MOC Sprints

The MOC sprint camp lived up to the high expectations I had of it. When I saw the invitation last Autumn with the offer of great coaching and courses around crazy Italian towns, I thought that it would take a lot to make me miss that. So, despite the clash with the British Sprint and Middle Champs, I decided to head to Italy.

The training camp was very professionally run by Janni Salmi and Goggi. We turned up to each little town, given a really well planned course, on a great map, SI punching and good international competition to compare splits against. Each evening there was some interesting analysis on the tricky legs of the day and I learnt a lot, not just from Janni but from the other athletes as well.

Monte St Angelo - the map and the town

Sprinting around Italian mountain towns felt like a different sort of sprinting to the stuff we usually do. Although Britain has some quite 'technical' sprint areas, there is nothing quite like these places we visited. Tiny alleyways, lots of them, junctions everywhere and then the stairs. The stairs proved to be more of a problem than I had first thought, not only working out route choices, as you can often cover twice the distance on the flat to that on steep stairs - but it was also trying to read the map on them that was the difficulty. I felt like a beginner again, I was standing still on road junctions trying to work out where I was and whether that meant right or left or back where I had come from. But things improved, I can't say that I have 'mastered' that sort of stuff, but I do think that I got better, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

Murray followed me round the last training exercise - a sprint relay in Vico de Gargono - with a video camera.

 

Murray also made another video with all the other footage of the relay

 After the training camp we came back to Rome for 3 days of the Mediterranean Orienteering Champs. A nice combination of rapid park orienteering and sightseeing. Although the orienteering was much more simple, the quality field meant that every second was shown up and so it was still worthwhile running. Technically I wasn't perfect, but nor was anyone, and I do think my sprint technique has improved, particularly flowing through controls smoothly. Physically I felt like I was lacking something all week. I can't tell exactly what that is - it could be still struggling for race fitness after injury - but I have had some encouraging training sessions so I'm not convinced it is that. Anyway, I was really pleased with the results as I managed to edge into 3rd overall, though there were only seconds in it every day. The results are on the event homepage here.

The JK is now only 2 weeks away and I'm looking forward to putting up a fight to defend my title. After that, I've planned a 2 month block of training through April and May to put me in good shape for the selection races and hopefully some World Cups/WOC to follow. I also have some other plans and aims and more news of them to follow shortly...

Training in Turkey

Hu og Hei!

I’m back running! And it happened at just the right time – while on a training camp in Turkey with NTNUI. I got on the plane expecting to be running once a day at best, and probably missing a few days too. However, I have managed to do almost everything on offer and it’s been great. My body really suffered the first few days running, everything was hurting, but as the week went on I felt better and better and I can’t feel any pain in the knee any more.

Antalya - not a bad place to be training.

The training camp has been really fun, not only great company but also fun terrain. We’ve stayed in Manavgat and Antalya, on the south coast of Turkey and enjoyed some pretty good weather. The terrain has been everything from sand dunes to continental hills to ravines to bushy stoney stuff. The common theme being that it has been pretty good underfoot and very enjoyable to run.

Some of the terrain

A highlight in a novelty sort of way was running around the ruins at Side, near Manavgat. The start was on the sea front, a few controls through a funny tourist town and then out into these crazy old temple ruins and sand dunes. Safe to say I didn’t get my head around the map at all, but it was a lot of fun all the same.

Forest orienteering wise, it’s hard to pick out a highlight. I enjoyed a middle distance that we ran in some challenging stoney terrain. It reminded me of some stuff in Portugal or Spain. However, I also really enjoyed the Lara sand dunes that were right by our hotel where we ran the middle distance from the Antalya O-Meet from a few weeks ago.

The ruins in Side

The map of those ruins - pretty crazy

It’s been really fun to be with NTNUI, even though I don’t live in Trondheim any more. Lovely to see old friends, try and understand their bizarre Norwegian jokes and get excited about TioMila together.

Altogether, it’s been great to get away and it’s great to be back running. It’s not long until the next camp – sprinting around the Italian coast at the end of March. I am properly spoilt. Better do some work and get some miles in before then.

Getting back...

So news from the physio is that after the knock to my knee, other muscles in my quads decided not to work, so others worked harder, so now they are all confused and poor old Mr knee cap is paying the price for this. However, a little bit of acupuncture and painful foam roller-ing has meant that I can now bike semi-pain free. So this I have done. Approximately 6 hours 30 today and yesterday and I loved it. Not surprising when there was scenery like this...

Some quite serious storm damage in places!

Update

It's been a long time since I last updated my blog but there hasn't been too much to say.

Shortly after the World Cup Final I started a new full time job and between that and training, there isn't much time left in the day. It took a bit of time to work out a good routine and see how much I can do before I get too tired but I think I've just about got the hang of it. I quite enjoy the challenge of trying to fit it all in and I enjoy what I do, so although I moan a lot, I'm not really complaining.

At the moment, I've got a bit of a knee injury. It is just a bruise from when I fell off a wall in a hill race, hit my head and bashed my legs as well. It was quite a shock and I was lucky that knee bruising is the only lasting damage. However, I don't think I'm coping very well with being injured! I've been a bit spoilt over the last two years with barely any time off due to illness or injury. Also, it happened just after an easy few weeks where I recharged the batteries and was all ready to go hard again. Frustrating.

Anyway, there are exciting things to look forward to. Next month I'm off to Turkey with NTNUI. I'm also going to do a sprint training camp in Italy in March. I can't complain too much.

4th World Cup Final

The 2011 season ended with two weekends of world cup races sandwiching a training camp to prepare for next years world champs. I thought I'd write about it in reverse order - or in order of excitement.

Fast start in Chauz-les-Fonds. 

So, the last race, the World Cup Final sprint around La Chaux-des-Fonds. I was pleased to be running as only the top 40 in the overall world cup qualify so that in itself was quite an achievement for me. If I'm totally honest, I didn't feel particularly ready for the race, I was very tired mentally and physically and I felt like the season should have ended a good few months ago. But I may never get the chance to run in this amazing race with so many spectators and crazy atmosphere so I thought I better give it everything.

I had no special tactics - I just started hard out of the blocks and thought I would keep that going until I died. I surprised myself and I held on till around the 13th control before my legs were screaming at me. I probably had less than 1km to go so short enough that I could make it. I can't think of any time loss - there are some different routes I could have taken, but nothing of major consequence. I was in such a state of oxygen debt that I nearly missed the street to the penultimate control, but just rescued myself in time.

Drollins feeling my pain on the run in

So there I was sat on the red sofa, grinning from ear to ear, checking my map to see which control I must have missed out as the GB team were shouting up to me "guaranteed top 15 ... top 10 ... podium!" It was a fantastic feeling to be up on the stage with such big stars, it more than pays back the hours training this year. I know it will be very hard to repeat this result ever let alone soon but it gives me a huge amount of confidence that one day it might be possible. And the ultimate dream of it being in Scotland at WOC2015...

Seriously excited to be up there

A few links: Event website, IOF Website, BOF Website

Anyway, working backwards, the day before was a middle distance race in the Swiss Jura. To keep it short, I was awful. Middle distances always seem to get the better of me and I never manage to get any sort of flow going aside from all my major mistakes. I felt quite down after my result here as it was very near the bottom of the list. It feels like there is a mountain to climb for me in terms of my orienteering technique.

Reversing further, the week before was spent near Neuchatel training for WOC 2012. I was taking it easy, trying to save myself for the weekend's races but going out enough to get a feel for the forests and what I need to do before next year. I'm in two minds about the whole experience. Part of me felt like the forests were quite boring in comparison with what Switzerland could offer, however, I still managed to get lost a lot and there is quite a bit of similar terrain in Britain, so maybe that could be to our advantage.

The iconic tower over Liberec

Photo from official event website. Hair cut needed.

And now to where the whole trip started - in Liberec, Czech Republic. A middle distance race followed by a chasing start long distance. I really enjoyed the forest as it was very fast but also a bit challenging with massive rocks and tricky vegetation. My middle distance was true to form with around 5 minutes of time loss but there were sections of it where I felt like a different orienteer to what I had been earlier in the season. Things flowed better and I was able to hit higher speeds than usual. The Long distance was epic with a 2km route choice to the first control. I went for the aggressive line, taking in a bit more climb but less distance as I think I'm a good hill runner. This seemed to work and I caught a few girls who started ahead. We kind of bumbled around together but making mistakes at different controls before we were split at the butterfly. The overall performance was a bit hit and miss - some things good, some not. What I was most proud of was turning the pace up during the last butterfly to narrowly win a race with two Czech girls.

What a week. Nice to be home now, ready to get into winter training and start the whole process again. 2011 has been a massive leap for me.

Thanks to Heather Gardner for all the photos apart from the last one.

WOC 2011

Photo taken by www.worldofo.com
See also my athlete profile
http://runners.worldofo.com/tessahill.html

My first World Champs and they weren't a disappointment. I really enjoyed the whole experience, preparing to race, being on the start line, racing through crowds, commentary, big screen, adrenaline, getting to the finish line.

I came 22nd in the sprint final and I was very happy with that. Even though before the championships I had been hoping for a top 20, I was pleased with my performance on the day and so I can't complain about the result. I was most happy with the fact that I'm learning to produce good performances under pressure - something I've never really done before. My aim this year was to move up from just running international races to being reliably in the top 30 so it's nice to have achieved that so far.

3-4 on this map is 14-15 in the race.
Red route best, yellow route mine.
Maps and results found here

Without getting too geeky, I've done a bit of splittimes analysis. In the final I was between 6 - 38% behind the fastest time for each leg but most of them around 16%. I didn't think I had made any mistakes when I had finished, but this analysis showed up that I took a longer route to 15 and lost 10 seconds. It also showed up that I started a bit steady compared to others. At control 5, I had lost 40 seconds to the leaders after 4 minutes running. By control 12, I was only a minute behind after 9 minutes running.

The good bits seemed to stand out as a section between controls 6-10 where I was in the castle grounds, and from 16 to the finish. I also seemed to loose less time on the long leg (7 seconds from a 1.40ish split) than I did on most controls of around 1 minute. Drawing some vague conclusions, running speed is not a main weakness (although it still needs to improve) but flow through controls definitely is.

After all that was over, I got to enjoy the men's race: see GG get even closer to the medals, watch Murray improve again on last year and cheer Scott on to an amazing performance after such a crazy few hours of disqualification debate. It was a good day for British sprinters (Sarah was 13th and Hollie 26th) and it was fun to be part of it.

The view from Dent du Chat - the obvious
rock sticking out from the ridge opposite Aix-les-Bains

The rest of the week was spent running up mountains in baking heat to get incredible views followed by watching the worlds best orienteers get lost in the forest. Respect to anyone who found a control out there, just watching the GPS made me confident I made the right decision to run the sprint and not the long. Despite nearly 3 weeks of training camps in the terrain, I was still in no position to race in it.

Although I'll hopefully be heading to the final rounds of the world cup in Czech and Switzerland in September/October, it's a good time to look back on my season. I've improved more than I thought I would both physically and technically and this translated into surprise wins in the domestic season and my totally unexpected 12th at one of the Nordic Tour races. I think this is because I have been working part-time so I have increased my training hours and quality and had better recoveries. My work was also very flexible so I could do a number of training camps in the Lake District and make up for the poor terrain around London.

The main hairpins of Alp d'Huez
- one of the amazing runs I did during July

The only slightly negative thing is that I have a (unproven) feeling that I was in better physical shape in June than I was at WOC. As I spent a lot of July travelling I didn't get the quality interval sessions in that I needed to at this stage. Again, I've looked at split times in the Nordic Tour race and saw I was more like 10-12% behind the fastest split times for each leg. Either I got slower over the next 6 weeks or the others improved more. Whichever it is, it's a lesson I should learn for next season. However, there are no regrets. I had a great month doing a lot of training that helped me be better prepared in other ways for WOC and hopefully making me better when I get back to chasing the flags in the forest.

Life as a pro athlete

It’s been a long while since I last updated this blog and so much has happened. In a nutshell – I went to Nordic Tour and got my best international results to date, got swapped from running long to sprint at WOC this year, finished my job in London, moved to Edinburgh, went on a sprint training camp in Switzerland, went mountain running in Switzerland and France, went on a training/racing camp in Slovenia, and then landed up at the Scottish 6 days. Going into more detail: here are some photos, maps and stories...

Just before I went on the Nordic Tour I ran a hill race at Skiddaw in the Lake District. It was the European Trials Race and the first UK uphill mountain running champs. I was doing the race to get an idea of how far behind the best UK hill runners I am, particularly before I moved to Edinburgh and started training and racing on hills regularly. I came 10^th and I was pleased with this, about 4 minutes down on the winners over about an hour. Results are here (see Race 2 European Trial Results Womens)

Taken from the Nordic Tour website

Then I headed off to the carnival circus that is the Nordic Tour. I ran a very good qualification race especially given that it was a bit bizarre – tricky forest, middle race course, but all on a sprint map. I didn’t expect to qualify so I went out with the attitude of trying to get everything right and seeing how far away I was. I managed to get most things right and pick some ok route choices. I qualified in 29^th place with about 10 seconds to spare!

Again from the Nordic Tour website

I then ran the final which was a standard sprint in the old town of Porvoo. I felt really relaxed with no pressure, just happy to have got this far. I’ve got to learn to repeat this frame of mind as I went on to run to my best ever result - I came 12^th. I did a pretty perfect race, I can’t think of many places I lost time. I thought my route choices were good and it all flowed nicely. This was a real encouragement as I’ve tried to focus on sprint racing this year but have not managed to perform in the races so far this season. GPS tracking here.

After this race came Jukola where I was running for the NTNUI 3^rd team. A super start by the 1^st and particularly 2^nd leg runners meant that we were in the 40s by the time I went out on last leg. I went out carefully and soon got swept up by Mora and Linne teams who were running much faster. I held on as long as I could, I made one mistake with them, but otherwise going well. I then had a different gaflfle and lost them as I got stuck in a thick marsh. I think I lost a lot of time there, but another pack soon ran past and I got to the finish safely and I was happy with my run. I think we landed up 41^st which is awesome for a 3^rd team. It’s definitely my highest ever at Jukola and it was a new experience running so high up in a big relay  - things definitely moving faster, to state the obvious.

On-on and we landed up in Gothenburg ready for Nordic Tour round 2. Qualification was a straight sprint race so I fancied my chances of getting through after last week. I was far more nervous and so tried to take things slowly and get the navigation right. Sadly it was all just too slow – a combination of nerves and tiredness from bad sleep at Jukola I think. I didn’t make mistakes in a big way, but it was a good reminder that I still need to run qualification races hard. Results are here.

Click here for GPS tracking and here for TV coverage.

After a few days relaxing and seeing the sights with old friends in Oslo it was then on for the final Nordic Tour race – a chasing start based on some algorithm of your previous race results. I was going out in  27^th with a lot of girls just ahead and just behind. I managed to stay with packs all the way, but also keeping control of where I was. The gaffling system was a bit funny as there was a map exchange so you weren’t entirely sure where the gaffles were. Also, there was just a huge number of people running very fast in a small space of forest which added to the chaos. I think I picked some good routes (mainly path options) which helped, and I also didn’t make any major mistakes so I managed to pick up a few places and finished 25^th. Results are here. I did lose some places towards the end as I was getting tired and I wasn’t pushing as hard. I also got a bit more nervous about making a bit mistake so I was a bit more careful and took longer to make decisions. I was very happy with the result and the performance and the whole 10 days really. It was a much better experience than last year because I was that bit higher up the results list that I got involved in the chasing starts. I think I may even be in 20th place in the current World Cup standings - crazy.

After the O-festivalen relay (running for the first time for the NTNUI 1^st team), I came home for my final week at work in London. At the end of the week I packed up all my stuff into the car and drove all the way to Edinburgh – and then asked Murray to come and reverse park for me once I got there. After another week of unsuccessful job hunting and interviews, I packed up again ready for life as an athlete for a month.

First I headed to Zurich where Sarah Rollins, Murray and I made our own sprint training camp. We ran sprint courses and training exercises fairly hard for about 2 hours every day in Schwyz, Bremgarten, Richterswil, Zurich and Einsiedeln. It was really good for focusing me onto sprint orienteering and learning a lot from Sarah. Particular things I’m trying to work on are long route choice legs and planning ahead. I tend to find I choose the wrong moment to plan ahead and then end up making a mistake on the current control.

After that, Murray and I headed to Grindlewald for some chill out mountain running time. We ran in the hills that are overshadowed by the Eiger, read books about the climbing attempts on the North Face and laughed at American tourists who asked “where is the Eiger?” We went on one very long run and photos are here.

We continued our adventures by going down to Aix Les Bains and Chambery to walk around the sprint areas for WOC. We met up with other GB team members and some Aussies and I got a bit of time in the terrain reminding myself why I’m happy running the sprint this year. As a bit of a break from the limestone we ran up Alp d’Huez. It was great fun as it was a week before the Tour got there but the Dutch had already claimed their spots and were cheering us on up. Sadly we missed a bus on the way down so it ended up being an even longer day out than planned.

After these adventures, Hollie Orr and I got on the train from Geneva to Trieste and joined the some GB juniors/young seniors to fulfil our talent in Slovenia. We missed a few days of training but got to join them for some excellent racing at the OO Cup. It was a great opportunity to get excellent coaching and to try out some new things. I’m trying to improve by taking fewer looks at the map, simplifying a lot more as at the moment I play dot-to-dot when I get into tricky terrain. I spent the first 3 days of the OO cup experimenting with this, blowing 10 minutes here and there, but absolutely loving it. I then tried to put it together on day 4 but didn’t really focus properly. On Day 5 I went out like it was a World Cup qualifier with some real determination to get it right. I felt it went really well and there were only a few bits where I lost time. I ended up 3^rd, a long way behind the two Danes but I felt like I had really improved.

Finally I arrived back in England and after a short trip to Grandma and a school friends wedding I was driving the long journey up to Oban for the Scottish 6 days. I only intended to run the middle and long days as they counted for the UK Cup. I went out for the middle race quite hard. I was tired but I wanted to do well so I thought if I pushed I might concentrate better. It didn’t happen and I lost lots of time at every control and then I never found 9. At this point I decided I desperately needed to get some sleep and relax and so I gave up and came home. Just before I left I was given an amazing present from Harlequins. The whole club had signed a little message to me of good luck for France.

I now have about 2 weeks to get ready for the sprint race at WOC. I am going to do some training in Perth and St Andrews as they have similar old towns to Chambery and Aix Les Bains. I’m also going to do a lot of resting.