Training Log Archive: Danny Riley

We're going to Switzerland!!!!

I'm a little surprised that nobody ran quicker because I left a lot of time out there, could've easily gone below 100. No race is ever perfect, but I thought for sure that my mistakes in the beginning would be my demise.

I had an awful first control. My route to 3 was sub-optimal as the green really wasn't that bad. I was following the line to do what Greg and Joe ended up doing, but turned more south to go full speed no mistakes into the southern boundary trail. If I wanted to do that route, I should've gone more south from the beginning to avoid the climb near 8, and really I should've just stuck to the original plan. The runnability near 15 and 14 just seemed too slow for me.

Checking the RouteGadget, you can see I then made a mistake on 4, 5, and 6; wrong cliff for 4 (easily could've caught that), right cliff but just couldn't find the control itself for 5 and ended up checking every single cliff in the circle, and attacked just a bit too early for 6. That being said, I knew my route to 6 was best, and I knew that I didn't lose that much time on 3, so I started hyping myself up and starting really believing this was my race to win. In reality, I was 4 and a half minutes back, but I felt really good for some reason.

8 was really good, I crossed the river first then trail so I knew exactly where I was, went right to the swamp, and found a very nice tunnel of runnability in the green W of 8. I proceeded to just execute well and run fast exactly when I needed to and slowed down at the right times. It's crazy how at the map flip at 13, Joe, Greg and I were within a few seconds of each other.

While my route to 14 and 15 weren't the best, I only lost a few seconds on each and I was able to run cleanly and quickly without zapping energy in the green. The plan was to go more straight to 23 but I noticed I was tending W and decided on-the-fly to graze 19 and take the trail to climb the steep hill. Going to 24 I banged my knee just outside of the circle and got really scared for a second, so I took a bit to gather myself and finish strong.

SparkNotes: Despite many mistakes on the first 6 controls, I for some reason thought I was basically in the lead and started focusing on pushing really hard when it was safe to do so. Was this the difference?

C • legend 12

Long Blue-TT - Splits

Event: 43rd West Point National Ranking Event
 

I started this warmup with the watch off by about 19 hours and finished the warmup with it telling the correct time, so it appears to think I was warming up for quite a bit longer than I really was.

C • Wat 5

I'm okay with this one. On the surface a good run, but easily could've cleaned it up significantly. You can see on the RouteGadget that small errors in the bearing cost me 10-15s on 3, 5, and 6, and at this point I could see Anton a little ways behind me. I poorly executed the climb route to 9, going too far around getting the worst of both runnability and distance, so he caught right up with me.

I knew he was a fast runner so I still had a shot at the podium and pushed hard, initially following him to 10 but then correcting his mistakes and actually staying ahead of him. I'm not saying this to dunk on him or anything, just a huge accomplishment for me to be the cleaner, more direct runner in a duo. That same trend continued all the way to 17, where I didn't follow the contour in time and he punched a solid 15-30s ahead. I caught back up again as he misread a rock wall on the way to 19 I believe, and led him into the penultimate control.

That was a fun race for a variety of reasons, but I'm particularly proud of myself for not letting a great runner distract me and even ran cleaner than him at a few points, being the man in front for a good chunk of the race. That's something that has never happened to me before.

C • I'm surmising that Anton ov... 1

No sprint for me -- maximizing rest for the long tomorrow.

Middle - Blue - Splits

Definitely the hardest week in the program that I've had so far.

Biking with shorts on. Huh. It's been a while.

I have a bomb strapped to my heart rate monitor that will explode if I go over 170bpm before West Point.