Training Log Archive: smittyo

Intervals with Trail-O practice. Did 2min run / 2 min recovery at the Desert Woodland Preserve. Carried my air photo and did TempO relocation and feature ID during each recovery.

Green course at LAOC Barton Flats Event. I was somewhat surprised to see that I won this course when the results came out. I really didn't push the pace much at all and felt very slow. I also lost time at control #8, stopping too soon at an open dirt area and then apparently passing right near the control without seeing it. I was convinced the control was misplaced too far to the north and the dirt was actually the clearing. But then I ended up picking up that control and approaching it from another angle. I think it was correct, but the spur right next to it was mapped a little off or something. Stuff in this area just wasn't at the proper distances.

A nice fun course. The map was printed at 1:15,000 and not at any super great quality, but it was perfectly adequate for the style of the terrain and course. So in terms of recent discussions about this, 1:15,000 still has it's place. 1:10,000 might have been slightly easier to read for my old eyes, but wasn't necessary.

Time loss at number 8: 4:00
Time loss at wrong turn between 3 and 4: 1:30

Elite Training at trailo.it

Easy neighborhood run

Event: 12th World Rogaining Championships
 

World Rogaine Championships 2014. Did this with my brother Steve. We don't usually spend a huge amount of time planning and after looking at other's peoples tracks, it looks like we were not very efficient in racking up points for the distance we traveled. We do like to come in and sleep at night. Our plan was to do a loop to the southwest of the HH and end up near control 42 when darkness hit, then get 42, 70, 20, and 33 in the dark before stopping for the night. It was much slower than anticipated though, so we didn't get that far. Instead we ended up doing 85, 41, 60 and 20 in the dark. We had heard at the waterstop that a lot of people had trouble with 85 and never found it. We attacked with bearing and pace counting from the trail junction closest to the control. Since we knew it might be difficult we didn't spend a lot of time searching in the dark. We weren't lucky enough to just run into it, so we bailed and went back without those 80 points :-(

Day two decided to stay close to the HH and pick up lots of lower point controls rather than go for a high pointer and feel stressed about getting back on time. In general enjoyed it. I wasn't happy with the inconsistent mapping of trails. It was always annoying to get to a control and discover that a pretty significant road was very close but not mapped. Seemed a little too bingo to me in terms of route choice. Some areas were very annoying with the deadfall, but we found others quite nice. Liked the big cliffs and rocks. Glad that it was nice warm weather and not really wet - although we did slog through a swamp Saturday night just before hitting the HH.

The Garmin track shows our actual route for the first loop. The bagged Garmin died overnight though, so the best we have for the rest of it is this nice route map from bmoore.

http://www.schuhmann.us/wrc/routes/188.jpeg

Ended up with 1170 points. Gavin and Sue (the team we were out for) bested us with 1370. They stayed out and did find 85.
Placed 143 out of 175 finishers.
Placed 64 of 79 Mixed teams.
Placed 40 of 49 Mixed Veterans.

After the Rogaine enjoyed a nice side trip to see Mount Rushmore before heading home. Also enjoyed conversation with Eric and Mary Smith at the airport. Congrats to them on their second place XUV finish!

Green X - Splits

Event: 2014 US Classic Championships
 

Green X - Splits

Interval workout. 2 min run / 2 min recovery / 8 reps.

I was overdue for a workout and it was hot, but I did it anyway. I incorporated some relocation practice into this. One of the things I need to work on for TempO is quickly finding my location in the map snippet. This requires keeping track of where you're going and where you've been without a map to reference. I carried an aerial photo with me and at the end of each interval used my recovery to locate myself on the photo and then identify as many of the surrounding features as possible before the next interval. This was much harder than I anticipated.

I made a point of going out on the Western loop because I figured that would be easy. It generally took me quite a while to figure out where I was most times. I didn't carry a compass and the number of bends in the trails made it difficult to keep track of which little segment I might be on and which direction I was facing. I had one interval where I was never succesful in figuring out where I was. I made an assumption about a junction I had just been through that was incorrect, so I wasn't even looking at the right part of the photo.

In general, I think this was a useful training and I'll be incorporating more like this into my routine.