Friday, July 30, 2010

Oringen 2010

I basically got destroyed by technical swedish forest.

Etape 1 - A disaster, couldn't hit a barn down.
Map here

Etape 2 - Middle distance, a lesson in how to read control descriptions.
Map here

Etape 3 - It was horrible. So horrible and so demolalised so I bailed out at control 6. I can't remember if I drew in my route, but I was an hour to 6.
Map here

Etape 4 - My best day by far - I remembered how to orienteer, the terrain was runable and I ended up in a train. We were motoring along, really had fun this day... because I could run!
Map here

Etape 5 - The chasing start at 15sec intervals.... it was crazy. It was extremely wet. I ended up to my waist in mud/water/rivers/ditches many a time. Didn't really have fun at all.
Map here

Oringen was cool..... but it was long and very tough. It drained me mentally and physically.
I reckon if your going to race Oringen hard - racing a world championships the previous week, its the worlds greatest idea. Twas an experiences to say the least.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Marsh, Contours and Forest

Been in Sweden for the past while. The orienteering is sweet!
The first day I landed in Nicks gav and just fell into bed. Pretty hot and humid.
Day two was a jog around the Bosom complex. Its part of the swedish sports training facilities thingy. It had a lot of stuff. Indoor track, massive gym, outdoor sprinting strip, soccer pitch (outdoor and indoor) and its beside the sea, on an orienteering map! I ran, jogged, walked around the Bosom map. Missed a few controls, found a few controls. In the afternoon I ended up on IFK's home map. I loved it. Not that technical but fun none the less.

The next afternoon, after watching the tour I did this training.

The training was set up by Theirry Gueorgiou, middle distance master. The basis of the course is to get the fundamentals of orienteering down to a tee in the one orienteering session - must be a bitch to do in OCAD!
As can be seen, I was crap. Contour only was a horror, can't do it, at all. But once I gave up on that and bailed out on taking a compass over nothingness I opted to tackle the control picking and I was pretty happy with it. If only we had one may like this in Ireland. The guys living in Sweden have no excuses for not destroying the rest of us.

The day before I headed north to Borlange, the location of the World Student Champs I ran the 2009 IFK Lid KM course. It went ok. Some good, some bad but overall I really enjoyed just been out on the map. (Neil scoffed when I told him I enjoyed it).


After this training I caught the train north with Nick. Friday was an easy day. Just a light jog around Borlange, bumped into some Kiwis, hotel room, food, sleep and chilling out. Neil and Niamh arrived and Team Ireland were all in one piece.

Saturday was my first look at Borlange terrain. It was tough. Very tough. Very physical. Roz told me back in september that it was going to be a sufferfest and she wasn't joking. I did a "short" training session and ended up been out for 90mins. Some of the course was nice, some not so nice. I reckon my problems will be in the control circle so just have a BFA (big feckoff attackpoint, last seen JWOC, Gothenburg) and it'll be grand.


The model event is tomorrow and things are heating up to be an epic week!
Revenge attack on Sweden has begun . . . .

Saturday, July 17, 2010

World Students - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly




The Good.... WUOC Sprint
The Bad.... WUOC Middle
The Ugly.... WUOC Long

I'll start with the Ugly and work towards the sprint.

Day One of the World Students was going great, then I got worried that it was going well and this happened... or something like this anyways resulted in something like this....

The fail

So after that I hit the wall.
My report on my AP log can be read here and the map is here. Needless to say I was very disappointed with the run.

After the Long Distance, there was the Sprint. This was the race I was looking at all year after my MP at the Irish Champs... and also the reason I've been battling it out on the hills of late.

I was completely pumped for this race, but pumped in a calm sort of way.
I ran pretty cleanly for the entire race and was planning ahead and had good control flow. It really hurt. The worse bit of the race was that I had prepared mentally for the final hilly, grassy section. I was caught by suprise and suffered, I suffered badly!
Report from my training log is below.

I walked this...

The hills....

I really wanted a good race - this was kinda the race I was aiming for all year so I'm pretty happy that I avoided any massive fuck ups the have plagued all my international races. I would have liked to have no run the long yesterday and ran all out today but DIT wouldn't have liked that :P

Started off by going on the twenty min walk to the quarenteen... 3mins later we arrived! A ploy by the organisers maybe?

Warmed up and was pretty pumped. Let the nav decide the running speed and keep it cool, while flooring it....
Running out of the start, I found it difficult to realise which direction I was going in but got it sorted and picked a clean route, fell on my ass as I went over the contour. Kinda shocked me a bit as I wasn't expecting it at all - difference between spikes and stupidly light racers.
Two was straight forward, vaulted the fence, avoid the bus going past. 3,4 both easy route choices. The route to 5 reminded me of the WC in Finland last year, I cut the bridge tight, catching my singlet on the railing. (its still in good nick, slight dam).

5-6 was the shortest leg on the course, I ran by it, realised it was mine and had to back track, dropped 5sec I reckon. I didn't expect it to be so close at all.
Off to 7 around the building, heading to 8 I came back on myself. Leaving 8 was the fence crossing. As I came up to it the Finn who started behind me vaulted it cleanly - I, been ever so slightly shorted had to put my foot on it so I didn't polax myself.
10 involved another fence jump.... It looked small, but as I neared it kept changing size. Almost missed the jump but got over it in one piece.
Hitting 10 I was 1min down on Nick - he was monstering it!

Took a shaky route to 11, weaved a bit but caught the guy who started in front of me leaving the control. 12 was straight forward, leaving the control the Finn had caught me. I raced him to 13, punching at the same time. At 14 and 15 the 3 of us punched it together.

Leaving 15 my brain was fucked. I should have taken a split second to look at my map but I didn't so I took a fucked up route - going up and over 2 nasty spurs. Lost ~15sec maybe. Contoured around to the control and looked UP at control 17. It was a 40m long leg with 5 contours in it. Nasty stuff. Contoured around to no 18. Then ballsed 19 is well, dropping another 15-20sec. I should have run down thw spur but I ran down the wrong side of the fence, was forced to climb again before contouring around to the control. Hammered the run in. Beat someone by 0.5sec.... happy with that :)

Finished 47th which is my best international result by far. Possibly with a near perfect run I could have been top 30 but perfect doesn't happen in O.
Happy with the days efforts.

I'm slowly getting to where I want to be . . .

Map with route here

The Middle is best summed up by Nicks email to the O Group...

"Today saw the competition turn back towards the forest. It was the
middle distance and the team were hoping to carry some of the good
from the sprint into the hilly forest of Gustafs. The weather was
showery which made the already long wait in the quarantine that bit
longer.
Colm was the first to head out of the Irish. He never really got it
going as the hilly, tough, and technical terrain was not his cup of
coffee. Again showing that the hours of technical training on the
curragH is only really suited to the curragH. One large mistake plus
some smaller ones saw him drop from a potential top 80 finish to an
87th place.
Niamh was the first and last of the irish girls to head out. She
started off slowly and safely, but on the first long leg was thrown
off by a indistinct track which caused major problems for many other
athletes. She managed to keep going and finished in 62nd place which
she was not totally happy with. We had to keep a safe distance. On a
positive note she is feeling that her preparation on getting back on
track for her main goal in 2 weeks, the world champs in Trondheim.
Nick was a last of the Irish to head out, never really got the body
and legs going during the warm up and knew it would be a tough battle
out in the forest physically. The first few controls on the first hill
were met with some wobbles but was still fighting heading towards the
final part of the course. A large mistake on the third last control
ended any hope of him getting a respectable and similar result to the
sprint race.

The Irish team has now finished there competitions for the week a day
early as we do not have a relay team in both classes to compete in the
relay, which is a pity as the relay is the often the most fun and
interesting race to run. Hopefully in two years a large enough team
will meet the "selection criteria" to be able to run this great
competition.

On behalf of the runners, I would like to thank Neil for his work (or
lack thereof) as team manager. His enthralling and informative team
meetings have prepared the team for each of the days challenges ahead.
However his team's staple diet of potato salad has been met with mixed
success.
Nicolas

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Mud and Mist on the Mount

My third and the final race in the Leinster Champs.
This race was always going to be my going away race before I left for scandi for the international races. The prep for this race was a 3,000m track race in Santry on the Wednesday (only 9:22).

Arrived at the base of mount leinster completely pumped after a 0530 start. As things usually go, if your up before 7 its going to be an epic day.
For the first time all year, the weather is on my side, and none of the big guns have shown up. Mist, rain, wind but warm enough to ware only a singlet. The plan was simple. Pace the climb myself, ignore everyone else and burst my gut on the descent to claim the first losers place in the leinster champs.

Start line, Jane makes it clear that a rain jacket is needed at minimum or your'll be DSQ'd. Seemed like a fair call to me.

Start line, 12:00 and we were gone. Gerry Brady set the pace going up the fire road. I sat in behind. The pace was pretty easy but I wasn't going to do anything stupid (yet).

I was surrounded by North Laois runners. I was vaguely intimidating at first - then I looked down at the shows there were wearing and I resisted the temptation to laugh, road runners for a bog. I'll have fun at the top! I also noticed that none of them had rain jackets - so they were out of the running anyways. After helping Brian on FRG, I was in no mood today to share a helping hand to anyone. Today, this mountain belonged to me.

We tipped along up the road, at the bend I took a glance over my shoulder and the pack was well spaced out, looking down at my wrist, I was just in time to see my Garmin battery die. This was going to be a purest run.

I felt pretty comfortable as we climbed the fire road. The first group was reduced to myself and two North Laois runners. Up and up. One of them panics at a junction and does a bit of a double take. We leave the fire road and we're onto a grassy trail. The lead is chopping and changing. At this point I decided to take the lead. My pace stays the same but they lads are probably sliding in the road shoes.

At the S bend I take a look back. I have a guy on my shoulder and a gang coming around the bend. They don't look comfortable. We pass Izzy and she gives encouragement as always. Arriving at the rocky section of trail I study as much of it as I can to give myself an advantage for picking my line for the descent. If I have a group on my shoulder at this point on the way down, aim right and sprint, on the verge there is some softer ground if I want to bail out. Things are looking good.

The NLR (north laois runner, don't know his name, no results up) makes a break for it. He's only faking. He comes back to me pretty rapidly. Off the trail and onto a more cut up section. I decided to see what he has and upped the pace for a few seconds. I get by him and open up a gap. He's unhappy in the sloppy stuff. I'd use this to my advantage at every opportunity further up the climb. I still felt really fresh. It was an enjoyable mountain run so far. As we climbed further we were surrounded in mist. Looking behind all I saw was white. The race was between me and NLR.

We reached the main ridge line and I put the head down. I was going to be first to the cairn. I didn't care. Today was my day. I was bouncing through the slop. I could hear the nlr's feet splash on the ground. This was my marker to where he was behind me. The wind had picked up at this stage. The visibility was down - I felt at home. We continued to climb. We appeared to be climbing for ages. We changed places every now and then but the pace remand high. I still felt comfortable. It was a strange sensation, knowing in my head that I could take someone on the descent and been completely calm, completely in control of the situation.

We reached a smaller steeper climb and descent, I put the boot down to see would nlr follow me. I opened a gap straight away on the descent. This only boosted my confidence. He closed the gap on me again and sat behind me, allowing me to take the wind. I was convinced he was hurting bad.

Running across a wet trackless section and up through a few more peat hags. The mist was still down. Nrl made a move. I followed, he opened a gap which I struggled to close. The gap was 5m. A seed of doubt creeped into my mind.

What happenes if he was bluffing. What happens if he's making his move now. This pace is beginning to hurt a little. This is actually maddness. Your in shorts and singlet up a mountain in the rain been dropped.

My brain countered it pretty well - Yea, we're on a mountain in the rain in shorts and singlet - but we ain't been dropped. Where are you in the LC standings - your fucking second. The only reason your second is because your a nice guy. Therefore, your number one. You had Brian beaten but you didn't put the foot it. Yea he's climbing well, but look at what you have to come down through - no one will hack it at pace. You can give this guy 10mins at the top and you'd catch him on the line. Look at him now, he's struggling through the peat, his line is completely wrong for this terrain. He's watching the flags, not the ground. Finish this, NOW.

My legs suddenly felt as if I started running 30secs previous. I let him have he's 5m. It gave me a chance to survey the ground in front. Brendan comes down and says 3mins to the top. Climbing climbing climbing. We hit the peat hags, I go forward and make my move at the metal wire holding the mast up against the wind. First to the road, we go different sides of the big puddle. I make the turn up around the corner of the fence first. I can see the cairn silhouetting out of the mist. I look back, see I have a small gap and put the boot it. First to the cairn, a shake of the hand from Graham (he looks crazier than I expected, probably isn't helped that he's sitting at a cairn on top of a mountain in the wind, rain and mist) and I turn for the descent.

The rocks coming off the cairn move slightly, I get a small fright but I reach solid ground and take off. I'm in my own world. Its me versus the mountain and I wasn't in a mood to lose. I reach the road and sprint straight down the middle. Through the puddle and dive off the road into the peak hags. I run straight, as hard as I can. I was in a flat out madding sprint through the peat. Only one route choice, straight. I up my pace and its just perfect fluid descending. I was so focused I don't even remember passing runners. It was just a matter of driving the pace as much as I could. I had to slow once as a climbing runner attempted to avoid me but stepped into my line.

I remember a couple of rocky sections that I just danced down. My rain jacket was bouncing on my back. I ripped it off over my head and ran with it in my hand. On reaching that flat trackless, featureless section I was no longer runner, it was more floating. I was wondering where Brendan was, and as if I knew he was there he appeared out of the mist. Up the small rocky climb, getting a hand from the wind as it pushed me up, around the massive rock feature and then battling into the wind on the short drop.

I reached the turn off from the ridge and I knew I had the race won. I splashed happily through the puddles. I was just going through the motions. My mind began to drift. I had a sudden urge to go to the jacks. I was racing past knee deep heather. Suddenly realised I was no longer running. I came to my senses and realised I was face down on a rocky trail, I lay there confused for a split second. Not entirely sure what had happened. I was shocked. Had I fallen! I never fall. Of course you didn't fall I told myself. Then why are you lying on the ground... oh yeah! This is weird! I stood up, did a 360 degree turn, realised I had stopped running and took off again. I felt kinda dizzy and was concerned that I may have actually fallen and hurt myself badly. My head was ringing. I decided that I did have to stop and go to the toilet. I ran off the trail by 20m or so and attempted to untie my shorts. After a few seconds I couldn't untie them so I decided I'll go when I get down. Back to the track and I still had that weird sensation of dizziness.

I felt my toe hit a rock and I was whipped back to my senses as I hit the ground hard. Cutting the left side of my body. This second fall snapped me out of my daydream state. I was suddenly hypersensitive. I paniced, I had lost a lot of time. I was back on my feet in a flash. My rain jacket in my hand saved it from been gouged open by the rocks, but was now saturated from the stream/track mix. I had reached the section of rocks, stuck to the line and flew down. At the S bend again, I looked behind and all I saw was empty mountain side. I knew my gap was still big but I was still nervous of been caught on the fire road. Down the grassy bank. Opening up my stride. The first track junction.... still running hard. I took another glance behind me, I could see plenty of fire road and no runners on it. Perfect. Down through the first bend, second bend in the road. Out of the forest and I could see the farm house. Game, set, match O'Cnoic. I upped the pace anyways. I was flying down the road. The usual thoughts went through my mind. I was delighted with the win.
About 200m for the line I let out a scream in triumph. According to Izzy, she heard me scream, went, Oh, sounds like Colm. I think he's probably won - she was in her car in the far corner of the field.

I rocked across the line in 59:59 and through my rain jacket on the ground in the puddle. Spend a few seconds shouting and cursing everything in the valley. I was pretty pleased with first loser in the Leisnter Champs for a first year mountain running. I was even more happy when I heard I had finally managed to take a record :)

Learned a valuable lesson on the mountain - Don't fall, you'll only hurt yourself.

Friday, July 02, 2010

Count Down


With the weather set to lash rain this weekend, it of course turns out that I've scratched Lug from my racing list. With the count down timer firmly on the World Uni Orienteering Champs in Sweden its time to cut down on the beasting sessions and to get focused.

This means attempting to relax and cut down on the distance been pumped into my legs and focus more on quality sessions. I was down on the track last week chatting to the boss and we've sorted out some sessions to have me (hopefully) flying come the 19th.

The two big sessions are a 3,000m on the track on Wednesday, followed by Mount Leinster on Sunday, then its off to Scandi for a few days of map before the racing begins.
A lot of my runs recently have been with map in hand in the mid day heat just visualising the races and preparing myself for what will be an intense sprint and suffer feast of a long.

I've never been this physically strong or fast before so I'm hoping that it will enable me to orienteer better with a clearer mind. Only time will tell.

Following the World Uni's, it'll be a month until the World Military Champs in Norway at the end of August. But before that, the Big Mountain races of the Galtymore (allegedly the toughest race on the calender) and the World Trial are on the menu.

It'll be a pain filled 2 months! Bring it on :)