Training Log Archive: Lizzie

Cruise down and waddle home

Got off my arse and out to club intervals at Rødsparken. Session was 3 x 8mins and 4 x 2mins, but I limited it to the 8min reps tonight. Don't want to make myself sick again straight away.
Pace seemed decent anyway, I just tucked in behind Kjetil and used him as a pacer for the session. Not sure he was aware that was what I was doing, but worked pretty well.
1.79, 1.78 and 1.77km for the reps.

A very half hearted effort at night cup. Too much going on elsewhere and head and heart wasn't in it tonight. Took a breather and was at a walk-jog by the end. Should have opted for a head-clearing run in høiåsmarka instead.

Jo leading tonight, so back to the old dance mix. Far less French music that we've never heard of. Also less rest time. Had to take initiative and introduce my own rests. ;)

5th and last leg Smålandskavlen.
Headed out in 3rd place about 1.5mins back on Tisaren and 12.5min behind IFK. Felt like a noob on the first control as I opted for the direct routechoice, only to remember that snow slows down small track and forest running compared to the longer road choice. Oops. Worked my way steadily through the first few controls, feeling a bit like a wreck on the hills and not hugely better on the other bits.
Then, out of nowhere, I got a glimpse of Josefine (Tisaren) about #7. She did a couple of disappearing acts over the next controls, where I'd spot her going an odd direction, but then she'd appear at the control just ahead of me. I chased her down on the way to #10 and passed her at #11. But then I hesitated on the vague hillside to #12 and she got a 10s break on me again. A hair-raising chase down the rocky hillside from #13, and I snuck ahead at #14 by dodging an unnecessary patch of light green.
From there it was a matter of cleanly navigating the short legs through to the finish. I knew that most of my team had had issues with a splitting in here, but glancing at my codes it didn't seem I had it.
Wrong.
I had a gap of maybe 20s through the pre-warning control, and headed up the slope to my penultimate control. However, coming on to the top of the hill, things stopped making sense, there were rocks and knolls everywhere, and the control on the rock just to my side was definitely not mine. I saw Josefine come over the rise behind me, but didn't panic, as she headed questioningly to the rock control. She was obviously in the same fix as me. I quickly relocated and found my control and glanced behind to see what where Josefine was, only to see her ahead and almost on the track to the last control already. Sh*t!! Obviously we did have a split!
From there it was a long sprint to the finish. I didn't want to burn out, so didn't go full guns from the outset. But after the final hairpin bend I put on the burners and started reeling her in. Alas, got caught 1s short on the finish line.
Slight salt in the wound is that it shows I was 20s behind on the official results, thanks to the finish punch being well beyond the finish line. I mean, I didn't scandi flop, but it did take me a while to waddle my way to the finish punch :(

Anyway, 3rd place and a really fun weekend all up!

Livelox: Although it seems to show a blank map, not the course, so that's fun. https://www.livelox.com/Viewer/Smalandskavlen/Dame...

C • 3rd 2

Spent best part of the day driving down through Sweden to Smålandskavlen. Slightly unimpressed as the level of snow on the side of the roads steadily increased the closer we got...

Arrived at our sweetly located farmhouse accommodation, 250m from the arena; ideal for spending maximal time in the warmth and minimal time out in the freezing cold. Eventually managed to drag myself out for an evening jog. A useful test of number of layers required for running.

Got back in time to watch the women's start, then did return trips to and from the house to catch the changovers and finish of the night legs. Jo had a bit of a mare on first leg, but Kine killed it on second leg to bring us back up to 3rd going into the day legs, 3mins behind.

Squeezed in a run between work and heading to football end of season. Up around Venås and tracks at a decent pace, or atleast faster than ive managed the last few weeks.

Running around in the dark at høiås. #528

https://events.loggator.com/1sfjQQ

Giving the dregs of the virus a day to get out (hopefully). Do I need to do 11 hashtags for a rest-day? I'm going to say no. Thinking up 11 hashtags is energy sapping, not a rest-day activity.

Tirsdagsnatt training at Skårefjell N.
My first mass start night in a long time. My stomach is still not quite recovered, gets a bit uncomfortable with all the bouncing involved in running. Even more so with the agility terrain running requires. So I was planning on a slow and steady approach. Still, I was a bit surprised to be dropped even on the jog to the start. Didn't think I was going that slow?

Anyway, Eva gave Helene, our French junior, the same splitting as me so that she could follow me. Yeah...more like so I could follow her! I was leading on most legs, but she'd lead me in to the control site. yay for team work! All up was good fun running with/against the girls, even if Vilma and Karoline left me in their dust today. Damn these fast juniors...

What other excuses can I find? Oh, half way through I lost my R leg down a covered-up leg sized crack in some not-so-bare rock. A trap Bear Grylls would have been proud of, let alone in the dark! I had no chance. Went down to the knee and my momentum meant my leg bent a bit in the wrong direction. Survived to fight another day though ;)

GPS: https://events.loggator.com/SkarefjellN

#night #dark #cold #gettingcolder #longforking #honest #nightonoob #obesetobeast #wheres24 #seriouslywhereis24 #f***itimgoinghome

I've been doing some research on fitness hashtags so I can keep up with Bun's gym snaps. Wow, there is a wealth of advice out there! Apparently the golden number is 11 hashtags per workout...so let's see how I can do...


#gainzzz (obvs) #danceparty #squadgoals #goaldigger #monslay #pushpullgrind #obesetobeast #planker #gluteusmaximus #squats #calves


Just jokes. I actually arrived late and missed squats.

#nosquats

C • Ahaha 3

Starting to feel alive again. Went for a jog in the thick cloud. Managed to make it up to høiås for some sweet views.



Started to feel like maybe I'd bitten off too much on the way home so took some little strolling breathers.

No cats today. My friendly neighbourhood sheep at Eklimoen were out and enjoying the weather though.

Went for a joggle up to Eklimoen and back around Venås. Stopped to walk a few times when my diaphragm or stomach or something down that way got a bit complainy. Progress though. The fever and sweats are gone, no big headaches today, and I wasn't left wanting to curl up in a little ball after the run. So definite improvement!

Also saw a girl out walking her two fluffy white cats. Being cats, they looked thoroughly unimpressed about being on leashes and being taken for a walk. I couldn't agree more with them.

C • Amazing. Simon and I walk o... 2

Nope. Not happening today either.
Had already abandoned any hope of playing football today. Today I abandoned hope of any sort of appearance at Blødslitet tomorrow. Bit bummered on this one, as it's my second to last race-i-didn't-finish-cos-of-heart-shit to tick off the list. The other one, and the biggie, being O-ringen.

In fact, out of 4 years in Norway my Blødslitet record stands at:
2015: DNF after passing out on-course.
2016: DNS after putting a stick in my leg at the 25-manna test-race.
2017: Hmmm, think I'd trained myself up to a 2km walk at this point post-op.
2018: DNS thanks to pesky unknown virus.

I guess there'll always be more opportunities, but not convinced it'll be 2019.

C • 2019 7

Went for a walk/jog at høiås in the vain hope I was feeling a bit better. Turns out I was not. Spent the rest of the evening restraining myself from curling up and dying in a corner. Kakefest kept me alive long enough to make it home to bed.

Still, quietly stoked to be under 10min/kms on night-o at høiås ;)

Didn't get far from the sofa today.

Fever through the night and generally shit throughout the day. That explains yesterday evening's tiredness and the previous nights' bad sweaty sleeps I guess.
Went to after-hours on the advice of my Dr, to make sure it wasn't a bacterial infection or anything heart-dangerous. 2hrs waiting, then got sent home to rest it off. Hopefully that works

Feeling fairly wiped out, but made it to strength training. Early night after.

First match of a triple-header week. This week at least it seems I am primarily a footballer rather than an orienteer. In fact, my biggest contribution to the orienteering club this week may well be eating cake at høiås on Thursday ;)

Beat Ekholt 7-2. We came into the match expecting a tough match after they thoroughly beat us last time (we played shite then, but still). The first 20mins was even enough, but once we got on the board things were only really going one way. We let a couple of goals in as we tired in the second half, but the game was done by then.
I really don't understand the dynamics of this league. Next up is Drøbak on Tuesday night. they're 2nd in the league, compared to our 6th, but recent results have shown that means little. We'll see.

Over to the national park in Sweden to get out of the sights of moose hunters. A nice long orienteering course on a laser map. No major navigation, just a nice terrain run.
Didn't seem to have the ability to pick my own pace today, was behind the boys for the first few controls, then when we caught up Jo I tucked in at her pace. Took slightly different routes but always coming together at the controls until #12 when I cut to #17 while she continued and took a short-cut later on.
Legs satisfyingly tired after running through heather and marshes for 2hrs.

Two girls were taking up all of the usual mat space, just sitting, talking and throwing in a half-hearted stretch every now and then. Grrr. #gymrage

C • You should have started doi... 3

to/from

Leading the UFO 13-16yo group around Stangås. I've always thought UFO is an unfortunate abbreviation for the youth orienteering group, but I can just about cope with it when pronounced the Norwegian way (ooo-eff-oh)

Anyway, a good paced run leading the fastest group. Unfortunately when Thomas took over the pacing we lost a kid or (more?) off the back of the pack, who I had to go back and find when one of the other kids made me aware of it. But it begs the question, what the hell were the two older helpers at the back of the group doing? They're main purpose was to stick with the last in the group and to let us know if we were going too fast?! Not very impressed.

Last Thursday was one year since my heart-op (one year heartversary, in heart lingo ;)
That went fast eh?! There's been some nostalgic and reflective moments throughout this week for sure, including in quarantine before the KO sprint. Hard to imagine the difference between that day a year ago compared to last week in Czech. Crazy to be running World Cups sprints again just one year on, let alone 3 in 4 days! It's something I couldn't have even conceived doing the last 3 years.
It puts things in perspective though. Now when I make a mistake (even the epic one in the middle, but not so much the ones in relays) I can't help but smile thinking how little the mistakes matter when put in context. And quite often when I'm struggling up a hill or pushing hard, i have a mad little laugh or grimace about how (technically) it's much less pain than what i've been through (hills still hurt though).

C • Happy heartversary! 3

Plod around the tracks. Legs felt decent but energy stores were running pretty low. Seems to have rained a bit in Høiåsmarka since last week?

Still in Oslo. Crashed on my colleagues sofa last night. Woke up with her 3 little kids surrounding me this morning.
Finished the proposal late this evening, so on the sofa a second night. The twins are now very disappointed I'm not staying for their family-only 6th birthday celebrations Wednesday night. I've gone from strange-lady-sleeping-on-the-sofa to family in one day. So sweet :)

Travel back to Norway. Have been working as much as possible all through world cup as we have a grant proposal deadline early Weds. Had a nice long free-cafe-wifi skype meeting on friday, and another one today as soon as I landed at Oslo airport.
Decided to stay in Oslo, where our business manager lives, so we could work together on the proposal; far increasing the chances, but not guaranteeing, it gets completed in time.

At least the sore throat and cough seems to have eased off at last.

World Cup (B) Final

Fun little course around Mlada Boleslav. I made two rookie route choices which dropped me straight down to 19th, but other than that my splits had me around top 5. So there is progress!

So, our little B race was run once all the excitement of the A final was done with. But while I enjoyed being able to spectate the whole A final, it did kind of make a joke of our race that we could all sit in the arena and watch the GPS on the big screen. I felt bad enough about watching that much GPS, but actually a significant fraction of the B final field spent much longer studying the map, tracking and possible routes on their phones. There was nothing stopping us looking at our A final team mates maps after their races, and not even any statements in the bulletin or TOM about expected fair-play.
In fact, the organisers accidentally published the B final map online at the start of the A final...although they took it down once someone pointed out their mistake.

Anyway, given our race was still WRE (although 1st place got as many points as 3rd last in the A final...), and given we all still paid World Cup level entry fees for this race, I would think it would be far preferable to run the B final before the A final, and give it World Cup level ranking points. But being the cynic I am, I'm guessing that was too hard to fit in with the TV programming of the A final?
Call me naiive or stupid, but I refused to look at the map or tracking beyond what was on the big screen.

Warm up laps of the arena and a warm down jog around town.

World Cup Middle

Such an awesome course in the sandstone of Turnov. I really wish I could hang around and train here for a while!
Had a good race today, bar one absolute nightmare of a control on #6.

After a steady start, we headed into the detail at #4. 5-6 I thought to head down and around the bottom of the detail before working my way back up through it to the control. All well and good. I exit #5 and find myself at the top of a sketchy as 2.5m cliff which I reckon I can (maybe) get down, at least, it looks like people have been down before me. I manage, but not without scaring the sh*t out of myself! Happy to be in one piece, i skirt around the bottom of the big cliff, into the reentrant and up into the detail to my control. Or not. 5mins of confusion later I bail out and realise my massive parallel error. Ugh. I head to the correct spur of rocks, immediately locate the men's control, and spend another 4mins being a confused idiot before clicking and finding my control with no further issue. Only 10mins blown on one control, no biggie!

After that I considered packing it in, but the terrain was so cool I had to keep going. I lacked motivation to try and find speed for a few controls, before we headed into the labyrinth and speed became a non-issue anyway. Wary from my early cock up, I took the safe option of running long distances around the detail, avoiding the steep slopes as much as possible, and just ducking in and out of controls. This turned out to be the best route on most legs anyway. So I managed to pull back at least a few spots by the finish.

So actually, pretty happy with the run. Obviously a 10min mistake is fatal in the result list, but I'd say it's a lot more positive than 5 x 2min mistakes. I understood the terrain and navigated well the rest of the course (bar entering one cliff early on #10...big cliffs on the ground do not translate to big cliffs on the map when there's other, bigger cliffs on the ground to compare against!)

World Cup Sprint Relay, 4th leg.

We got released from quarantine to the change over just in time for me to see Toby head out on 3rd leg, which was good, as I had some idea of how long I had for waiting/final warm up. Unfortunately though, we were a fair way back, so it was a game of seeing if or how many teams I could pull in on last leg.
Headed out by myself, around a minute back of the next teams up. The first leg was much as Tim had planned the night before, so I could run that fairly hard. Was surprised to see other teams already at #2 however. Kept myself clean through the down hill zig-zag of controls, but chose a bad route choice back over the spur to #9, dropping about 20s on the better choice I think.
From there it was a matter of gutsing it back up the hill and making the lactic legs keep moving around the last loop around the gardens. Had a momentary brain fart at the control just before the botanics, which meant I was a bit stuck behind Italy in the narrow paths, but accelerated (very relative term, it felt very sluggish!) past before the arena passage and didn't look back.

WD jog with Mary. Had to do two loops to get our cameras for the view point over Prague. There was a guy just below the lookout who had laid out a really beautiful romantic dinner set-up, no sign of the second party yet though. He looked a bit nervous!

The cold that has been threatening all week reared its head today. Classic timing. Really not sure racing was a great idea, but figured I'd be knocked out pretty fast anyway ;) Made for a nice burning throat sensation the whole way around, which matched nicely the burning leg sensation happening already!

As soon as I picked up the map on the start beep, I knew it would be all or nothing. Some short sharp park controls before gapping it through the parkland toward the sports complex, via a couple of slope controls. The flat running gave me good chances to wipe the snot from my face though, so I can't complain!
A criss-cross of controls around the tennis courts and buildings and suddenly it was the (long) finish stretch already. Ended up 13s off the lead in 9th place. Happy to make it through, but not ecstatic about having to run a 2nd race!

World Cup Knock Out QF

My first go at the actual knock out part, and at runners choice.
Happy with my selection, and was 2nd behind Anna Nahmi coming out of the forked part. However, from there it was about 1km straight running back toward the arena. Yeah, Nah. I managed to hang on in 5th place, losing time on the top 2 but not 3rd and 4th. But before the bridge into the sports complex, Julia came steaming past too, leaving me at the back. Julia and I too the left option to the next-last contro. I didn't think it was the best route, but being 6th, something had to be tried.
Sarina nastily caught her face on the fence at the penultimate control. A bit of hesitation as my initial reaction was to stop and help her in, as I was figuratively knocked out anyway. But she seemed capable of making it the 150m to the finish, so I continued. Probably not the wisest control to have so close to the end of a knock-out race? A tight control with either a cramped in-and-out, or trying to duck under a fence at speed.

Flew in, hopped in the rental car and drove straight out for a walk/jog around the middle model. Lovely forest, steep as slopes and some not insignificant sized cliffs and boulders. Saturday should be cool, although hopefully my cold will clear a bit by then and allow more than a walk!
Found a geocache under a rock, so was obliged to write in it. Obviously not a well visited one, the last date was 2014! Jo then kindly pointed out to me the massive rock carving that was right above the geocache. Woops, apparently I can find a tiny glass jar under the rock, but not the beautiful half statue carved out of the rock?? (And even less the middle model control 10m away).

Checked in to our luxurious accomm and was persuaded to go check out the sprint model with Tim. Jogged over to it, found some flags, debated the mapping of trees and arbitrary olive green, jogged home. No geocaches.

Got the full HSK dance set tonight.