Training Log Archive: drewi

Salmon Run, Day 1
The forested sprint in the area that Lief mapped was really good. Though I was slow moving through terrain, I wasn't slowed down by my blisters as much as I should've been. I beat all the people who are ranked on red, including Huw (!). I was about 12th overall. The winning time was long, almost 18 minutes. I'm happy with my run - I had one major route choice error and a few smaller ones, but I don't think I could've shaved more than 3 or 4 minutes off my time.

Jogging back to the download from the finish.

Salmon Run Sprint 3 - Splits

I ran the first leg of the Lick Creek Relay for the team Czech this Inglish. I basically had the best race I'd had up until this point in PNWOF. I followed John Goodwin coming out of the mass start for the first 6 controls (I didn't look at my map until after the 2nd control), until he pulled away from me. (After control 1, I was in 4th, he was in 3rd.) After he ditched me, I spiked all the remaining controls, and passed him, because he had made a navigational mistake on the way to 8, I believe. I ended up 3rd, 5 minutes behind Oystein (sp?) and 6 minutes behind Patrick (I think that was the order those two finished in).

I was kind of frightened because I didn't see anyone, and then everyone came in like 10 minutes behind me.

The Kid. My feet got really torn up by my shoes, and I was running with crazy blisters for the rest of the week. =(

If I'm going to do something like JWOC next year where I'm orienteering every day (or 6/7 days) for 2 weeks, I need to solve this blister problem somehow. Suggestions, anyone?

With regards to the race:
Going to the first control, I started off by running 50-100 yards in the wrong direction before I got my map oriented. However, after I fixed that, I overtook Kelsey, (who was leading the group of people in the correct direction), and motored along for a while. However, I wasn't distancing things carefully, and stopped about 200m short of the control to investigate some similar cliff features near a similar marsh/pond feature. After realizing my mistake, I booked it to the correct control, and came out about 10th.
On the way to two, Matej and I were together, and decided that we'd stick together for the rest of the race. We cut south around the pondish-thing, and went thgouth the gap in the cliffs, around the top of the uncrossable marsh, and over the top of the cliff that had the control on it. We hit 3 with no problems. After 3, I believe we were tied for third -- (Christina and (whoever came in 1st or 2nd for the men who was not Rick)) were ahead of us. On the way to 4, we foolishly went around the lake feature to the north, because I had seen a control that was clearly not the right control and was going to it. Matej saw the correct control and was able to get to it, but Rick and someone else beat me to it. I caught up to Matej on the way to 5, running away from Rick, but I was pretty winded. We made it to 5 without any major problems. On the way to 6, we stopped short a bit, but then someone in front of us punched it obviously, and we found it. (Transition to USGS map...) We found 7 with no problems, but at this point the blister on my left heel was too painful for me to run on, and I dropped out, stopping for almost 10 minutes to try to cover it with the athletic tape I had used to tie my shoelaces and tie my cliff shots to my arm. Matej went ahead to 9 (8 was the only reasonable skip), and then lost 20-30 minutes on 11. I was passed by 6 or 8 people, including Rick and Jan, but still managed to finish reasonably well, walking the rest of the course. I basically went straight to 9 and 10, but then on the way to 11 I ended up too far East, and had to cut through the marsh in order to get to it. Oh well. I was 4th in M20, and 8th among Men, I believe.

Hung out with Tess, some walking at Greenlake.

Long warmup
Long
Long cooldown
Stretching
... 12 hours of transportation...

Long
I'm happy with how this race went. To improve, I need to be more able to run up hills (bleh), be faster going through terrain, and be more able to read my map while going through terrain. I had one perhaps 2 minute navigational error, when I made a 90-degree mistake and cut through to the wrong road (which was visible from the road I was on). However, I was able to relocate fairly quickly and get going back towards the control.

It's so much easier to take care of myself after I have a good race...

Middle... I spent 10 minutes looking for 1, then did pretty well for the rest of the course. John Goodwin was first in 36, John HW was next in 44. I probably would've been at John HW's time had I run a clean race.

(New definition of clean: no time loss due to error more than 15 seconds on any one control.)