Training Log Archive: roar

Event: Munster Orienteering Championships, Kilworth Camp
 

Loosening out those legs. They seemed alright but it did take me a lot of clothes and a little while to get warmed up.

Map
RG

MOC
4th (again, as well as LOC this year).
Overall happy with the speed. Same time down as I was for a shorter course at NIOC. One or two little slips that would have brought me up to Conor but I basically was at the same speed as him.

Just to mention it again, oddly saw an owl on the way to 16. Just flew up out of the heather in front of me. Highly unorthodox.

Jog up to the butts and back. Brief chat with Conor on the way. Then a little bit more. Tired enough.

1 - Splits

Got up for my early breakfast and there was a decent blanket of snow on the ground. Debated with myself about running the park run but decided I may as well. Warm up to the start along the walk way thing. Fun to run in the snow though it was getting pretty slushy already and very very very slippery. There was a bridge on the way and instead of the usual hump there was a small dip. This meant the centre of the bridge had filled up with snow melt so I got cold wet feet here. The hill up to the start was nigh on impossible to get up with the snow and the people already up were having a great time waiting for more people. HR monitor decided to go flat again.

Westport parkrun, in the snow.

Before the start the organiser asked, joking "is there anyone unfamiliar with the route" and there was great surprise when I stuck my hand up. Got a quick run down of it.

Starting was hard. Tried to accelerate but just slipped so took a bit to get up to speed. Had my watch set to 500m splits so that I could see my pace better and went through the first 500 at 3:50 pace when I was aiming for like 3:59. There was a group of 5 of us had gone off the front and were all sitting at this pace that I was finding easy but was fast for me so I decided to stay with them. This one guy who seemed pretty fresh (let's call him tri guy) asked why I was there. After about 1.5k one of the group seemed to be flagging. Tri Guy said "stay on this, it's 20 min pace". I wondered about that. I reckoned we were well faster than 20 min pace. A few hundred metres later I worked it out. I asked "Are we going downhill". Tri Guy said, "yup, it's a fair drag back up". Nuts.

First turnaround came after 2.1k and we had to slow down a lot and not fall on the turn. Straight away it was uphill and I knew I was going to be having a tough time to stay under 20. Another luminous t-shirt guy dropped off so there were 3 of us left. Tri Guy, me and luminous thermal guy. There was a flat bit somewhere around the 3rd k and after this Tri Guy took off on the hill. I tried to stay with him but it wasn't happening. My feet were slipping on the slush the whole hill. The race was on for second. Suffering now and there was a 4:30 mpk 500m in here but kept the pressure on as much as I could. Passed the finish and found some landmarks to know where to outsprtint lumo thermal guy. Gina was taking photos then somewhere. Second turnaround at the top of the hill was even worse as this was at the start and we had slipperified it up even more. Noticed Gina's dropped glove on the way back and smoothly scooped it up and threw it at her as I ran past again. Got a few metres gap on thermal guy and pushed hard to the finish to get under 20 for the course.

Course was probably slightly short but given the snow, the two 180 degress turns and the hill I'll take is as a nice sub 20. Happy with that, especially as the preparation of work xmas party the night before wasn't the best.

Walked back a bit with Gina and then jogged the rest before I got cold. Actually a very nice morning.

Went for a swim in the "Vitality Pool" in the hotel. Had a doggy paddle race with Gina and my calf cramped horrifically. It's feeling a bit tight since then. Nice relaxing pool though and some steam room time. Got locked out of my room on the way back though so was wandering around the hotel in my togs and dressing gown trying to get let back in.

Easy pre breakfast run to get a run in and make sure the legs are nice and loose. Dropped by the car to get my HRM. Threw in a few luas sprints at the end just to liven it up. Gloves were saturated so didn't wear them and had very cold hands.

30 calf things

This lack of sleep is taking it's toll on me. Got back pretty late from long run yesterday and wasn't proactive about going to bed. Very tired this morning so I decided to skip the morning run.

I actually forgot to do my calf thingys this morning. On the other hand I seem to be still losing weight. I'll probably get an electric scales over xmas to have more accurate readings.

Poor sleep too as I stayed up trying to fix www.cnoc.ie (which still isn't fixed I don't think). On the other hand I did get our new doma working:
maps.cnoc.ie for all you CNOCers
Your password and everything is the same.

I have yet to upload some historical maps (about 400 missing) but I will hopefully get to that today.

Edit:
All historical maps that were available on the old server should now be also available on the new one.

Run from Lamb Doyles with Shea. Weather was horrific so we stayed low through Balyedmonduff on the way into the wind and came back over the top of Fairy Castle with the wind at our back. It was very epic.

Enjoyable, got a little cold at the end but had the spare gear if I needed it.

30 eccentric baby cows. No partridges or pear trees in sight.
I thought the scales said under 80 for a second this morning but I was wrong.

Warm up laps with some people incl. Brian McG

Strides and dynamics. Legs feeling pretty shot in reality.

8x 600m 200m jog recovery, well we were in lane 5 so the 200m was a bit longer than that but kept it at about 90s as per coach Susan's instructions.

Felt great today (slightly longer rest maybe?). Started with the group in lane 5 and was just off the back with some other guy (Diarmuid) at then end. We took the recovery we were told to so dropped off a bit more but we worked really well for the whole session. The 4th one was odd, the front group passed us on the recovery but we caught them up again on the interval and they slowed us down a bit. Real happy with this session as all intervals were under 3:45 mpk which is pretty good for me, and it felt decent!

2:07
2:07
2:10
2:15
2:11
2:13
2:13
2:12

Cool down with Michael, Ilona and someone else. Happy.

30 eccentric calf lowers

Another successful week. Body coped with the double Saturday pretty well and seemed alright on Sunday. Easy week this week and there is plenty on.

Monday: Climbing
Tuesday: Intervals
Wednesday: Long run, I'll probably do like 80 mins in the park
Thursday: Lynam lecture in eve so morning run + strength
Friday: Travelling to westport for Xmas party. Maybe a swim
Saturday: Westport parkrun
Sunday MOC

Bouldering in Gravity. Good crowd today. Gina, Killian, Luke and some guy named Cormac. Shea showed up later too.

Big thing of the day: did 2 reds, bringing my total to 3, excellent. Probably helped a little by being tall I will admit. Also got the iron cross style blue which was nice. Had a fun time.