Training Log Archive: bm

Bunged up nose and muffled ears. Made it through the selection races healthy though!

Relays at Pwll Du. Great planning, arena, spectating etc from Keith and Mark.

Small wobble on 1, silly mistake on 5 (on line but didn't go far enough) and after about 7 just completely died, anything other than downhill was immense effort. Ah well. Good fun.

Small but not too consequential errors on 3, 4, 5, 6. Silly on 15 in the quarry, didn't think they would actually put a control there. Then switched off after road crossing and binned 6 minutes looking for 20. Dammit. Annoyed at that, so unnecessary. Speed wasn't too bad, just made some silly mistakes. Dam. Dam. Dam. Still kept me on the podium, which is nice. Just not the colour I was thinking of.

Was GPS'd and HRM'd until in the start lane they decided to contradict the final details and apply IOF rules to non WRE courses. Oh well.

C • Final Details 4

Middle Race on Merthyr Common. Won. Boooooooom! :D

Was feeling confident about my ability to be straight on it in this terrain after all the Llangatock practice and my compass being good all season, so the plan was to go out hard. Aim was to catch those in front, with a quiet ambition of catching Aidan.

Spiked no.1 and was fastest by 20s on it: compass, ruin, open spur, compass, control. 2 was perfect too. Great, excellent start. Drifted E on 3 and ended up in the pits to the E (+50s). Found myself, turned around and there was Aidan approaching it. What the hell? That never happens to me.

Aidan went E to 4, I went for straight line, wobbled on approach and went to incorrectly correct myself (should've kept going) and wasted 30s. Oh here's Matt E, "are you looking for 4?" Seriously, what on earth is going on today?!

Right, pack running. Don't just follow and have your own plan. Pack went S to 9, I went straight. Along the way reeled in some more M18s. Great, this might be a good run. Couldn't keep up the ferocious pace towards the end so began to drop backwards towards 17. Made it through the heather to 19 and then tried to push on home. Finished in first, woah....

Warmed down to find a very happy coach telling me I'd won.... Whaaaaaaat?! Woooooooooop! Biggest race I've ever won, and a pretty great run too. Happy!

Event: JK 2014
 

Sprint race at Swansea Uni. Solid run, nothing spectacular and nothing too awful. About 25s of mistakes which would've helped, but still wouldn't have got me that close to the top guys. Still fairly pleased and a okay %behind (8.6%). Slightly shocked by how far down the results place wise I was, but the sprint has never really been my forte.

Nice day, fun course and nice of Paul to come down to watch!

Resting is going well, three 10 hour sleeps in a row...