Training archive & future

A new training year has begun. The last one was an unsuccessful experiment but it is said that learning is driven by error and therefore I have no regrets. Having considered things that have worked training-wise over the last few years I have come up with a new and much simpler plan.

Basically from now until mid March I will place a greater emphasis on training volume, primarily aerobic running. After that I plan to do a series of hill, VO2max and race pace blocks, planned around the racing season, with the emphasis being on higher intensity sessions and recovery. The finer details of the orienteering technique training, session content and strength and conditioning training are not so important, the main thing is to get through the winter healthy with a good aerobic base.

Looking back at past years it seems that the quality of the aerobic base from the winter has been a big factor during the season. I am not completely disregarding Helgerud's interval block concept. I'm sure that it is very effective for some people. I think it depends a lot on lifestyle/ recovery and probably partly on individual muscle fibre type distribution. I am convinced that if you only have 6-8 weeks to prepare for a competition it is the most effective way. I am convinced that if you are only interested in increasing VO2max it is the most effective way. There have been some really interesting and useful effects and I will certainly use some of the concepts in my training in the future. I wasn't looking for a shortcut, I was looking for the most effective way to train. But for me I don't think that was it and I'm planning to take a safer, steadier and more patient approach. Now for some numbers and graphs..

USA debut! Orienteering is alive... in.. Greenbush, Wisconsin..?

To be perfectly honest I don't think I knew where Wisconsin was until a few weeks ago. But it turns out it's not too far North of Chicago, Illinois where I was attending the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting. SfN was a ridiculous conference with over 30 000 delegates so after a week of intensive Neuroscientific discussion and (too much) Chicago food I was a little exhausted. Training area "Hepcat" gave a taste of the orienteering treats we could expect at the double A-meet which included the US Individual Champs (for which I was non competitive).

On Day One at "Cat's Meow" I made some mistakes and became quite exhausted which resulted in an enormous mistake to the 13th control. I think the optimum line was to the right, I drifted off my own line, lost contact, failed to relocate and so on.. this episode reminded me that huge mistakes (a bit like plane crashes, according to Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers) are the result of a series of several back to back errors which are never corrected and usually some underlying fatigue/ lack of concentration.

On Day Two at "Cat's Agenda" I decided that by now I was completely exhausted and should take things a little easier. This led to me finding a nice flow and having a relatively clean run, although there were still a few extra turns and my route choice to #14 (to the right) was not optimal, but the mapping of the vegetation varied a lot which put me off the straight route.

This was good enough to take the overall victory by about 5 mins ahead of US Champ Samantha Saeger and W45 WMOC Champ Pavlina Braumtigan (who had both beaten me on Day 1). It was a really fun weekend and I met some great people, thanks to Maricel & Julie who gave me a lift up from Chicago and the Armstrong and Saeger families who organised a brilliant house on a bull semen farm. Thanks to all the organisers too, especially a dude named Kevin who's idea it was to re-map these areas and bring the US Champs to Greenbush, Wisconsin. The strange places orienteering takes you!

Trening pause!

In the past I often haven't bothered to take much of a break from training at the end of the season. In fact last year I used the downtime to start experimenting with interval blocks!! At some point during the season I read a blog post called takin' breaks (read it!) by American 5000 m runner Lauren Fleshman -an athlete that I really admire, not only her running, PB 14:58 but also her seemingly balanced approach to life and sport. Lauren's analogy of cashing in on the cumulative effect of training year on year while letting some of the top-end fitness (small change) fall away made a lot of sense. And her point that, although it's tempting to keep going, without a break you can set yourself up for a couple really big highs but some nasty lows (injuries, illness, mental burnout) reminded me of last Winter and Spring.

I haven't had a great season but when I think about the condition I was in mid April (injured, ill AND lacking fitness) I'm lucky I had a season at all! The one of my goals that I did manage to achieve (getting within 10 mins of the winner at NM long) gives me hope that next year can be (with Borat accent) "great success!" But I'm going to need to train more sensibly. If I take a break now, while I still have some energy and then build up slowly then maybe by the Spring I'll feel more like the sunflowers and less like the muck that emerges from under the melted snow..

The autumn is actually a great time to train orienteering technique so I won't be completely idle. Impossible anyway since my commute home from work involves over 6 km of uphilling. But other than that I'll adopt the Norwegian approach and leave the more serious training until that magical and mythical start point week 44.

While I'm reminiscing.. My season høydepunkt was Jukola! We reached our Venla goal of top 15 (11th) and had a lot of fun in the sunshine. Marte was an absolute legend and the rest of us did our bit. Now my old friend from back in OK Ravinen Sara Luscher has joined Wing! Sara and Elise will both be racing the World Cups in Switzerland this weekend. Lykke til! I'll probably be relaxing with a cup of tea and maybe dreaming of August 12th 2010...

NM relay: the unexpected scenario

Norwegian Championships relay was a great event to be part of and a good day for Wing OK who took bronze in the Men's relay. I've had this event in my mind for a few weeks and been imagining different scenarios for the 2nd leg. Sometimes I imagined Elise outsprinting a Halden runner to take the title.. but it was not to be.

Elise was ill and another regular first team runner Lene Bergersen is injured so upandcoming junior Mali Kanstad was called up to run the 2nd leg and I was switched to 3rd. Things didn't go well for us from the start. Marte, who is usually a bit of a first-leg superstar, extremely reliable, had some problems in the green and as it turned out had uncharacteristically mispunched the first control. Mali then lost some time on the 2nd leg but gained valuable experience for future relays. So I ran out about 20 min down with the knowledge that we were already out of the race, DSQ.

Not the ideal scenario but since I'm trying to get my orienteering more stable and reliable I thought it would be good training to try to do a good technical race. This I more or less managed although I made frustrating errors on the 4th and 17th controls and maybe didn't quite have the killer instinct up the tougher climbs. Since we were one of the supposed top teams having won silver last year, I got to carry GPS on the last leg, it's quite fun to replay the race and see the little red WING tadpole heading beautifully in to 4 & 17 only to veer off course!

Overall, really fun, the medallists this year were Halden, NTNUi and Konnerud (with Marianne Andersen running a superfast last leg) but WING are gathering strength & numbers and we will be back!!!

NM long: a unique & special test!

Last year I ran my first Norwegian Championships and realised that "NM" is a big deal. The Norwegians want to run well and the courses are challenging. This year the long distance was held ~1.5hrs drive from Trondheim in Haltdalen, in fairly relevant terrain for WOC 2010. I was keen to improve on 26th place from last year, but more importantly the question was, how much time would I lose to Marianne Andersen? Could I get within 10 minutes of her on a race like this?

Andersen is one of the World's best orienteers and studied in Trondheim for 5 years. I suspect that she didn't spend those 5 years getting pished in the student union. More likely she was laying the foundations for the level she has reached today. So I imagine she has spent some time in the Trønder terrain. Last year at NM long I was 22:07 down and left scarred by flashbacks of hopelessness on the now legendary crag-slope-from-hell... but how much have I learnt in the last year? I felt sure the Norwegians would be ready and up for it. They've just had a training camp here in Trondheim and had several days since then to "fetch themselves in" and "collect surplus".

Me? I had intermittent sharp pains in my left knee, been feeling knackered and on the verge of illness for several days and had considerable doubts about my technical skills... But I was up for the challenge.

The race itself: Pretty good! Apart from the World's dumbest route to the 3rd control, I'd planned it on the way to #2 and thought it was genius, 30 sec in I realised it was in fact idiotic but was already committed ("number 3?.. err.. was that a route choice leg? ...was there another option than pretty straight there??", well no, not really..) That cost me a minute or three (I dropped from 8th to 18th) but my other route choices, on the actual route choice legs #2 & #5, were pretty solid and made the control finding as easy as possible. I was fannying about a bit too much into most of the controls but there were no big errors.

The result: 15th place, 9:22 down*. Definitely the most satisfied I've been after an individual race for more than 12 months. Though obviously still a little frustrated. That's orienteering.

*It could have been more since Marianne lost ~3:30 on the 7th control. However, that's also orienteering. I came into #7 very carefully on compass from a boulder beside the last big marsh, the visibilty was very low and I missed the control by ~10m and came out in the narrow marsh just beyond the control, realised & turned. It was really tricky and a lot of people lost time there.
Results Splits

What now?: A lot more training. I've got at least another 10 minutes to find in 11 months ;-) And thanks to NM long I have a better idea of where/how to try to find it. First I need to take it easy and try to be ready for the relay on Sunday.

World's elite crash the District Champs

Last night the Sør-Trønderlag district sprint Champs were held in Selbu. It was more like a short middle distance course and there were several international guest runners taking part.
I had quite a solid run technically with just some small misses but did lose 2 x ~30 sec on route choices to the 8th and 9th controls where I got stuck in some thick vegetation. Physically I felt really good, since WOC I've been doing a lot of easy aerobic training, pleasant long runs in the forest and orienteering training at easy speed. It has been fun and my body seems to like it too!

KM-sprint: Results Splits

I'll probably run the first leg for Wing in the District relay Champs on Sunday which the organisers are calling a mini-WOC since there are a lot of National teams on the start list: Great Britain, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Czech Republic, Ireland, Austria etc..

Brainless in Hungary

To say my middle qualification race went badly is an understatement. The last couple of days I have been feeling pretty disgusted with myself. But now I've decided that it's not much fun to carry on like that and I might as well learn from it, look to the future and not least help my team mates prepare for their races. This morning I hung tapes for Sarah and Pippa's sprint training and discussed routes and strategies. At the same time I was able to get some good slope training in myself and start to rebuild my battered confidence.

I am in good shape and have some more races to look forward to this autumn. The middle qualification race was difficult but I do have good enough orienteering skills to have coped well with it in many other scenarios. Unfortunately nerves and self-inflicted pressure clouded my judgment on the day. I seem to be a bit of a slow learner when it comes to international orienteering but I've realised from this experience that I'm likely to have similar feelings at big races in the future too. I'm not necessarily going to get more relaxed with age and experience.

I reckon the only way to deal with this is to leave less to chance technically. All the technical skills needed in the relevant terrain need to be so well practised that they can still function almost automatically if feelings of stress and nerves crop up. I left too much to chance and was ill prepared for the slope orienteering in Hungary. I'd only done 7 hours of orienteering in Hungary prior to WOC and most of that was last October. There were good reasons why I didn't come on the GB training camp in May, but perhaps I should have come out earlier this time around. Slovenia was good technical training but only 1 day at OOcup was particularly relevant for my qualifier at WOC and not nearly as challenging. Of course none of that fully explains why I screwed up. I screwed up because I wasn't disciplined enough on the day and didn't stick to my plan when I missed the first control. Panic set in.

Lesson learnt. The good news is that I've already spent over 55 hours orienteering in the forests of Trondheim and the surrounding area (not including sprint orienteering). Even though we have snow from November until May I will more than double that amount between now and WOC next year. I will aim to spike every possible type of control and nail every kind of route choice many times over before WOC 2010. So that if the stress and nerves come I can simply pick up my map and feel at home. Of course that doesn't necessarily guarantee success, this is sport/ life, shit happens, but being well prepared for everything leaves less to chance.

It feels like the British team is in a transitional year but I'm sure they/we will still produce some good performances at this WOC, maybe some great ones. That won't come from me personally but I'm still here and part of the team so I'll do what I can to help. It doesn't help to have a miserable person hanging around, so it's time to move on and have some fun! :-)

Normal training resumed the afternoon after the middle qual with a 55 min easy run, yesterday I ran 1hr50 in the heat and today I was back orienteering. I'll run 3 or 4 Hungarian Cup Open races and today I found a place to do strength & conditioning work. Ja vel, it's 3.5 weeks til Norwegian Champs...