Reciently, the HPO of Irish Orienteering, Ivan Millar decided that the Irish based team members weren't getting in enough long, well planned, technical races on good maps.
This problem was solved by the Irish Long Distance Series. 3 races, on 3 maps. The terrain, standard unforgiving Irish mountain side. The planners were only to make sure that the winners time was to be around 120mins to give the runners a mental and physical challenge.
Needless to say once I heard this series was on I was delighted. Proper planned courses, on proper maps and it would be Long! not Leinster League Brown 55min winning time long, but +90mins winning time Long.
Race One was planned by Greg McCann on Gortalughany, close to Florencecourt, deep in Fermanagh country. The terrain was a mix of leg sapping heather, but also a section of burnt heather and rock that allowed runners to open up if they had the energy.
My plan for the race was to cruise around and focus on my route choice and for every control have an attackpoint.
At the start I was calm... tried to take up my map, failed due to gloves, took off gloves, pick up map and floored if off down the road... And that was to contuine. I was running strongly, not flat out, but not going easy. A mistake at control 5 through my confidence slightly, and the following controls were shaky as I tried to find my flow again.
Once I found it, I was off flooring it again. At control 16, I was on a high, and I set my eyes on a pack in front. I chased hard and caught the pack leaving the butterfly. On the last long leg, I went the track route and ran as hard as I could to drop Conor. It worked wonders as I pulled away. From control 16 onwards, I dropped 60seconds from superman. I was pretty happy with my last half, where I could open it up and kept it pretty clean.
From FermO country, we moved onto Carlingford for race 2. Carlingford is a bitch of a mountain. You think your on top of it, you let your concentration slip and bam, your lost. This insain map was combined with IOC Sprint planner Igor Stefko.
Heading up I was concerned. Mainly due to the Nat Seniors XC the day previous and the worry that my legs wouldn't work.
I set off 3mins behind Conor with the idea to put him under pressure. I started off easy, building into it. I kept it under control, making sure of the nav, as I slowly pulled in Conor. By the top of the hill, I had caught Conor, but I stuffed up the control. I was afraid to drop contours.
Head to 6, I didn't read my map at all, but I relocated close to the control. As the race progressed, I got more confident and was able to control my pace to the orienteering needed. Needless to say, the climb was more of a speed limiter.
Once we got off of the open mountain and onto the runnable stuff, I put an extra 6mins into the following runners. In the post race analysis, I was happy to be able to open up the legs after 900m of climbing and the tough race before hand.
With two races down, the only race left before the JK and Irish Champs is the LongO race on the combined map of Meelmore and Tollymore. With Ivan planning, its sure to be a technical challenge.
Can't wait!
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