CIOR 4,5,6

Day 4

Today began with a long drive into Montreal. We had our O-ring (orienteering) training at the park where the Olympics and the Montreal Grand Prix were held. It was a very nice park. As the day wore on I began to hate it. I was running from 9 am until 1130 with a 30 minute lunch break. In the afternoon it was another 4 hours of running around this park looking for orange marking tape. My feet are killing me.

We started with a map that we had seen before but it is very difficult to read. I don’t know the name of it but it is a straight line with all the turns on it that you are not to take. If you follow all the turns correctly you finish where you started.



This one is okay once you get the jist of it.

The next was an orienteering map with tons of symbols that I have no idea what they were. You had to nav to different spots as fast as you could and find the marking tape. All you have is a shitty compass and a map.

Next there was a map with no points to nav to only a trail on the map you had to follow. As you naved your way on the trail on the map you had to find the marking tape. This was okay too so long as you stayed exactly on the line drawn on the map. So you could be in the bush one minute and then you would be in a field the next looking for a small rock. Pretty hard but fun.

Arial Photo map with no descriptions just circles you had to find.
A map with just a trail and no terrain features to follow.
A map with only portions of the map showing. So there would be blank space between one objective and the next. You really had to focus on bearing and pacing. I screwed up on this one a few times.
We later had to triangulate our position one the map with grid references and then nav to each point.

The day finally ended with a map we were only allowed to look at and not take with us. You had to memorize all the points and then go to them. If you forgot where one was you had to go back to the original start location and figure out which one you forgot and then go back to it.

All in all it was a fun day and I learned so much that I will forget it soon I am sure. That is why we have 15 orienteering sessions in these 26 days of training.

Tomorrow I have a session with the team physical therapist for my shoulder and neck that I hurt around Christmas time. It has started to bother me again.

Oh and I have a few people who want to my rings because I showed a video of a muscle up and they want to try and do a couple of them. We’ll see how that goes. Wink!

Another early night and another early morning. Shitty.


Day 5

My eyes are fucking killing me.

Today I was up at 5am and off to Farnham Training area so I could pick up the ammo. Thankfully the 2 privates who were hired to drive, now have their qualification for dangerous goods and they can drive tomorrow.

So I now know what it is like to be professionally coached. It is hard. Damn hard. I remember a crossfit
t-shirt that had the slogan “embrace the suck”. I have begun to embrace it. Today really felt like a training day for an athlete. We were at the ranges again today. Rifle and Pistol. I did okay on the pistol and very well at the 100m with the rifle with an iron sight. Then we moved back to the 200m and it went to shit fast. It was the first day at that distance so I am okay with that.

After the ranges it was to the o-course. This is always fun. We tackled a few more obstacles like the irish table and low wire. There is definitely technique in crossing these two with the least amount of effort. Because we are competing for time we try to do everything with as little effort as possible so we will not waste effort where it doesn’t need to be that way. I really look forward to putting the whole thing together into one challenge. We spent about an hour running and jumping and climbing out there today.

Lunch

After lunch was a track workout. I was really looking forward to this one. That soon changed after I was told what we were doing.

6 rounds of:

500m in two minutes. No faster no slower.
After the 2 minutes were up we had to jog for 4 minutes. We were not allowed to walk during the whole time.

32 minutes of work.

Off to the pool! The pool was by far the hardest workout for the day. And this is why my eyes are fucked up. I have no goggles. I didn’t think that I would need them. Boy was I wrong!

200 m front crawl as a warm up

8 x 50m (3 arms only, 2 legs only, and 3 where you can’t bring your one hand back in the stroke until the other one touches it. Very hard)

2 rounds of
2 x 100m (25m kicks with flutter board, 50m crawl, 25m kicks)
2 x 100m (25m sprint, 25m relaxed)
100m relaxed

100m front crawl Long strokes

8 x 25m (first one slow and each successive one faster)

100m crawl relaxed.

Cool down.

Total 2000m or 1 hour and 10 minutes of swimming.

Supper

I have been eating very well and trying to stick to the zone as best I can. I had a bit of a cheat meal at supper tonight. I was staving.
Tonight’s supper was garlic spaghetti, 2 slices of bread and butter, 20 olives, chicken kabab, celery sticks, cucumber, and 2 scoops of ice cream. I washed this all down with 1glass of pink lemonade, 1 glass of water, and a coffee.

Starting to get some aches and pains all over. Oh, got some scrapes and bruises from the o-course too!


Day 6

Another great day here in Quebec. This morning it was sunny with a nice breeze while we were shooting the 9mm Pistol. We had a great shot practicing the rapid applications where you have to shoot 9 rounds in one minute from 25m. A mag of 3 and a mag of 6. It is quite fast when you have a mag change thrown into the mix.

Off to the C7 range. This is where things started to heat up. It was 30 degrees and it was hot laying in the sun. I did better today on this range. I took my time and made sure all my rounds were going where I was aiming. Well there was one round that found its way onto someone else’s target but oh well.

Lunch

O-course in the afternoon on a full belly was very hard. The sun was beating down on us and it was very hot and sweaty. I am getting comfortable with jumping off stuff. It is rush to run up to an obstacle and climb it and jump off and keep going. We were at the o-course for 2 hours and we had a great workout.

Pool. The dreaded pool. I managed to buy some goggles today. I thought I got a great pair but when I put them on I learned that they were prescription with a -4 rating. I couldn’t see shit. At least my eyes feel good tonight so I will continue to use them.

2 Round of:
100m crawl
100m kick with flutter board
100m with pool bouy (PB is something you put between your legs so you can focus on just using the arms.)

2 Rounds of:
50m crawl
50m with head out of water
50m crawl
50m kick
50m crawl
25m easy
25m fast
50m kicks
25m easy
25m fast

6x25m kicks as a race. I finished second last
8x25m crawl I was third each time.

1750m total or 1hr 15 minutes in the pool.

Supper
Bed!