So stoked with a full week of training this week! One of the few this year! So what is a full week for me?
This is an ideal week and it often makes sense for me to swap a few of the running sessions for cycling sessions if I feel and injury coming on. This loses some of the specific benefits of running for me but is still an excellent aerobic workout and I love road cycling especially from home in West Auckland. If the Tuesday or Thursday sessions are a tempo or fartlek then I can combine this with orienteering training such as this awesome night orienteering session AOTC ran this Thursday.
This was the first night orienteering session I have done in a long time and I was pretty happy with my navigation considering. I made a few mistakes and some small hesitations but with most of these hesitations I was in the correct place but just not 100% sure. At number 5 I made a significant mistake and actually ‘punched’ the control in the wrong re-entrant. Of course in a race I would have been able to see the control flags, but the aim is to be able to orienteer without needing flags. Leaving 18 I was getting excited about how well I was going and lost focus. I drifted off the straight line and when I checked my compass I realised my mistake and managed to correct without much time lost. But the true issue was that my mind was not focussed on the map and at 19 and 20 I lost more time. At 20 I stood still and went through my mental process (compass, simplify, what next) then restarted and smashed the rest of the course.
Saturday’s training was also very good except the mapping was a bit dodgy near the beach and I don’t know if anyone finished the corridor because of it. I ran this training without a compass and was impressed to see that I was still running in a pretty straight line. I think not having a compass forced me to read the map more so I might do this again soon. Both these maps are on my DOMA page.
Sunday’s run is usually in the Waitakere Ranges but often there is an orienteering race on Sundays. If the race alone doesn’t give me enough training then an extended warm down usually does the trick! This Sunday’s long run was actually a bit different and I chose to head out to Woodhill Forest with the side-plan of finding my compass which I dropped on Thursday night. I had a good idea of where I dropped it and after running around in circles for a bit…YES! Essentially saved myself the $140. The main reason I was able to find it was because I had stopped to fix my shoe laces and paused my watch at this point. This point was obvious once I had the GPS track on my computer and accurate to within 5 or 10 meters. From there I just ran around in circles and I’m not surprised it took so long to find, it looks tiny from 3 meters away on the forest floor.
During the run I could feel that my physical form was still strong and 23km in terrain was no trouble at all. Combining this with my improving technical precision from Thursday’s and Saturday’s orienteering sessions I feel pretty pumped for Europe and for another week of quality training!