wouldn't put a face to them, so whether they were actually there or not, results will tell. Although one woman I saw looked like she could well be.

Anyways, everyone started, I took the same route as most to 1, but I couldn't keep up, not that their pace was that fast, would have been fine, but I couldn't comfortably navigate at this pace, at least at night, so I just dropped off. As I got into the Area of 1 I was just very sloppy and had been put-off by everyone getting away, so I just wandered, slowly, finally decided to head down off the hill and relocate, and went in and spiked the control fine. Dang! To 2 I took the safe route and this went fine, a little sloppy again towards the circle I went too far around a hill and just added some extra marsh running. To 3, I once again took the safe route, and this control went really well. To 4, I decided to take the safe option, heading up to the track, hit a path, presumed it was my track, wandered for an age. I figured it out hit my track, presumed my junction was to the right, it wasn't, back down, up correct track, turned in too early to control, back out relocate, up a little further, than in, kept hitting the area I thought it should be, was pretty certain, but no crag, and no control. But after 3 goes of relocating of the path, and heading back in, and with my headtorch falling to pieces and eating into my forehead, I called it a day.

Yes, it was really bad, but I didn't seem to mind as much as maybe I should. I know that I just really amn't practiced enough in this discipline yet, so they were always going to be better. Tomorrow though and Sunday, I'm looking for good, but clean runs, it is my first proper chance to race against OLGy members, so I guess I have to prove myself!

3km Running Test with the OLGY.
An interesting one. Ran a very different race to last week, but basically the same time. We used SI at the finish, that plus the fact that the finish box was in the 4th or 5th lane was probably the 1 second to be honest.
I started behind the start line of people, not knowing how fast they would go. I unfortunately fought a stitch for most of the first half, but that was my fault, bad timing of a big lunch. Still though, they didn't seem to go that fast. I just ran comfortably for the first while, not having a watch to tell my times. I realised with about 3 laps left that I really didn't feel that bad, but I had still been letting people pass me or get away from me. So, lile last week, with about 1km, or a little more to go I tried to pick it up, with about 900m to go I passed Leif, and then we caught up about 30m on the next group, and I passed them with about 600m left. I was still feeling good but didn't really push harder again until I picked it up with 100m left, at which point I was not catching the next guy.

Some good points here. Originally I felt last week like I had just pushed harder than usual, but in reality I am just around about this time now, which is good news. I think I can also go faster, which is good, especially considering I'm after knocking 35secs off in 7months. Conditions were grand, windy, probably more so than last week, but considerably chillier too, understandably. I can see myself breaking 10 this Spring, for sure! :)
MH ran 9.30, a good bit clear of the next, but he had promised Anders 9.20 so...

Olgy busses full so no Golf-OL for me. I kind of need a rest day this week, otherwise I certainly wouldn't be "coming back easy", which I am supposed to do.

15x 1min hills. 2 min rest jog down.
Same as this one 6 weeks ago, only more!
Really good session, really tough too. I just set myself a marker early and made sure I got there on each interval. This worked pretty well, and I got there each time. I wasn't making it quite as far as the last time I did this but that was okay, the rest also seemed shorter as early on I wasn't even back at the bottom before we started again, as with many others too.
With 5 left we were told to use our arms more, which I did, and that worked more than I expected.
Gradually some people dropped out and finished early or just started to slow down, I was pretty consistent but while I was quite far back early on the last few I found a new wind and was up near the front, going a bit further than the rest of my intervals. Nice and rainy and dark, the path was lit up in some places.

the jogs back down...

C • 6 weeks ago 4

A little bit of warming up and down, maybe not even this long, around abouts though.

400m, I think.
Swimming: 30secs on, 30secs off!
2* sets of 10, with a 2:30min rest between.

Tough going! Considering I'm a pretty shit at swimming! My speed apparently isn't ridiculously bad, but my technique... I probably look like one of those drowning elephants while I swim, who knows...
In the 30secs you cover the length of the pool, well, it took me just over 30secs, I think the pool is 20m, maybe 25, but I think 20.
Finished them all but it's tiring on the arms and generally cardiovascularly. Anton was impressive, doing the breast stroke he was faster! And still finished them all, that's way tougher!
Noticed I gradually got a little slower, which means less rest as we were just going on the minute mark and went from 5 strokes/breath to 3 strokes/breath.

Also, no matter what Conor says, we did not swim 500km, and it was certainly not 10secs!

Warming up and cooling down, tis' needed!

Jog with Anton and Matthias... and Conor. Grand pace. Easy, but my ankle felt weird after the swimming so it was good to stretch it out, nice.

Usual Monday night session. Good to be back. Could feel I wasn't really doing as well as usual, but wasn't too tired. Probably just earlier.

Jog home. Exciting stuff!

Seriously!