Training Log Archive: A damp otter

travelling home, taking some easy time off for a bit now as well.

due to unforeseen circumstances i didnt have a team, so it was me olly and a freelance italian.

Olly did well to come back in the main pack maybe about 2 mins down, and about 2 places down on the GB team, i headed out about 10 seconds down on ciaran, first half was pretty clean and i took a fair few positions on one of the steep hill legs, kept taking places including the swedish 2nd team and i caught up to denmark, but then i took a bad route choice on the long leg dropping me a few places, went to the wrong gafflle on one of the controls but knew where i was, this dropped me a few places but i gained most of them back on the long leg to spectators, got past france and russia on the way out of the spectator, but couldnt quite get past denmark on the downhill.

managed to come back a couple of places higher in 13th about 2 mins down on the first team and 10 places higher than the GB first team.

JWOC middle B final, got 1 fine, lost 6 mins on 2, 3 mins on 3, and then wasnt too bad for the rest apart from a few misses, caught back up to a train that went past me without me realising, finished in a pretty awful 37th, technique needs some serious work.

JWOC middle qualifier, extremely detailed terrain, my O technique just couldnt cope with it, i just couldnt run and read the map and run relocate didnt work, first few controls were alright but then i had some huge misses on 1,6 and 13, which made me way off the A final.

http://jwoc2014.bg/index.php?name=maps#prettyPhoto...

easy rest day run, down through borovets to the bottom road then just a couple of ups and downs.

JWOC Long distance

BOF wasnt going to let me do this race until 2 weeks before, so preparation for it was pretty poor, no long runs etc, but i think physically i actually handled it pretty well and it was poor concentration and mental fatigue that let me down,.

controls 1-3 were slope orienteering, hit them all ok, although a little high on 3, in hindsight would have probably dropped back down to the path, 4 was the long leg, took the north road path spur route and hit it well, slow through the control pick but hit them all pretty well, picked up a couple of stragglers, took the north path route to 8 but then annoyingly executed it really bad in the circle losing a couple of minutes, then i mentally switched off a bit and the rest of my course was plagued in mistakes, 9-10 loop fine, but that was after the 12-14 loop where i missed 13,14 and 15, took a risky route that paid off to 16.

still coming through spectator even after losing about 5-6 mins, i still came through in a reasonable time, but then it went very wrong after spectator, hit the girls control on 17 which i thought was on a path but was actually on a big elephant track, this lost me 4 mins, but not as much as the 6 mins i lost on 18, mis counted the streams and it was very very vague and took a long time to relocate, got 19 ok, started going to 21 without seeing 20, stopped about 300m ahead of 20, should have taken road to 21, damage limitation to the finish.

dissapointing 72nd although at least better than last year.

http://jwoc2014.bg/index.php?name=maps#prettyPhoto...

Warm up jog loops with some strides and quick cornering practise in the bottom sports hall of quarantine, quite an annoying place to warm up because there were just so many other people all over the place.

JWOC sprint 2014 in samokov, a pretty run down city with old soviet style blocks overgrown grass burnt out garages and surrounded by wild horses and dogs.

In two minds about what shoes to wear due to the weather as I knew if was going to rain at some point, looked outside 10 mins before I started and it was still dry so I thought I would be ok, as soon as I was in pre start it started chucking it down with rain, dam.

Clocked one quickly so I was able to do the almost 180 turn out of start without too much hassle, I was running well on the first half and not making any real mistakes but I made a good 3 bad route choices probably losing myself at least 5 seconds each, not planning ahead enough as really scared of making big mistake, this was pretty stupid, missed the really short cut through to 8, and was almost falling in each of the corners,

The rest of the course was similar to the first half, bad hasty routechoicrs and lacking aggression with the running and the cornering, definitely not hitting my full speed at any points.

I think I just went too cautiously not wanting to mess it up, I needed to be more out of control.

48th nothing special but timewise not to bad, 10 seconds quicker would have been 30th, just shows the depth if the jwoc sprint.

Still a 52 place improvement on last year.

Event: JWOC 2014 - Borovets, BULGARIA
 

Easy jog round the sprint model map in samokov.

Long model training in the morning and then some quicker sprint training in the afternoon running one control hard one control easy.

Long model in the morning and then some sprint training in the afternoon, did the sprint training one control hard one control easy.