Training Log Archive: mintore

Event: London City Race
 

Visited the Tower of London. So much history focused on a small place. The White Tower is an exquisite piece of Norman architecture and the Crown Jewel were impressive, especially the ginormous gold punch bowl that holds on the order of 140 bottles of wine. People really seemed to enjoy an afternoon of head lopping back in the day. It was great exercise but the tour would have been nicer without a suitcase.

2013 London City Race. 8.3 km straight line but 11.1 km predicted min running distance.

A really fun race through Canary Wharf and the Isle of Dogs. It was mostly not very technically demanding with a few trickier controls, some longer runs, and lots of route selection problems that were really close to 50/50 choices. Attackpoint is probably about spot on with about 4 min lost time. I made only one significant error, heading towards a dead-end that I had thought looked like it might work on the map, 80 s). I did make a number of smaller errors or definitively bad route choices on legs 4-6 that I should have done better with (these cost between 20-60 s each). I did run fairly hard and there were some parts of the race where there were little competitions with other runners (either head-to-head or with similar runners making different route choices). A fun 3-way finish sprint that I prevailed on; all-in-all, this was a good run finishing in the top half (49 of 102 mens vets, 40+).

5. Mens Veterans (40+) - Splits

Event: LOK Ultrasprint (UKOL16)
 

Spent the afternoon sightseeing (Westminster, Downing St., Buckingham Palace and St. James Pk) and the run/walk to get to the race. Distance is a guess.

London Ultrasprint 2013 by LOK.

A few issues getting there as the tube from the east was out-of-service so we use map and compass to find our way through the neighborhoods from the north (starting ever so slightly off our paper map for good measure).

The ultrasprint was a format met with some trepidation. But, after it has all played out, the consensus is that it was highly fun! For the adults, much of this hinged on the 1:1250 map and, possibly more importantly, an amount of ink corresponding to a 2mm pen line chopped into 30 bits. Tiny marks at the center of the circles marked exact control placements and these made all the difference on the fly.

The day comprised itself of 3 prologue races and a final. There were category finals for the top 4 and then everyone could run the same course (there was one final course for all categories). For me, the day started pretty well (no penalties and only a bit rough), got worse with my second run (a 30 second time penalty -- this is how they dealt with each instance of mispunching), and yet worse for the third. I came out of a control at a slightly wrong angle and took 90 seconds?? to fix it, but ultimately finished the third with no mispunch. Finished the prologue at around 48th of 62 mens vets.

Aidan ran 4th cumulatively on the prologue and made the junior class final. This was interesting because it was essentially a head-to-head race. The final had two butterfly loops but there was a long run in where you knew how it was going and a couple more maze controls (there was a labyrinth used twice in each course). It was possible to see most of the course from the start area and it was a melee for the first few controls with the runners splitting between several very small loops. The maze seemed a bit tricky here. The second butterfly was about halfway and Aidan and another Norwich runner seemed like they were really confused. It turned out to be controls 16 and 17 (but 16 was printed in a way that seemed ever so slightly like 18). They both went to 17 first and it appears that Aidan went to 16 then back to 17, whereas the other runner did 17-16 and onto 18. There was some regrouping, and a chase. The fastest finisher was in before Aidan's group; he and remaining two fought it out in the maze. Aidan finished in 3rd across the line but had no time penalties. The result was a 2nd place finish -- very awesome for him!

I really liked the final and managed to pull it back together. I think that I needed bigger breaks between the prologue runs. I am not sure how I finished but was 20th out of 50 finishers when I downloaded. No penalties and I could not have gone loads faster; maybe there was 20-30s of scraps lost in many small bits. I'm very happy with this!

prologue B

Prologue C

Mass final (course length = 1.5 km)

5 round-trip walks from the bus to work

A fast winding route through Eaton Park; Aidan's plan for London ultrasprint training. For me, learning to see my map would be an even better exercise as the course notes state that are no control descriptions for the ultrasprint, the controls will be unnumbered, and they will be potentially within a meter of one another on opposite sides of the same feature. Hmmm....

No spectra this time; missed bus and chose to walk rather than wait. It was a cool but pleasant morning.

Lots of distractions from running this week but Aidan and I got a short, much needed run in.