Thursday, October 10, 2013

How Was Your Run?

It’s probably the first question anyone asks after you finish a race – and it’s a question I think orienteers are particularly bad at answering. How was your last run? Chances are it was pretty successful and you had a good time but that’s not what you’ll say. Instead you say things like “Oh I blew it on control 9” “Ach, I missed 90 seconds on the third and gave up after that” or “the map was completely wrong in the technical bit”. We even do it after non-orienteering races: one of my team mates tweeted at the weekend “Feeling tired at end of Ben Venue today. Close to Findlay’s record despite a 2min detour on a checkpoint though.” How negative can you be after winning a hill race up and down one of the best hills in the southern half of Scotland?!?
I’m no psychologist so I’m not going to postulate why orienteers are so negative. What I am is a math geek so here’s a formula for how orienteers might rate their run:


Where:
M = Largest mistake made, in minutes
m = personal factor for maximum size of mistake before writing run off
n = number of rivals in race
Ix = indicator function. Ix = 1 if rival x beat you, 0 otherwise.  I1 = greatest rival, I2 = second greatest etc.
T = % of training goals completed in last month
C = number of complaints about the map, course, terrain, weather
S = number of injuries sustained
Fun = % of fun you had.

I’ll let you digest the detail of that one. In short, I think we overvalue our mistakes and the external result and undervalue the actual experience of completing the course. We must enjoy it or else why would we bother? I’m not claiming this is definitive but try filling in the values for your most recent race and see what you come up with.

Last weekend I flew to Switzerland to race in the final round of the 2013 Orienteering World Cup. On the agenda was a middle distance and town centre sprint race round the hilly spa town of Baden. The middle distance produced a disappointingly ‘normal’ result for me in a middle distance race at this level: 52nd, out of the points and 10 minutes behind the super-Swiss winners. But not for the last time this weekend I wasn’t too disappointed with what others might see as a poor result. Because I had fun! The terrain had included a mad section known as “The Devil’s Cellar” – a steep, craggy heavily contoured section of <geoglogical term> reminiscent of the French limestone used for WOC2011, a really good orienteering  challenge. Sure, I wasn’t as fast as the best but I navigated through this crazy terrain as best I could and got it mostly right. And the rest of the course had been nice Swiss forest with controls that generally popped up where you expected them.  It was FUN! On top of that, it reminded me that, while I am far from World Class at this discipline, I can see how I might improve with a bit of specific training. I know how to do this, I’m just not good enough at the moment. This is just the kick up the ass I need at this time of year, as we prepare to start winter training!


The next day was the sprint race – the real reason I was here. After top 10 results in my last three international sprint races I was looking forward to this one-off race to finish my season. I was in good shape, with consistent high volume training since mid-August and some great hard tempo runs on the Dalkeith railway line in recent weeks. I’d done my geeking on the old map – I’d studied every course from the 2008 Swiss champs on the same area, measuring routes and checking split times so I knew the best choice for almost every possible leg – and I’d had a good wander round the area, getting a feel for the steepness of the hills and slippiness of the steps. My legs felt good after the middle distance and I’d done some short sprintervals in the morning of the race to wake up my sprint-o brain which has been a bit dormant since the summer.

The race went well. I had a great flow round the old town, my geeking paying off in helping me make quick descisions and executing them well. Buoyed by the impressive and enthusiastic crowds all over the course I thought I was running pretty fast too.


The results board disagreed. 31st wasn’t the position I was aiming for, and 1:26 behind Mattias Kyburz is my biggest deficit since New Zealand (ignoring my implosion in Oslo). I couldn’t make sense of this at the time. I’m used to the Good Run/Good Result and Bad Run/Bad Result combos. Even Bad Run/Good Result happens from time to time, such can be the woeful state of Elite races in Britain (see the British Long Distance champs this year). But Good Run/Bad Result just doesn’t happen to me.

Getting an orienteering result is a two stage process. You have to get yourself to the startline as well prepared as possible: physically, mentally and technically. You then have to turn that preparation into as good a result as you can. The preparation sets your limits, the race is a test of how close to those limits you can go.  On Sunday I executed a race that I am proud of and was as good as I could hope for on the day. I was initially disappointed to be so far down in time and position but on reflection I think I did OK. I took the legs I had and the training I’d done and turned it into a good run. And I did that in one of the most fun races in orienteering, with the crowds, the pretty town and the atmosphere of the Swiss retirement party.

How was my run? Awesome.

\\

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Tre Rifugi Mountain Relay

I was first asked to run this relay in the Italian Alps during WOC2011. When one of the original team dropped out Anne Buckley called me up to see if I could ‘pop over’ from Chambery to fill the space. I thought about it then but it would have meant missing the WOC banquet and taking an extra day off work so I had to turn it down. However I didn’t forget about this interesting sounding race and when I was asked to take part this year I signed up straight away.
Refuge #3: they were selling beer at 9:30am when I arrived. Maybe to help calm the nerves?

The race, which is featured in the excellent “World's Ultimate Running Races” book, is a three leg relay. The first leg starts with 2km of gentle climbing from the village of Collina to the first “rifuge” then climbs steeply up to the second at the changeover on the Austrian border. Second leg is the real showpiece of the race, a steep scramble up a sheer rockface followed by a technical trail run to the third of the three rifugi where the final leg starts. From here it’s all downhill back down to the valley floor.  Every year a British team is invited to take part by the hosts and this year it happened that all the guys in the men’s team were Scottish so we ran as Team Scozia.
Second leg basically traverses this rock face: not for the faint hearted!

Robbie Simpson is spending the summer in the Alps and has been getting some great results including 5th at Sierre-Zinal the week before Tre Rifugi. He powered up the hill to win his leg by 10 seconds – read more over on his excellent blog. Finlay Wild is also spending some time in the Alps while he is between GP jobs and used the skills which saw him recently break the record for the Cuillin Ridge to power away from the opposition. He handed over to me with a minute lead which made my job on last leg fairly straightforward.
θ >> 0.  θ ~ 40°?

Straightdown might be more appropriate. I knew the first 200m would be the hardest descent and I was glad to get them done before I heard the cheers from above signalling the opposition starting. From there it was a slightly less steep sprint down alpine meadows and into a twisty singletrack path through the forest. 
Nice smooth track back to the valley floor. Not.

The race is incredibly well supported and all the way I was cheered with shouts of “Bravo” – slightly different to the usual “Dai” that you get in Italian races when you’re not leading. “Die” might have been a bit closer in some places as you leap off cliffs and drop offs with no idea what’s coming next.
A relatively short time later I dropped out of the trees and onto the road for the final 2km to the finish. By my reckoning I dropped 700m in that first 10 minutes: over one metre per second. Not quite free fall or terminal velocity but pretty quick nonetheless! 

Out on the road I could run a good fast pace on the gentle downhill and I knew that the victory would be ours. That said, the tiny little rise back into the village (10m?) felt like a mountain and the soles of my feet were burning up. In the end we won by the same minute margin that I had at the start of my leg, and sure enough I had two new blisters on the sole of my heels. The Red Cross even laughed at my feet when I went to get patched up – my heels have only partly recovered from the same affliction at Snowdon.

The girls finished second and also had two fastest legs so we fairly cleaned up at the prize giving and even spent some time signing autographs for the locals before heading off to enjoy some classic Italian hospitality at the after party – local food, beer and music with the organisers.

 All in all a great weekend away in the mountains – after spending so much time in the Alps last summer it was good to go back for a wee reminder of what a great place they are – especially after spending 5 weeks in the somewhat flatter Finland earlier this summer.
Travelling all the way to the Alps to run downhill for 17 minutes got me thinking about different sports and where they are best done. Here’s a diagram of my findings:

As this clearly shows you can run anywhere. This is not surprising as the oldest and most versatile of physical actions. But while there are plenty opportunities to run on the flat and on undulating or even uphill only courses there are precious few downhill only opportunities – while for disciplines like mountain biking and skiing these are some of the most popular disciplines. Well the good folks of Scottish Hill Running have spotted this gap in the market and for the next three Wednesdays are putting on a series ofdownhill only races to find the best "doonhiller" in the country. I’m not sure it fits in my training plans this year but it looks like a great laugh!
A short video showing the start of my leg:

Longer video of the whole event
Many thanks to the organisers of the race for inviting us over and making us feel so welcome!


Wednesday, August 14, 2013

World Games: The Races



The first of three blogs on my World Games experience - my view of my races.

Sprint: Easy and Hard, Fast but Slow

Of course it looks easy, because it was. Any beginner with a few Saturday afternoon introductory events under their belt could have got round without too much bother. But that doesn't mean it's not a valid race. When it's easy it just means you can run more of the course at top speed and the margins become even tighter. And thus, it was also a hard, hard race. The sun was directly overhead and temperatures in the shade were in the 30s. On the long route choice legs I felt slow and tired but unlike at WOC where I panicked a little that I was too slow this time I just relaxed <this is as fast as I can go, so I better just go at this pace and accept the end result>.


Sprinting. Photo: IOF


At the spectator control I heard I had the new fastest time, one second ahead of Khramov. <Ok, that's good but there are still lots of top runners who started after me and Khramov hasn't been on top form this year>. By now I had nearly caught my one-minute man Martins Sirmais of Latvia. As we ran to the 16th control he turned in too soon. I knew he was too early and I carried on to the gap in the thick green where there should be a path to take me to the control. I turned in as soon as the terrain changed - grass now rather than thick bamboo. But this isn't much like a path - and no control at the end. <Damn.> Panic reaction- back out and find the path, back in 10m further on and hey presto, there's the control. <Damage limited.>


Excerpt of the Sprint map. 16 cost me a medal, I didn't notice the green dot in the rough open was separate to the green and turned in before it.


But not enough. That mistake, which flashed past in the blink of an eye, almost certainly cost me my first international medal. I finished in 6th place, a mere four seconds behind bronze medalist Jerker Lysell. My split at the spectator control held up well with only eventual winner Mathias Kyburz going faster.

Usually 6th place would gain recognition as a "podium" result however at the World Games only the top three are rewarded so I had to take consolation for my lost medal by celebrating my first "pseudo-podium".

Sprint map: without route - with route

The next day was the middle distance in a recreational park SW of Cali. I tried to race it like a double length sprint but I lost some time fighting in the green and in the heat. Despite this I finished in 14th place which I was reasonably happy with.

Middle map: part one without route - part two without route - part one with route - part two with route


In Colombia thicket means THICK!

Finally came the relay which was probably the biggest aim of the week for the British team. We know we can sprint, we know we are all in good shape (all getting a top 10 individual result at both WOC and World Games) and we know the new Mixed Sprint Relay is a discipline where we want to fight for medals in the coming years. But none of us have ever run a sprint relay before so there was still an air of uncertainty as we lined up on Sunday.

I ran the first leg, the same as at WOC. However my tactics at WOC were quite different. In the technical Finnish forest I wanted to be near the front but not leading so I could observe the race and benefit from the other teams. In a sprint situation I thought that other teams could be more of a distraction than a benefit so as we set off I had a simple mantra to follow: "Get to the front - and stay there."

This turned out to be easier than expected as the planner had made the gaffling at the start quite uneven - something I am not impressed about but more on that in a later blogpost. So after four controls I only had Gernot Kerschbaumer (AUT) and Carl Kaas (NOR) for company. A small miss on the fifth where I misread the uncrossable fences meant I was chasing again but quickly caught up in the green at eight. I was clean from there to the finish and Gernot and I were able to run away from Carl. I was leading as we crossed the line but I think Gernot actually managed to sprint past me to handover first.

The next hour or so was a bit of an emotional roller coaster. First Cat dropped the Austrian girl and extended the gap to the other big teams to over two minutes <We could do this! It could be gold!> before getting reeled in a bit by the spectator and then passed when she made a mistake near the end <but it's only Switzerland and Sweden ahead, and the Swedes don't have a complete team>. Once Scott was out news came through that the Norwegian team were disqualified <one less team to worry about> and I learnt the Danes had lost big time on leg one when Tue got a thorn wedged in his big toe <definite medal on here with Nogs and Swedes out and Danes behind. Not much we can do about the damn Swiss now but the silver is there for the taking>. Then news came through that Scott had dropped time at the radio controls. Kyburz was pulling clear and the Scandi teams were breathing down our necks. Scott held on to send Tessa out in 2nd place with the Czechs and with Maja Alm of Denmark hot on her heels. <get away from the Czechs and its a fight with Maja for the silver - but a medal feels almost certain>

I could barely watch or listen, I was so nervous as she set off and the news that the Czechs had made a big mistake early in the final leg didn't help much either.

I was listening 5 minutes later though when the commentators announced that there had been another disqualification.

Us.

<crash>

Scott mispunched on a gaffled control in the woods (#6) when he ran down a ditch and didn't see his flag and carried on and found the wrong one. In the dark jungle it was easy to mistake a knoll for a boulder and several teams did - us, Norway, Sweden and Czech Rep all MP'd on this control. With 26 controls in <20 minutes checking codes, which were only on the descriptions on the map is tricky. On my own leg I only managed to check some codes as I was half way through the next leg. Clearly this is something we need to work on before next time.

Tessa would have finished in the bronze medal position, had she been allowed to finish at all, but I had to go and stop her at the penultimate control so as not to confuse the spectators or TV audience.



Sprint arena nestled at the foot of 4000m mountains. Security advice was that we shouldn't go exploring as the "farmers" might give us a frosty welcome.

There wasn't much we could do but accept the result. I had bittersweet feelings when the Austrians were presented with their medals: happy to see some new faces on the podium but deep down knowing that it could so easily have been us. It just serves to remind us that come sprint relays in the future we have to treat them with the same respect and focus that we do individual sprints, making sure we do everything right to get the best result we can.

Map: no route - route

Tuesday, July 09, 2013

WOC 2013: I love it when a plan comes together

July 14th 2012. Lausanne, Switzerland, the day before WOC Sprint. I’m pretty sure that I won’t be running WOC next year. With 2015 on the horizon and three consecutive WOCs under my belt I need a year off to refocus and prepare myself: spend some time developing my forest technique so I can be a multi-discipline runner come our home games in three years time.  I’ve heard that the sprint in Finland is going to be a forest race so it might be a good one to skip. I can come back in Italy in 2014 to get me back in the zone before Scotland.

July 15th 2012. WOC Sprint result: 11th, 1.1 seconds away from a top 10 result. Aw man, so close. Probably my worst WOC run technically but it was a tricky course and everyone struggled. Yesterdays plan scrapped. I’ve got to go to Finland, to have another crack at getting it right. If it’s a forest sprint then I’ll have to get good at forest sprinting.

July 8th 2013. Sotkamo, Finland. WOC Sprint result: 9th. Job done.
For some reason only the British flag displays on my results.
July 9th 2013 (today). Vuokatti, Finland. How did that happen then? You might argue that not much changed. If I’d been 1.9 seconds slower yesterday – one hesitation to check a route, or one missed micro route choice – I’d have been in the same frustrating 11th place asking the same questions as last year.
But those 1.9 seconds feel more significant than that. They feel that way because they were the result of me executing a season-long plan to improve on last year’s result. In March I sat down with a few people I value the opinions of to plan out my training up to WOC. My conclusions from these conversations were that while yes, I can get faster, there are probably bigger gains to be made from improvements in sprint technique.  It would take a huge effort to improve my 14:36 5km pb by 30 seconds or so, but I can easily see where that time could be saved in cutting out small mistakes. The problem I’ve had in the past is that I’ve put a lot of focus on demanding physical training which means that when I turn up for technique training I’m unable to run at race pace. Then when I turn up to WOC with nicely tapered fresh legs I’m running faster than I’m used to and technically it all gets a little scrappy. So for the 14 weeks from the JK to WOC I slashed my mileage and prioritised sprint technique.  Rather than getting faster I just looked to preserve the speed I had. Morning runs dropped from 15km+ to 5km. The only long runs I did were classic races. I ran a sprint course at least once a week and almost always felt fresh for it. It didn’t always feel like the right thing to do, particularly in the last few weeks before WOC when I started to doubt my shape but on the day it turned out right. An improved position compared with last year, much closer to the winner than previously and in the second half of the course I was running as fast as anyone – so the speed was still there!
Split times for nerding over. Note the low numbers in bottom half of right most column.


Of course there is still room for improvement. The margins in the sprint race are so tight that you can always see that next step. But I know that I can find those improvements. I have a plan.

Crossing the line in the lead with a satisfied feeling. That feeling turned from satisfied to thrilled when I found out Tessa had taken 5th and when Scott stormed home to an incredible silver medal it was sheer joy. What a team! Photo courtesy of Martin Ward/British Orienteering 

Saturday, June 15, 2013

NORT part 2: I got that racing feeling

I remember when I first realised that orienteering was a race. I was 12 years old and on a training weekend in the Lake District organised by Carol McNeil. Most of the exercises over the weekend focused on basic technique rather than speed but something clicked in my brain that the whole point was to do these things FAST. The final exercise of the weekend was a "tour champs" on Torver Back Common and for the first time in my life I raced an orienteering course. I just figured out what I needed to do and got on with doing it. I think I won that race, surprising a few people including myself. I went on to finish 2nd at the Scottish Six Days a few weeks later, my first notable success at a GB level. My orienteering career had begun!

I had a similar epiphany while watching the knockout sprint rounds during NORT. Orienteering is a race. The whole point is to get from the start to the finish as fast as possible. I think I'd forgotten that at the start of that week: I was more concerned about planning ahead, being in control and having a good flow than actually getting anywhere fast. As such I was off the pace in qualifying and missed out on the rough and tumble fun of the knockout stages. As I knocked out a tempo run along the side of the lake that afternoon to release some frustration I resolved that Finland would be different. Finland will be fast.

The next day we made the most of arriving in Turku in good time to get out on the sprint model map. With the luxury of a full two days between races we could run hard then and still have an easy day the next day to recover before the sprint races. And boy-oh-boy did I run hard. I split the model course into three control sections and really attacked them, running flat out and barely hanging onto the navigation. In fact I was often out of control navigation wise. It was reckless orienteering but it was brilliant. I was hurtling down roads, accelerating out of every bend and cutting every corner. This is what racing should feel like! 

I took my newly rediscovered racing spirit into the qualification race on Friday. I was left nothing to chance this time, I ran it as if it was a final. The course was about as British as you get, with a mix of university campus, halls of residence and typical urban terrain. I only lost time on one leg, to the 16th control where I initially planned to cut through the woods to the riverside path, but doubled back to the steps instead. I finished 5th=, tied with Daniel Hubmann: a very satisfying result!

The final was a more difficult course with much more route choice and some controls in tricky locations. I didn't have as good a feeling during the race but I kept pushing all the way and was rewarded with 10th place - my best ever World Cup position, 39 seconds behind Mattias Kyburz. I got caught out by tricks on a couple of controls (7&8) and actually got lucky on 8 where I hadn't checked which side of an uncrossable wall the control was on - I got it wrong but fortunately there were some hidden steps to reduce the cost of this mistake to just ten seconds. 

The best thing about running well in these races was that I *decided* to run well - it wasn't a case of repeating the approach from the earlier races and hoping it would work, it was a conscious change in approach which means it should be repeatable in the future.

The next day was the chasing start long distance finale to the tour. I was completely shattered and could barely do anything more than jog around the forest but I enjoyed the interesting course and it reminded me of the challenges to come at Jukola and our WOC selection races in coming weekends. We travelled back home the following day and while the results at NORT might not have been all I hoped for the I definitely took a lot of learning away and I now have a clear focus for the run in to WOC. 
But first... JUKOLA!!!

Maps with routes can be found in my map store here: 

Thursday, June 06, 2013

NORT update: Knocked Out Before the Knock Out

After my moment of madness in the first sprint race things didn't improve much in rounds two and three of the Nordic Tour. I had a very "average" run in the Norwegian middle distance on Sunday then on Tuesday I failed to progress to the knockout stages of the knockout sprint. 

The middle distance was held in the forest surrounding the sprint area at Ammerud. I trained  here a few years ago while staying with Østmarka so I had a good idea about what we were in for: mixed forest, some steep and rocky slopes and a reasonable path network. What I hadn't expected was the torrential downpour (with associated thunder and lightning) in the hour before I started which absolutely waterlogged the terrain, making the rock treacherously slippy, the vegetation very heavy going and the marshes into lakes. 

I thought I ran reasonably well: I had no problems finding controls and I was happy with my route choices. So I was a bit bemused to find I was over four minutes down when I arrived at the finish, and seven minutes behind the eventual winner Carl Godager Kaas. Where did the time go? A bit of splits geeking later confirms my feeling about my run: no major misses or time losses, just generally a bit slow. Thinking back, although I felt like I was running hard I think I was a bit within myself and a bit too much in control. I've heard it said that to race well you need to be on the edge all the way, slowing down just enough to avoid mistakes but generally pushing yourself to the limit all the way. I was nowhere near this style in the middle distance and at this level of competition that costs you badly. 

Map - no route
It was a similar story in round three. At our team meeting the night before I told everyone that I thought we had to treat the qualification like a final as the competition here is so strong. However I don't think I listened to my own advice as I ran my race at a decidedly cruisey pace. I was running fairly hard but not flat out. In the end I missed qualification by 13 seconds. I lost 17 seconds on a short leg in the forest near the end but I feel like I should have had more of a cushion. I know I have the speed and technique to contest for podium positions in races like this so I should have been at least 30 seconds faster - and then a small mistake would have been less critical. 

Map - no route
Map - with route

After punishing myself on a tempo run round the edge of the lake I enjoyed being a spectator and supporter at the finals. The compact arena, big screen and some exciting racing made me forget about the disappointment of the morning and and got me motivated for running fast again. 

After a couple of days off we are racing again tomorrow in hot and sunny Finland. I've remembered what racing should feel like and I'm looking forward to making this one count. 

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Sprint Muppetry

It’s funny how thoughts grow. They appear as if from nowhere, a spark in the mayhem of all the other thoughts but some sparks of ideas or concepts or memories are actually seeds which grow and grow until they become all consuming distractions which trump rational argument and prevent you making sensible decisions.
I realise this sounds like someone describing the onset of depression or a similar mental health problem. It’s actually what happened to me during today’s race – and fortunately it wasn’t a depressing thought, but having experienced the way it grew I can see how depression starts.
The first half of the course went reasonably well. I was happy with my routes and while I was feeling a little sluggish and perhaps lacking a little bit of aggression through the terrain I knew I was going OK. Just before the arena I met my 1- and 2- minute men on an in-out leg so I knew I was catching them. At the arena I heard I was in 2nd, 16s behind Chris Smithard. Great, I thought, the rest of the course is in the housing estate - just like I’m used to. Lets pick up the intensity and close that gap down. 

The next control after the arena was #11, down the edge of some buildings and turn left. As I was running down the buildings I picked my route to the 12th – carry on past 11 all the way down the road – the straighter route looks fractionally shorter but my route is simpler, so I can really open up the taps. As I’m running down the road I see the Finnish top of my 1-minute man ahead of me. Cool, I’m definitely catching him.
The spark first appears as I turn off the road. “Wouldn’t it be funny if I’d forgotten to punch the 11th”.  Haha, yes, that would be funny. I carry on towards the 12th.
Then it grows. I can’t remember punching the 11th. Can I? I wouldn’t have run right past it, would I?
I look at the map again. I think I ran straight to the road. I’ve done this before – start navigating the next leg before punching the current one. I saw the Finn – I got ahead of myself. I’ve got no way of checking – we’re on screenless EMIT cards. In that 30 seconds from the first spark this negative thought has grown to be 100% certainty that I ran right past 11. I pause for a second. If this was WOC, a one-off race, I’d chance it and carry on but this is the first of five races this week. A DSQ today would really spoil the rest of the series, particularly the chase on the final day.
I turn away from 12 and back to 11. As I get there I become slightly less certain. I know my race is over but I still have to get round the rest of the course. I can’t say I was pushing 100% or really focussing on the best routes. Another spark – in my heart and legs – was gone.

So I traipsed in 67th, 3:25 behind the best time of Mathias Kyburz and 3:00 behind the outstanding run by Chris Smithard in 4th. I don’t know what I could have done today but I do know I’ve let myself down. Fortunately there are still four races left this week. Today could be just the spark I needed.

Nordic Tour - the Pablo Honey of the O Calender


The Nordic Orienteering Tour is about to start for the fourth and final time. Over the next eight days 130 of the worlds top elite orienteers will race five finals across Scandinavia and like a guilty pleasure I'm looking forward to taking part. 

I've raced one-and-a-half of these jaunts across the northern lands: the full tour in 2010 and the first two stages in 2011. And, like a guilty pleasure, I quite like them. 

I know they are wrong. They've sacrificed orienteering quality for the sake of media exposure. For many teams they are prohibitively expensive and previous editions, split by Jukola, have felt like a sideshow of the main event. They've trialled ill-thought out formats like ungaffled head-to-head sprints and middle-distance-in-the-forest-on-sprint-spec-mapas a qualifier for a sprint final and the best orienteer doesn't always win. And that they effectively killed off the Nordic Orienteering Championships, one of the most prestigious and competitive races on the calendar is unforgivable. 

Everyone has guilty pleasures. My favourite Radiohead album to listen to is debut Pablo Honey rather than the critically acclaimed later ones. I'll happily watch trashy comedies rather than classic "cinema" and I'll feel no guilt about sticking a ready made "Cook" range meal in the oven and enjoying it as if I'd prepared it all myself. That's how I feel about Nordic Tour too. Sure, there are tougher orienteering tests out there and competitions where you spend more time competing than you do queuing at airport security between races. Everyone knows the best orienteer wins Long at WOC not a head-to-head race round a suburb in Sweden. 

But it's fun! This is what being a top level sportsman is all about! Crazy mad adventures round the world, only knowing what country you're in by what day it is and what race you're running by which country you're in. Races with TV cameras and big cash prizes and spectators lining the run in. I know none of my colleagues back home will tune into the NRK or SVT coverage but the fact that I can send them a link to it validates what I do more than any story of adventures in the forest or medal or title I can bring into the office on a Monday morning. 

It's also great training. A month before WOC I can put all my training into practice with 3+ dry run sprint races to see where I'm at and also a couple of jaunts into the forest to see how my improved domestic results rank on the bigger stage. The most nervous I've ever been was before the sprint at NORT 2010: I'd made a lot of sacrifices to get to WOC for the first time that year with no guarantees I would be good enough when I got there. NORT gave me the chance to compare against the best so when I arrived at WOC I could relax and just focus on my own race. 

Later today this years NORT circus rolls into Grorud in Oslo. I'm only feeling a little 
guilty about looking forward to it. 

Friday, May 31, 2013

Domestic O Season 2013

Good Friday to May Day, bank holiday to bank holiday. Five weeks, ten races, all in the UK. That was my domestic season this year. Three sprints, two each of middle, long and relay and a 5km road race. Everything beforehand was mere playing and now it’s done I’m regrouping with another training block before the international season*.

And how did it go? Two disqualifications, one 6th=, a bronze and silver and FIVE golds. Or in pictures:

So all in all, pretty well. In fact, since only one of the #Fail’s was directly my fault, let’s redraw that:



Two mispunches? That is the harsh reality of the results. At the British Relay champs our first leg runner Alan Cherry mispunched when he visited the wrong gaffled control and didn't check his codes. But that does a disservice to Alan, who has been a stalwart of the successful Interlopers relay team in the last couple of years. In fact, the one time he wasn’t available last year we were gubbed and when he ran for Oxford Uni at BUCS this year, they won as well!
So ignoring that and a sloppy mispunch (all my own fault) at the 37th control of the JK Long (out of 38) it was a fairly successful season. I defended my JK Sprint and relay titles (with help from Alan and Oleg on the latter) and added the British Middle and Long distance titles to my CV - not bad for a ‘sprint specialist’.
I’ve added a fair bit more forest work to my training this year and it was nice to see this reflected in my results. That said, the middle distance title was somewhat unexpected. After 9 full seasons in the senior ranks I’ve never bothered the podium in any major middle distance race (JK, British Champs or WOC selection race) - compare that with the Sprint champs where I’ve been a serial podium botherer and you’ll see why I was surprised:

Of course, there were a number of people missing at both of the forest British Championships for various reasons. At the middle distance champs I only had to beat one of the 6 who were ahead of me at the JK (Rhodri) while the fields were even weaker at the Long champs due to the clash with TioMila.

It’s a real shame about the clash with TioMila. My honest feeling is that my middle distance result would have stood up in a stronger field but that my time in the long distance would only have been top five - bronze at best - in a full strength field. However the history books only say who won not who they had to beat and it’s my name on the list for 2013. I’m now in an exclusive club of male orienteers who’ve won the full set of daytime British Titles - Sprint, Middle, Long & Relay. Jon Duncan & Jamie Stevenson are the only other guys to have done this since the sprint champs started 12 years ago. So far, no one has done the full slam by winning the British Night Champs as well. In addition to Jon and Jamie, Oli Johnson and Matt Crane are close with just the Sprint title missing. Indeed Oli missed out on the ‘career slam’ by just one second at last year’s Sprint championships. Craney is somewhat further away (i.e 10,000miles away in Canberra). This leaves the obvious question: Will I ever with the British Night Champs? I think to answer that I need another pie chart:
2014 - unlikely as I think the British Nights is going to clash with the Scottish XC Championships (and more importantly the Trotter Dinner). There is a possible scenario where I get injured mid-winter and choose to hide in the forest rather than getting a hiding at Falkirk.
2015 - possible. The calendar looks more favourable so perhaps I’ll dust off my headtorch and have a go.
2016 - I’m not sure I’m going to look at a map for all of 2016. If I do, it’s highly unlikely to be in England, at night.
2017-2020: the twilight years: lured back to the sport after a year in the mountains perhaps this will be just the kind of domestic challenge I need.
Never - do I think I’ll ever be the best night orienteer in Great Britain (rather than just the best person to go to BNOC)? Probably not (night training not really being my greatest pleasure), so there will always be someone with a better claim than me - they just have to turn up and stop me! An alternative version of ‘never’ could be if Scotland votes for independence next year and I become ineligible for the British title – I’d have to go for the Scottish-slam instead (I don’t think I’ve ever won the senior Scottish Nights title either).
I could of course have made this much neater by winning last year when I did the English National XC/British Nights double (two races in 6 hours totalling ~24km) and only narrowly got beaten by Mark Bown but that’s in the past now and my run that night really didn’t deserve to win either!

On the roads I had a successful run at the Scottish 5km Champs on a Wednesday evening at Silverknowes. In gusty conditions I decided to ignore the clock and try and win the race. After a tactically sound showing I finished second, narrowly beaten by Andrew Butchart who managed to get a gap on me with 1km to go that I couldn’t close despite a 2:46 final kilometre. Andrew has gone on to run a 3:46 1500m (i.e. much faster than I’ll ever run) so I don’t feel too bad about this and the 14:37 I ran in the 5k knocked one whole second off my road PB (and was within a second of my track PB). Those PB’s have always been set in July in the week or so before WOC when I’m in top class physical shape:
So it’s clear to me that when I’m more triangular than rectangular I’ll also be more golden than silver. I think that’s proven by the chart above.

But I think my best run of the domestic season was in the JK Relay. After running 98.7% of the individual days races (plus 1.3% of someone elses course - damn you #37 in the long race) I was feeling pretty beaten up on the morning of the relay. After Alan seemed to lose a lot of time on first leg I’d written off our chances of defending our title but Oleg had a flyer on second leg to give me something to run for - a medal at least. After a fast clean start I’d reeled in and dropped the leaders (a Belgian team and SYO) but still had Gristwood and Crickmore for company. Crickmore got dropped at a gaffle in the second half (Alan had taken one for the team by having the long gaffle on first leg) and I managed to slowly pull away from Graham on the final loop to anchor Interlopers to our third victory in a row.
The fun thing about this was the reaction I got from some of my rivals, particularly the younger guys who I’ve not had many relay battles with. They seemed genuinely surprised by the time I’d run. It made me realise its been a few years since I’ve needed to pull something special out on last leg of a relay. Back when I was a young senior I’d regularly run good leg times in my many battles with ShUOC and SYO – better than anything my other forest results would suggest I was capable of. But in the last few years I’ve had to run far more defensively after my teammates have done the hard work on the early legs so while I’ve been winning relays it’s been somewhat more relaxed. So for me, running 4.5 mins/km to win the JK was normal – for everyone else it might have been a surprise!


*I’m actually publishing this blog at the end of my mid-season training block, en route to the Nordic Orienteering Tour which kicks off in Oslo tomorrow. I hope to update this blog more regularly over the summer with more irreverent chat, unnecessary charts and stories of my successes and failures along the way. All apologies to American ultra runner Dakota Jones for pinching his blog-with-charts style!