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Occassional thoughts about orienteering


Sunday, February 05, 2006

Training month

 

I like looking at how people train, but I rarely spend much time looking at my own training. As I was reading logs at Attackpoint, I realized that it has become fashionable to review your month's training and write a few notes about it.

I've never done that. I've never really thought about training in terms on months. I think of days, weeks, parts of the season, and years, but never months. So, I decided I'd look at January and compared it to the every January since 2001. For each January, I'll list the total hours, hours of O', and hours of cycling:

2006 39:07/15:32/8:55
2005 27:32/11:02/5:10
2004 22:58/7:33/6:35
2003 32:53/10:58/5:55
2002 18:30/6:35/7:20 (lots of rehab from knee injury)
2001 33:40/9:00/8:40

I've generally trained pretty well in January. 2006 stands out a bit (2001 looked quite good, too). It is motivating to see that I'm training as much as I have since 2001, which was a very good year until I tore my leg to shreds. It looks like I wasn't especially motivated in 2004.

I hadn't really realized I'd done 15+ hours of O' practice and races in 2006. That's really quite a bit. With all that practice, I should be orienteering a little better than I have been. Maybe I can turn it around at the Georgia meet in a couple of weeks.

PNS race

A couple of thoughts from this morning's race:

I passed two people in the last two miles. I passed on guy right at the top of the biggest hill on the course (a climb of maybe 250 feet over about 1/2 mile). I passed another guy on a downhill. I'm not used to passing people on hills. It feels good.

I won my age group (M40), which may say more about the level of competition than my performance. Still, I felt like I ran well and I'll be interested to see how I finished overall.

The organizers had a public address system and used it to comment and play music (all 1980s pop, as far as I could tell). It was nice. Having an announcer makes an event feel like a sports event. I wish more O' races in the U.S. had announcers. I don't know what a small PA system costs, but it would seem to be a reasonable investment for a club.

Having an announcer would change the environment at most local O' meets -- making it feel more like a sport and less like a hike in the woods. Maybe that is why it hasn't happened. Maybe most orienteers prefer the event to feel like a hike than a race.

Cause and effect? I trained well in January. I ran well today. I guess the lesson is that training works.

posted by Michael | 4:04 PM

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