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16 November 2012
15 October 2012
Hat trick in the hills
This weekend I flew back to England to take part in the UK Fell Running Relay Championships which were held on the Long Mynd in Shropshire by my club, Mercia Fellrunners. After many years of failure (some years close, some years not so close), we were desperate to finally win the coveted prize in home terrain. Mercia had never won before, but had thrown away winning positions several times, and been unlucky with star runners getting injured the day before (etc....), but we finally managed to get out a full strength team for the first time since I have been in the club (even if I was lacking some training mileage this year).
Paul Jones did a good job on 1st leg, handing over in 6th place, 1:30 back on the best rival team. Steve Cale and Tim Davies did well on the long 2nd leg to pull up to 4th place (behind the other 3 favourite teams) about 1:45 behind the leaders. Then it was time for me and my partner, Andy Davies, to run. We had run together twice previously, in 2009 and 2010. Both times we had run the 3rd (navigation) leg, and both times we had won out leg convincingly. This time I was unsure of my physical shape, but was determined not to get dropped by Andy up the hill! We started fast, overhauling the 3rd team at the top of the first climb, and the front 2 teams were in sight in the distance. We ran strongly to the first checkpoint, and soon after 1 caught up the 2nd placed team. There was a route choice to the 2nd checkpoint, and we decided to take the left path option whilst the leading team ran straight through some rough heather. We made a gap of about a minute by the 2nd control over the 3 chasing teams, and then tried to push on around the flatter section of the race. The 3rd and 4th checkpoint were physically much easier, and the split times there were pretty close amongst the top teams. Contouring round to the 5th (and second last) control, we had just over a minute lead and were feeling confident. We picked up the tapes from the other legs to lead us the the checkpoint, but when we came to the hill top, there was no control! Confused, we ran on, but we had clearly been in the correct place. After a few meters we turned back to hunt again. We saw the 'marker' left by the course setter to indicate where the control should stand, but no control. By this time the 3 teams chasing had caught us. A consensus was reached that it was missing, so we all carried on. Andy and I managed to stay in front (just) on the steep descent to the finish, and sent out Simon Bailey (English champion this year) with a few seconds lead. Marshalls managed to get a checkpoint in place pretty quickly so it was only the first 4 teams (mostly us really) who were affected by the missing control.
Luckily, the minute or so that we lost was inconsequential as Simon ran the fastest leg time on 4th leg to win the 2012 relays for Mercia! Andy and I still managed to win the leg, and maintain our unbeaten record as a pair.
Leg 1,2 and 4 maps here
Results and splits here
Other news
I am now a Master of Sport and Exercise Science and have now graduated from Sheffield Hallam University, and I have been selected for the GB Performance team for 2012 and the World Cups in New Zealand in January.
Back in black
I did a good race, with one 40 second mistake on the second last control, and a little time loss on the way to the first control when I hit my knee pretty hard on a stone. I was 2 minutes behind on my leg, and my team finished 3rd (after a pretty bad start).
Most positive was that my body responded in a good way, and despite not having a lot of recent training hours, I was able to run as I would have liked without any bad feeling or after effects. It is good to be back!
23 August 2012
Masters
This
week I have been mostly writing Masters thesis. Luckily I don't have
any training to distract me at the moment, so I have been able to
make good progress, so hopefully soon I will be able to add the
letters MSc after my name, and be eligible for the SPOOK beer-relay
team (although I probably would need to change my training slightly
to make the first team). My training break has been going well, with
an amazing holiday in Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia, during which we
walked about 5-6 hours each day, often up big hills, so we pretty
much needed a holiday the week after to recover. Also went in some
cool caves, visited some amazing coastal towns - are there sprint
maps of Rovinj, Pula etc? If there aren't there should be! Now I am
looking forward to kicking off training again in September, and
hopefully doing a couple of races in October. I have been selected
for the World Cups in New Zealand, so hopefully I can get back into
some shape before then!
My Masters Thesis is titled "Heart Rates of Elite Male Orienteers During Sprint, Middle and Long Distance Orienteering Races", and I was hoping to publish it in the Scientific Journal of Orienteering, but I am not sure if that exists any more - I certainly haven't been able to contact anybody at the journal.
26 July 2012
Bad summer
It feels like this summer could not have gone much worse so far. After getting a stomach bug in March, my year has been a roller-coaster of sickness - I was ok at Tiomila, but since then I have been sick more than I have been healthy. Every time I felt like I was getting better, something else hit me and I had more time off training. At the back of my mind was the fact that World Championships was not far away, and I tried desperately to get healthy and get to Switzerland. I was just about healthy enough to run at Jukola, but a 9 1/2 minute mistake shows that even if my body was up to it, my brain certainly wasn't.
I missed every single test race for World Champs, but luckily, enough of the selectors had faith in me to give me a chance if I felt I was fit enough, and the last 3 weeks before the champs even felt ok in training (although in retrospect I was kidding myself a little bit).
I flew out to Switzerland (although for various reasons I actually spent most of WOC in France) a few days early to get in the terrain, and did a couple of decent low intensity trainings. The qualifier actually went quite well, and although I never pushed too hard, I felt ok.
However the next day at the final, I felt terrible already warming up, and my calf injury was more noticeable than it had been for months. As soon as I picked up the map I was struggling physically, and I had a really terrible feeling. I wasn't able to focus on the navigation as I would like, as I was thinking too much about the physical side of things. I managed to get away with it until the 8th control, when a short sharp climb took everything I had, and then I failed to think about the direction, I was just trying to run. I missed the control by 3 minutes, and after that not only did I have a terrible feeling in my body, but also psychologically I knew already that I had failed. It was then even harder work to try and keep pushing around the last part of the course. Luckily most of it was downhill, because I felt like either walking or giving up for most of it (and had it not been World Champs, I am certain I would have). I motivated myself by imagining Marc Lauenstein (my 4 minute man) chasing me, and I resolved at least to beat him to the finish. I succeeded. By about 3cm. I can honestly say that I don't remember ever feeling so bad either during or after a race, both physically or mentally, and my calf was really sore both during and especially after.
WOC Relay - I told the selectors how I felt after the middle race, that I had a bad feeling in my body and that my calf was sore, but that if I was in the team I would give it everything that I had. They decided to not select me in the team for the first time since 2006, and it was at the same time a crushing disappointment, but also a relief, as the relay at the World Champs is not the place to be if you are not feeling absolutely 100%.
The last week has been one of the toughest in my orienteering life, going to a championships short on fitness and form, struggling with a bad feeling and the attitude of some other athletes. Having spoken with several doctors, the general consensus is that at best I have some form of post-viral fatigue, and at worst some form of pneumonia (mycoplasma seems to be the fashionable one at the moment in orienteering circles). Anyway, I am back home now, on antibiotics, and starting a 5 week training break to try and get healthy.
I was really inspired by the Czechs winning the relay though - it is great when it is not the same few teams winning all the time, and I will be back (hopefully) fitter than ever in future to try and do the same!
I missed every single test race for World Champs, but luckily, enough of the selectors had faith in me to give me a chance if I felt I was fit enough, and the last 3 weeks before the champs even felt ok in training (although in retrospect I was kidding myself a little bit).
I flew out to Switzerland (although for various reasons I actually spent most of WOC in France) a few days early to get in the terrain, and did a couple of decent low intensity trainings. The qualifier actually went quite well, and although I never pushed too hard, I felt ok.
However the next day at the final, I felt terrible already warming up, and my calf injury was more noticeable than it had been for months. As soon as I picked up the map I was struggling physically, and I had a really terrible feeling. I wasn't able to focus on the navigation as I would like, as I was thinking too much about the physical side of things. I managed to get away with it until the 8th control, when a short sharp climb took everything I had, and then I failed to think about the direction, I was just trying to run. I missed the control by 3 minutes, and after that not only did I have a terrible feeling in my body, but also psychologically I knew already that I had failed. It was then even harder work to try and keep pushing around the last part of the course. Luckily most of it was downhill, because I felt like either walking or giving up for most of it (and had it not been World Champs, I am certain I would have). I motivated myself by imagining Marc Lauenstein (my 4 minute man) chasing me, and I resolved at least to beat him to the finish. I succeeded. By about 3cm. I can honestly say that I don't remember ever feeling so bad either during or after a race, both physically or mentally, and my calf was really sore both during and especially after.
WOC Relay - I told the selectors how I felt after the middle race, that I had a bad feeling in my body and that my calf was sore, but that if I was in the team I would give it everything that I had. They decided to not select me in the team for the first time since 2006, and it was at the same time a crushing disappointment, but also a relief, as the relay at the World Champs is not the place to be if you are not feeling absolutely 100%.
The last week has been one of the toughest in my orienteering life, going to a championships short on fitness and form, struggling with a bad feeling and the attitude of some other athletes. Having spoken with several doctors, the general consensus is that at best I have some form of post-viral fatigue, and at worst some form of pneumonia (mycoplasma seems to be the fashionable one at the moment in orienteering circles). Anyway, I am back home now, on antibiotics, and starting a 5 week training break to try and get healthy.
I was really inspired by the Czechs winning the relay though - it is great when it is not the same few teams winning all the time, and I will be back (hopefully) fitter than ever in future to try and do the same!
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