Training Log Archive: Lizzie

Oceania Relay 3rd leg

got sent out 2.5mins down on the aus team, but Bridget happened to have the longer split on the first control. Was surprised to see her ahead in the open to #2, and caught her at 2, when we both hesitated finding the right little cliff. Together through to#7 where the course turned up hill again. Put in a decent effort up the hill to the pivot, and didn't see Bridget behind. From there, knew it was a matter of staying clean through the butterflies and the tricky downhill leg through the rock detail toward the arena.
Only blip was when I misread the numbers one butterfly ahead of myself and got confused looking for a 165 a reentrant instead of 131 a rock. Caught it in time though.
Happy to bring us smoothly into the finish.
Think I've caught Bridget's cold though, after running with her those 5-6 controls! :O

Aus long champs. Beaut terrain, loved being back in among the rocks! Didn't get all the best routes, but just enjoyed being out there...until the last loop, where I was really in suffer-town. Nice to take the win, hopefully the lungs feel a bit better by next week's long!

Course 3 - Splits

Oceania sprint champs.
http://www.tulospalvelu.fi/gps/20190928OSWomen/

Bit of a laugh, somehow ended up winning despite a shocker of a run. Just turned out I had the least cumulative mistakes on a day where no-one(?) in W21E had a clean run.
Lungs were feeling the long-haul travel during warm-up, but was ready enough to race after a looong wait in quarantine, as the last start of the day. having being kept separate from the public and the race for the last 3 hours, we were then led straight through the arena to the start. Lead being a very loose term, given there was no real marking and we had to push our way through a very packed arena to find the pre-start.
On the start line and I could see Tash take a long time getting to grips with the map before leaving the start triangle. As soon as i flipped my map I could understand her hesitation. The printing was horrific, with bright yellow and olive green merging in the bright light, and the mass of fluoro pink overprint incredibly hard to make out, let alone find the start and first control.
Got on my way, and was smooth through the first couple of controls. Surprised to see both Tash and Krystal as I headed into #2, and this should have maybe warned my brain into caution. But no.
Headed straight off to #3, which looked to be a turning control. Got there, no flag. Checked my description - "top of"...wtf? looked again...*top of stairs. Look at map closer - there's a tiny set of stairs going into the olive green at the bottom of the uncrossable wall. grrrr. set off back around the building to get to the bottom (have just seen another underpass that i could have used missed on the map - extra black lines made me think it was split level and unpassable). Get #3, grumbling, set off to #4 (again missing the underpass). Down the steps...no flag. Look around, nothing. Check descriptions "path, SE end" wtf? inspect map very closely - penny drops and i go all the way back up the stairs and into the dead end that runs parallel to them. Very angry by this point. 5-6-7 go smoothly, and i don't fall into the bridge trap on 7. I do, however, miss the small path through the olive green to #6, so drop another 20s on this leg. So already over 1min of mistakes by #6. Doing well!
Another 5s lost to #8, getting confused with OOB, and then through the arena and onto the rocky hillside.
I had no idea which way would be faster to 10, over the hill or around. Tash had said beforehand that around would surely be faster, but looking at the leg, it just seemed to far out of theway, so I bit the bullet and headed up and over. Went too far left on the way up, avoiding some climb, and very carefully headed diagonally through the detail toward teh control. Very lucky to nail it I think. Very surprised to see Tash at #11, as I knew she was ahead on time at the arena - so a 1min mistake from her there. We ran 12-13 parallel to each other, before I got my direction wrong to 14, and ended at a nice rock which was covered by the #9 on the map. Corrected, but dropped another(!) 20s here.
Through the arena on Tash's tail, fortunately as on the map it was impossible to read the run-through against all of the OOB hashing surrounding it. 16-17 I decided to duck through the buildings. A terrible route-choice compared to gunning it around the edge of the detail, which dropped me ANOTHER 17s. This one I can only blame myself for though ;)
The last loop was easier, although 20-21-22 was very hard to read in the clutter of controls. Tash stood still at 20 for a good 5s figuring it out, I stood still for 2s, chose my route, then ended up running 20-22... :/ Figured it out before I reached 22, but lost yet another 20s on it.
Very very surprised to hear I was winning as I came into the finish. Turned out everyone else made even bigger boo-boos today. Bridget was winning the entire way before avoiding the OOB compulsary run-through, while Tash lost it on the rocky hill.

Overall, just so many things not right with this event. Bit of a shame really, but also a nice rude jump into the deep end of sprint-o for me. Lots of work to be done before China!

C • Map printing 4

Course 4 - Splits

Went and ran the ACT sprint champs on Deakin Offices to get at least one sprint in before tomorrow's Oceania champs. Went well, lovely little area and good courses from Shannon.

Arrival down under. Plane got in at 6.20am and somehow stayed awake all day. Was severely flagging before heading out to this.
Hit up an old course on Stromlo W. Fastest km rate orienteering since I left Aussie 4.5 yrs ago haha. Millions of roos, plus saw a couple of turtles in a waterhole. Good to be back :)

A final høiåsmarka tour. Heartbroken that the Eklimoen sheep were nowhere to be seen. Did they hear I was leaving and decide to leave me first?

Spin around høiås, as I had to clean the bike anyway, so might as well go get it some fresh mud first :D good fun as ever.

mot FFK at Fredrikstad Stadion (because Sarpsborg wasn't big enough for our massive away crowd last week ;)

Tough match. I was put on left wing as I'm speedy apparently. Spent the first half covering box to box as our defence was stretched and I was needed to cover their right wing, and expected to be up front attacking left wing. Got nowhere as their right back was class, and I'm not a natural attacker.
Subbed into the centre at half time, but tbh we were well outplayed.

Festning tour <3

Eklimoen loop with Marianne

Middle #5 from the winter controls at Høiås. Lovely evening out. Bit of a love-hate relationship with Høiås, the terrain is just so damn tough, especially this time of year. But darn it's a nice place to run, and so good to have on the doorstep. Will miss.

vs Sarpsborg 08 at Sarpsborg stadium

Lovely stadium, can't believe we get to play 3rd div in it (in front of a huuuuge crowd of maybe 40).
Warned coach prematch about my ankle, but coped OK on the nice artifical turf. Lasted fine until just before halftime when I could feel it tiring and weakening. So agreed with the coach to come off after 60, which was about right.

Match wise we were well outplayed. Dunno how many of the S08 1st team girls were on the pitch, but we never had a chance to win. Held our own for the most part, despite two undeserved penalties against us, but only had a handful of proper attacking chances.

Jog around the silver mines before packing up and heading back to urban life.

Up Store Ble after a windy night camping down near the carpark. Found a reasonably sheltered (and very beautiful) spot for the tent, but the wind got stronger through the night, not weaker as forecast.
Headed straight up into the wind, icey cold on top but found some rocks to stop behind to admire the surroundings. Unfortunately not the day for a top tour, so cut the loop and came down the next valley to the more sheltered lower slopes. Still plenty of nice scenery and even managed to jog the last 5km.

Exploring the silver mines above Kongsberg. (Or above the mines rather, not in)

NM Relay, HSK1 1st leg
Lucky to squeeze into the first team after Ida got sick and Bodil turned down 1st team. Still, was keen for the job in my last foreseeable NM race.
Long first leg and found myself a little back in the queue. Super heavy terrain and every time I stepped out of line to try and push ahead, I'd find myelf losing rather than gaining places. Dawned on me 3/4 of the way into the leg that there was no splitting to #1 either, so the 70% in front who weren't reading their maps were going to get away with it. Grrr.
Splitting to #2, but I slightly overshot mine, dropping 30s, the back in line for #3&4. Sigrid came past here and I took the chance thinking together we had better chance at running our way up the line. Unfortunately, #5 was the only control with significant splitting, and I had the long far left control. So instead of moving up, I found myself way offline and downhill, losing 60s to correct :(
From there it was a physical battle through he heavy terrain and marshes to the finish line. Came in 2mins down on Andrine, but 22nd(!) place. Eve pulled us up to 11, and Kine up to 5th, but very disappointed that I didn't put us in a better position from the getgo. On the other hand, its more than I could have hoped to manage 4days ago!

Long WD with iliana and then eve

NM middle final, 20th.
Looking forward to the terrain after yday, and a bit more confident on being able to focus on orienteering rather than my ankle, after managing to get around unscathed in the qual.
Started out nicely on the first two controls before getting caught out by trying to use the track for easy runnnin to #3. Lost time on going straight, but mostly as I crossed the control reentrant too high and didn't see the flag, so dropped 30+s. Happy with my track route to #4 though, and clean through to 6.
7 was a diagonal downhill leg which I recognised as needing care. Unfortunately it was also very rocky u derfoot and my ankle required concentration and car too! Thought I was on-line, but got caught out by he track midleg extending further than on the map. Ended far too low in a reentrant that looked about eight but felt very wrong. Relocated and hit the control but lost 1.20 :(
Tough leg over the line of the terrain to 8, nailed 9, and happily too the track around to 10 (after not doing so a paying dearly in the same area yday). Unfortunately on 12 I came unravelled again. My mistake was coming a bit offline and not climbing high enough up the hill, which left me in a parallel error, circling in a reentrant system that was hidden under the uncut circle on my map. Grrr. If I'd been coming at the circle from the correct angle I suspect I'd have seem the flag from afar though. Double grrr. Another 1.20 gone.
Nothing special from there to the finish. Lost a surprising amount (40s) on 17 by going a bit around rather than taking a straight line through cliff city.

All in all should be happy after being doubtful about even being able to run. But of course I'm an orienteer, so im equally peeved about my mistakes!

NM middle qual.

Bit of a comedy really. Was very unsure how the ankle would go, but at least the warm up was along the road, so no issues there.
Started off OK on #1, but very unsure when i got to the circle and there was no flag in the reentrant? Double checked the map and was sure I was in the right place. Kept going 10m further up the slope, and there the flag was, in a 2nd reentrant! Very confusing with only one on the map. Swore at my messy start and headed off toward #2, ignoring the grumbles from my ankle on the downhill slopes. Mid-way to #2 I got a stick to the face, which then slid into my hair and pulled me back, stuck fast. Extricated myself and half my hair and continued on my way. Only to glance down to check my descriptions and realise that my description holder had also been ripped away from me! At this point, with snot running down my face, hair going everywhere, pain in my ankle, no descriptions, and losing more time unable to see the flag at #2, I had to have a dry chuckle remembering that we do this stuff because it's fun. (and glad that there weren't any photographers out in the forest today).

Actually from there I pulled things together and from #3-#9 went nice and smoothy and cleanly. #10 was a longer leg through detail, with a wider option taking paths and roads close to the control. Being a qual, I knew that the safe path-road option was a no-brainer...so I took the straight option (duh). So came a comedy of errors, losing track of where I was enroute, taking wrong paths, and then finally, getting well caught out in (or on the edge of) the circle. As the circle wasn't cut and critically covered the spur which I was erroneously searching around. Nice. Dropped 3mins before finally heading out to the track to relocate and finding the control enroute.
From there I figured I just needed to stay clean to the finish and qual should still be fine...So I went and blew another minute on a control which, no kidding, was a pit squeezed between two tracks... mmhmm. Beginner quality stuff.
Fast finish and still safely qualified, but not a race to be proud of. On the bright side, ankle held up. And by the time I'd made my massive mistakes, I wasn't thinking about it so much!

WU on the track to the start. Ankle OK on track.

My very shortened version of NM long. Took the first control, which was OK ankle wise as it was down a nice slope. Then headed off toward #5, and suddenly things were not OK. Going along the slope and very bumpy/rocky, all of the stabilising muscles and were verrrry grumpy. Ditched #5 and went straight toward #6, #7 and the finish.

Oh boy. peroneal tendon is not happy. Got Venda to tape it last night but had to take the tape off after three sleepless hours as it was making it more painful. Instant relief and able to sleep thereafter, but its really not happy with any wrong movement this morning.
This year of various ankle problems is wearing me down.

Having a lot of fun in the mud around høiås. Then as a bonus, the sheep at Eklimoen had broken out of their field and happily surrounded me for a chat when I stopped to say hi. Way more talkative than the squirrel, but way smellier too.

Attempted about 8 steps of jogging from the letter box to the front door this morning before getting a nice solid pain in my peroneal. So, looking hopeful for thursday. Might take my bike with me to NM as a back up option...

Someone stood on my big toe yesterday. Now it's a giant bruise which I'm quite proud of.

Easy jog to collect tapes at Kjeøya. But then I slipped over on mossy rock and aggravated my ankle. Wooo! Should have worn dobs...rookie mistake. After that it became a walk-hobble-jog.
Once again, either some of the tapes were gone, or I'm a pretty mediocre orienteer. The map was out of date and very odd (one that's OK at race pace, but when you slow down you notice it's kinda warped), so that didn't help my case.

Nice timing for the ankle with NM in 3 days...lets see how this goes...

1-1 mot Drøbak.

Good match, had most of the control in the game, just couldn't put the ball away it seemed. Happy to set up a very nice goal for Heidi. Learnt years ago that I'm not a goal scorer, but have a knack for doing the work, and passing it to someone else to score.

Proved my point by hitting the woodwork late in the game, with the ball ricocheting along, but not over, the goal line. Seem to remember the same thing happening last time we played Drøbak too. Standard.

More tape collection. This time Røsnesåsen, an interval training from the end of 2017. Actually I did half of the training back then as rehab - in fact it was the first session I ran part of (wasn't meaning to, but these things happen ;)

Anyway, very stop start, especially reading the complex rocky slope on my averagely printed map. Things didn't exactly get better on the vague southern slope either - as someone had already brought in the tapes from one of the intervals, leaving me and about 3 million deer flies circling confused on the slope together for a while. Once i convinced myself that I wasn't an entirely hopeless orienteer, and that the tapes were indeed gone, things improved somewhat. Not least because I ran away fast enough to leave about 2.5 million of the deer flies behind.

Love the rocky slope. Hoping it might give me a bit of a sharpener for aussie granite.

Ran some of the kyststien to make it feel like I'd actually done some running.

Didn't go out with the intention of a long run, but it was nice out and I felt better as I got going. Stopped to have a chat to a squirrel. Standard.

C • Squirrel chats 9

Following the juniors at høiås. Much chat and picking of blueberries. Maybe some learning in there too. Maybe.

Slight sore throat and raining all day. Enough for me to take a rest day. Ankle will be appreciative I hope.

Collecting tapes on iddefjordfjella. My printer is not printing colours properly atm, so drew the course on an old map, with the slight issue that one or two controls were right on/off the map haha. Tapes were 2 yrs old so were well faded/see through too, just to add to the challenge.
Forest was wet but beautiful. Cruised around and found all the remains of tapes, even the ones off the map ;) was feeling pretty lightheaded at times. Maybe dehydrated. Or iron.

Football training on a stunner of an evening by the lake - post rain storm with rainbows and pink skies...and mozzies.

Session was taken by who I guess will be the new coach next year - first proper coaching we've had in my 4 seasons! Good stuff. Shame I've only got 3 more matches.

Venås loop from HSK huset after cleaning up and moving the final bits out of my apartment :(

Token but better start this again

Morning jog in Høiåsmarka. How boring. ;)