Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Long O planned by Brendan. Mentally it was hard to will myself to go out on what I knew was going to be a very tough course. especially with a fresh Clem frolicking about showing off his energy :) As I headed for the first control I realized that there wasn't going to be a streamer at the location, so when I got to the re-entrant I tried to draw an O-flag on the ground. Apparently nobody saw this design though. Same was true for the second streamer as well. I feel pretty guilty that this was the straw for brendan's race. I feel even more guilty that I felt so relieved to hear that Brendan had gone out to pick up Night o controls instead, which meant that there were fewer controls left to pick up when I got done.

anyway, back in the jungle. I was able to keep moving up until control 10. Unfolding the map and realizing that I still had several k to go was a bit disheartening, and my legs were super tired. I started walking on the way to 11, and only found the control by lucky accident. I was basically just bumbling along, swatting at flies and trying to estimate how much longer I had until I was done :)

after the finish, I could only muster a slow walk back to the parking lot. draining, but an excellent course. would have been really fun to race this course on fresh legs.... don't know if I could have matched Clem's time (under 1:50:00) after putting in so much work yesterday. I think i have splits somewhere on my watch... I'll have to see how I compare through the middle section.

C • guilt 1

picking up 2 of the night controls. thankfully Ed, Brendan, and Clem all picked up a few. many hands makes light work. completely spent after this weekend, nothing left in the tank :)

Setting flags in Patuckaway. This took way longer than I expected, but setting streamers in Patuckaway is hard! everything looks the same out there in the woods and so I had to double and triple check some of the locations. I don't think I made any mistakes though, except the very obvious mistake of not hanging the first two flags on the Long course. Out of sight is out of mind and those two controls weren't on my main map for control setting.

good way to start a weekend in the woods.

Contours only course. planned by Brendan. Patuckaway without rocks is a much easier map to read, and many of the swamps and ponds were left on the map, to aid with navigation. I had one big goof, and then most of the other controls went well. I was moving fairly well, but not really cooking. I was picking up streamers as I was the last one to go out, and got messed up on a couple of occasions because the streamers I found looked like old streamers ( read: streamers from last year's training weekend) . FDFs not as bad with Mark's bug spray.

C • rocks 4

Middle Distance training. planned by ross. My idea was that since I've been struggling with the middle distance style orienteering that I should practice. so I set 19 controls, in ~5 k with lot's of change in direction. I guess there is more to course setting a middle than just changing direction, but that's about as fancy as I got. I was pretty clean on this course, and felt like I was moving faster than the contours only. I think it really helped to have set most of these streamers myself. glad that I motivated myself to go out on this one.

headed over to the beach after this one to wash off all the hemlock needles.

The on and off thunderstorms of the weekend could not stifle the team spirit of the training weekend. The creative efforts and combined generosity of all the attendees made dinner totally awesome. Dave's cooking was super yummy, giving us the energy we needed to tackle the night o.

C • amen to that 1

Night-O planned by ross. wow these patuckaway night races are super hard. foggy night made for some creepy woods :) started well, but real shaky on the way to 2 and blew up on 3 pretty badly harder to relocate at night. spent a lot of the night fighting my compass, especially on the way to 5, just heading on a bearing to a trail and that was so hard. slower after 5, just trying to survive, and really thirsty by the end, just like the wicked hard night o from last year. I assumed that Brendan had stayed ahead of me, but it turns out I snuck past him when he went far right around some swamps and I zig-zagged between them. Heat lightning was cool to watch in the parking lot after I got back.

to from work. as usual very late leaving work. whenever I have someplace to be I get stuck the longest. So an hour late picking up Brendan and Ed, but that's okay, we made it up to the Park almost in time to get our tents set up before the rain.... almost :)

New O-shoes. Got a pair of Falcon's from the Berman's. Super nice of them to let me come over on a Friday night and buy shoes. half price as compared to what I would have paid in Sweden. Anyway, the plan is to treat them better than I typically have treated my shoes in the past. I hope to follow the Saeger method, which involves taking out the insoles and drying them after every run. Their shoes last much longer than mine, let's see if it's because they have better maintenance.

C • Hard numbers about flies in urinals 2

a lot of biking today. To work, from work to CSU training, from training to home. On the way home I was really thirsty so I stopped at a CVS and got a liter of chocolate milk. then I was worried that it would explode inside my pack so I had to drink the whole thing. This was fine with me :)

legs feel pretty tired... hard to spend all day on my feet and then go exercise. sometimes I day dream about quitting my job and training 100% but I'm pretty sure that would only be fun for like a week before I got bored.

Not the best training that I've ever done. Alexei planned the course to be easy, wanting us to focus on being very clean [read: have a perfect race] and specifically to have a good plan for leaving each control before we got there.

positives first. I was able to plan my exit from each control very well, and executed each plan very well. I was also quite happy to be out in the woods, and had fun.

negatives. I was feeling very sluggish running, had a hard time pushing myself, and was sweating so much that it felt more like swimming than running. My map was disintegrating in my hand and wasn't getting a quick turnover even on downhills.

from the very start I ran 180 degrees the wrong way, partly because the map had no numbers or north arrows to orient by and partly because I just assumed the course would start the same direction as last time I was up at the Sheepfold. I realized by mistake quickly, but it was a harbinger of bad times. I was doing okay up until I was running to the 4th control, when I started running down the wrong trail, I realized it pretty quickly and corrected, but it was a frustrating kind of mistake. Next I headed off my attackpoint towards the control and couldn't find anything except a boulder which was a bit north of where I wanted to be, I kept on trying to find my feature in the green and was having a hard time getting things to match, I did eventually stumble onto it but I never ended up getting that little section of the woods to make sense. On the way to 5 I headed out of the control, crossed a field and then inexplicably somehow turned my map upside down and started running the wrong way. none of the trails were making sense, I couldn't get the junctions to match anywhere on the map ( because the map was upside down) I knew I was on a large trail, and I could hear the road nearby, but until it dawned on me that I was being an idiot I couldn't do anything.

Alexei had some interesting things to say afterwards. One thing that seems interesting to me is he said the kinds of mistakes that I made today are typical for thinking too much about attackpoints. When you rely on attackpoints overmuch you basically relinquish navigational control between the control and your attackpoint and that's when you get lost. It's better to always focus on where you are, and what you are doing. I guess that it is true that I tend towards "run hard, relocate later" school of orienteering but I hadn't thought about over-training an orienteering technique and having it cause trouble.


Anyways a pretty blah day for orienteering. This weekend is going to be much better. A few CSU folks are headed up to Patuckaway for some training. two courses saturday followed by a Night-o and then a long course on Sunday. should be stellar. people are welcome to join us for part or all of these trainings, we just don't have much (or any really) extra space in our campsite(s).

to work, and back with a quick stop at REI to replace my watch. The band on my old one ripped, and I had "fixed" this problem with a bent paper clip. However, no one could invent a paper clip stronger than the Swedish Swamp. When the swamp gets hungry and decides to have a snack, it's best to just go quietly with some dignity. Ashes to Ashes and swamp to swamp ... [translated] as the old Swedish proverb says.

the new watch seems okay, it's a bit funny looking, and is ostensibly a woman's version, but it was cheaper and I have very effeminate wrists anyways; hirsute, supple, very womanly.

Finally I sat down and actually made my pizza chicken carbonara. Delicious.

Chicken, Bacon, diced Cherry peppers, walnuts, cheese, and sundried tomato alfredo sauce from a bottle, all work in perfect concert with the bowtie pasta and the thin pizza crust.

C • WOW!!! You are welcome in ... 9

to work and home. time is estimated again. Only difference on this route is that I stopped past the library on the way to work to drop off some books-on-CD that I have had out for awhile.

I think that for all intents and purposes I'm over jet-lag, any sleepiness now is probably just my own fault for not sleeping enough. this morning I didn't get out of bed until 7:30, tomorrow I will try to do the same, but I suspect that it will be closer to 8 am and my regular schedule.

C • awesome 2

perhaps foolishly, I have purchased plane tickets for the US champs. I will be arriving in Denver ~ 10:35 pm on Friday night, and I will be flying out 3:30pm on Sunday ( not ideal, but that's what you get for putting off such a decision).

jet lag is less than ideal. only thoughts of patuckaway this weekend and US champs next weekend keep my morale high.

C • US champs 12

currently I don't have a watch so the time above is an estimate. I felt quite slow, but pleased that I managed to cajole myself out of work and onto the streets. legs are good, just overall the energy levels were at basement readings.