Orienteering properly kicked off this year with a TuMe Spain camp. Good times were had, 100+ miles were done in the week, and I felt relatively on top of the technical side of things once again.
On the racing side of things, I have so far managed to combine continuing heavy weeks with weekend races without too much disappointment down to arguably slightly less fresh legs. Things kicked off with a bit of a test race in Tensmuir, the CompassSport Cup Qualifier. The race felt fast and although I had some stomach troubles later on, I came out on top but more importantly, clean bar ~60s of mistakes. This was much lower than the prediction, and I was very satisfied with how the orienteering has seemed to have stuck over the winter gap. Improvements have also, somehow, come with a long break off the map reading, with regular control description checks - for actual control features - now being part of the normal leg execution, something that I have never previously done. Perhaps this has come with a more relaxed racing approach due to the speed endurance work, but potentially is just a nice side-effect from some time off orienteering.
BUCS Long and Relay followed on the weekend after, and I was nervous in defending the trophies. In the end, to shorten the story somewhat, my legs were not prepared for terrain on the long and I was caught by the Jonny C train, something that I haven't experienced for a while and was rather horrible confidence wise. Managed to shake it off, with a few final drinks at the night out, and after 2 hrs of sleep (damn red bull), Jack L and Ali M managed to deliver a very good two first legs for me to be able to cruise round the relay and secure the gold. EUOC was also very dominant, and nice to see everyone stepping up their game. Would love to return to the Long area, the rock detail is unknown anywhere else in Britain and it was a pleasure [in attempting] to race in the heavenly stuff.
As well as a seeming step-change in training volume from last year (I had run the same BUCS weekly mileage from last year in the first 4 days of the BUCS week this year), pre-race pre-breakfast runs have become part of the norm. This goes against all former rules I thought I had formed about training, in that surely tiring out the legs on a 20min run on the day of a race would be a bad idea. However, I'm gradually beginning to realise that in running, and especially orienteering, the controllable are somewhat less controllable than they are often thought to be, with more examples later on.
The following week was the Midland Champs. This was a significantly more important weekend with selections being at stake, but I refrained from losing my good weekly streak too much and settled for some good mileage with a single session on the Wednesday before. This, with a stop at Lancaster on the Friday, gave me a chance to reacquaint with Sprint-O, before racing my first specific sprint race in over a year (!) on the Saturday. The race went well, and the map was awesome. Coventry gained a lot of respect from myself that weekend. The Sunday was a full-length Middle on what should have been a very easy Bentley Woods. What ended up happening is that everyone (including myself) ran too fast for their brains to keep up and some big time-losses were experienced. Thankfully, though, I survived with minimal losses (although with some schoolboy errors). It was frustrating not seeing more EUOC boys on top though, with their recently big gains in both training and lifestyle.
Now for the things I can't explain, and don't expect many people can, about training. The following Tuesday should have been knackering, and the legs were still battered after the weekend. I trundled out of the computer lab at lunch and rather hesitantly, decided to do the planned session of 2 x 20min [1km] on the KB dash course. Without going into too much detail, it was a significant step up from an already successful series of tempo sessions, with both efforts averaging 3:20s on a hilly, blowy, tired-legs day. The second session that week was 60 x 30s/30s, which was oddly manageable.
That weekend, after an easy Friday, my legs couldn't even hack a middle race on South Achray. In fact I could barely stand, and I was very annoyed upon finishing. I camped that night, after a less than ideal dinner, and slept minimally, getting very cold in sub-0 temperatures. I woke up at 5am, got up at 7am, went for a slow 30mins, and had the biggest breakfast of my life (lunch box of muesli, plus porridge, 2 bananas, and a coffee and tea). Surely this would ruin the stomach, and surely the legs wouldn't hack a 75min on Trossachs... and yet the best race of my year followed; catching Nixon by 3mins before dropping him towards the end with a lot still in the reserves. Why can't days like that have some international importance, ever(?!).
So today, with some help after speaking to Jonny Muir about training, ultimately for ideas for his upcoming hill running book 'Heights of Madness' (out soon, as soon as he's done a Ramsay Round(!)), I've come to to the following conclusion. In an age where we are trying to make everything somehow predictable, especially as being orienteers, we can easily forget how often events like the above are occurring. It's frustrating, and flashes back to last year's 10Mila/JWOC spring to mind, but it's arguably what makes the sport so exciting at the same time.
Anyway, JK starts in a week and although it doesn't feel like it, I am excited as ever to race 4 days in a row. One word has kept coming up recently, in different contexts but all ultimately to do with orienteering, is consistency. Hopefully my appreciation and dedication to this word in the last few months, and my plans to do so for the upcoming few, will not only reflect in my racing, but also in my training and lifestyle. Fingers crossed anyway.
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