Training Log Archive: iansmith

Ian's excellent adventure. I set out on a 40-minute easy run, with a goal of running comfortably without looking at my Garmin for HR or pace data. That failed after about ten minutes, so I changed my goal to running at fixed cadence. At 14:23, I switched from The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich to 170 bpm techno.

The adventure began when I couldn't figure out how to get back to the Esplanade after crossing the BU Bridge. I knew a footbridge over Storrow Dr existed east of the BU Bridge, but I decided to find a crossing west. I suppose deep in my memory was the fact the next crossing was at Cambridge St. I explored some of the backstreets of BU, including running around Nickerson field and through a building to get back to the streets. I chose a poor route to get back to the river and added a few minutes to my time. I pushed hard through Harvard Square without intending to, and added two minutes of data to the end of the run to track my heart rate recovery while I stood still.

I have been in a funk for the past few days due to an unusual confluence of stimuli in various portions of my life. My resulting angst and fluctuations in my rhythms and mood have been disproportionate to the perturbations. I believe I have dealt with many of the problems that confronted me, and now I just need to suck it up and recover. Much is uncertain, but a loss of control and deliberateness in the course of daily life is unjustified.

Legs felt a bit stiff during the run today.

C • hmmm... 10

Event: Hudson Highlander XVI
 

Vetting at Lynn Woods with Brendan. Logged at half the time; total time spent was about 2 hours.

Running about. Brendan and I picked up about 7 large bags of trash at Franklin Park, chiefly from control sites. We wisely wore gloves; the items we disposed included some syringes, an occasional condom, and miscellaneous undergarments. We were assailed by a legion of mosquitoes, who probably caused much more damage than I inflicted in turn.

C • Trash duty 2

An aggressive easy run around the Charles River. I had planned to go kayaking this afternoon after internet was installed in my apartment (woo interwebz), but I dozed while my mp3 player was charging, and didn't get up until 5 PM, when Charles River Canoe and Kayak would be nearly closed. After reading about the Brackett gamma transition, I set out, continuing part 5/7 of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I'm happy with my pace, but it was challenging. I don't have realistic hopes for victory at Boulderdash, but I will fight as though I did nonetheless.

Truly epic oration:

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the new world, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

While I am reluctant to use my log for commentary on anything except specific remarks on my training, this article, "The Orienteering Elite Unite against WOC program", deserves mention. In summary, an illustrious group of elites totaling 111 names from the Liberec World Cup races signed a petition to the IOF Council expressing their disapproval for the IOF Council's proposal for a modified WOC program. The elites decided to take this approach because "the [national] federations do not listen to us." This is a mighty band of the greatest orienteers in the world (including Thierry, who supports the petition though he didn't sign it at Liberec), and I hope their voice is heard by the IOF.

C • Wow 1

I went to the War Memorial Pool for lap swimming. A very slow old guy occupied the fast lane, and I kept running into him. He didn't seem to want to defer to me, and I didn't ask, so by virtue of the pigeonhole principle, I shared a "slow" lane with Jess.

Tonight's workout consisted of 500m freestyle, 250m kickboarding, 750m freestyle, and five or six jumps off the diving board. The limiting factor was my pain tolerance for chlorine in my eyes rather than fitness; I need to get goggles. Fins would also improve the workout. Time is a guess.

Today, as an exercise, I modeled my bowling score in a game as a function of three statistics I regularly record: number of strikes, first-ball pins (average pins felled by the first ball in each frame), and spares. I used a simple linear regression, and while the input statistics aren't wholly independent, it's a good first model. The model is pretty good, with r² = 0.88, and a standard error of the predicted score of 7.70 pins/game. The residuals were normally distributed.

Here's the weird thing: while a strike is more valuable in a bowling game, the coefficient for the number of spares in a game was actually higher than that for the number of strikes. According to the (admittedly simple) model, I earn 12.4 points for each additional spare I hit and only 10.1 for each additional strike.

I suspect the reason for this is that the number of spares is a better indicator of how well I am bowling. I haven't bowled more than 5 strikes in a game, and even on my best days, strikes occur somewhat randomly (apparently with 17.6% probability on average). A strike is satisfied by a single criterion - placing the ball in a relatively small area in the position-momentum space that characterizes the impact. A spare requires two events - an initial hit, then a successful subsequent hit. The probability is maximized if both hits are good, though non-zero even for really bad first shots. Consequently, the variation in the number of spares I hit is more strongly correlated with competent bowling than the variation in the number of strikes.

This exercise is somewhat pointless, since calculating bowling scores is not a difficult process from the raw data. I'm sure that if I focused on training a particular technique, the regression model would also change; this model is only valid for the data I have collected over the past year, and would probably be better modeled by a piecewise regression as my technique has changed.

C • correlations are probably important 4

On the SLOC Relay champs:

Mispunches:
The high density of parallel features typical of flood plain terrain coupled with mass start and relatively high visibility suggest that mispunching will be a fairly common mistake. To completely disqualify a team for such an error seems a bit draconian. Therefore, a team may negate a mispunch by running a penalty loop subject to the following restrictions:

It seems easier to just have people check their codes. While it might be charitable to include a penalty loop, it vastly complicates the process. When you finish a leg, you need to download quickly to check for MPs, then quickly run a penalty loop while the race admins bust out a ruler to see if the mp'd control is within 250m of the correct control (not crossing bank lines).

C • Mispunching 17

My office building was evacuated late Thursday evening due to reports of a gas leak, so I went home and went on a run. In my haste to evacuate, I forgot my 305 in its cradle, charging in my office, so the distance and time are less precisely measured than usual. Legs felt good.

I ran at a deliberately easy pace to the river and ran an Eliot-Western Ave loop, crossing the Harvard and Weeks bridges twice. I estimated the time by glancing at the clock on my phone in my apt before and after the run. I felt acceptable, apart from a bout of weakness and jitters halfway through the run. I continued part 5 of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and I'm entering the military strategy section, with which I'm vastly more familiar than the political maneuverings of the 1920s and 1930s. Sucks to be General Gamelan and the poorly coordinated military commands of the Dutch and Belgians in the aftermath of the conquest of Norway and Denmark. The allied commanders were two decades behind the Germans in their grasp of military tactics, and adhering to notions of guaranteed neutrality from a megalomaniacal warlord with 136 infantry and armored divisions standing on your border is not good strategy. For not the first time in European history, the English channel saved Western civilization from cultural and social cataclysm. It's much easier in hindsight to identify errors, but I'm still incredulous at how badly the democracies of Western Europe played both the peace and the first year of war with the Germans. Despite his debacle of the British naval intervention in Norway, Churchill was the first leader to effectively stand against Hitler and adequately understand how critical the situation was, as early as the Anschluss of Austria. I suspect the modern stereotype of the French as lackluster in war stems from their defeat in essentially five days by the Panzer divisions under Guderian and Rommel in the Ardennes, though it was probably exacerbated by de Gaulle's obstinacy.

My second favorite warship, mostly for all that she represented in the twilight of the British Empire (as opposed to her tremendously flawed armor design) is unquestionably the HMS Hood. There is some symbolism to be found in her catastrophic demise at the hands of the Bismarck; the massive and senseless loss of life in her sinking is a testament to the insanity of war, particularly the war that only Imperialistic Europe seems to know how to wage. What a beautiful ship.

Particularly if you live in New England, please consider donating platelets. Apparently Irene depleted the blood supply, and platelets are particularly useful without depleting athletes of red blood cells.

Read more at the Red Cross.

Evening run. My legs felt well rested after such a long period without road running. While much of my time vetting was not spent running, I did run hard on trails, apparently without debilitating effect.

Since I was feeling good, I pushed a little harder today. Breaking under 5:00/km pace is much harder than it used to be eighteen months ago (at least without a suitable nemesis to drive me to excel). One I have built up enough base, I will start doing intervals to get my top speed up.

I felt a twinge in the front of my left leg near the end of my run, but it didn't seem to be anything serious. In the aftermath of the run, my legs are pain free - just slightly sore from running. I find it absurd that 40 minutes of running can wear out my legs, but c'est la vie. I'm almost done with part 5 of 7 of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I followed the run with the usual stretching.

All this course setting and course vetting has me on track for the most training I have done in a month since my fracture in August 2010. It would be nice (of course) if the activity were actual O-training rather than just woods time, but I will take what I can get. I find myself tempted to take up Ski-O simply because all the mosquitoes are dead, but I ski like a duck.

Some performance goals:
- Sub 19:00 5k by Dec 31
- Sub 1:25 New Bedford half (6:30-ish/mile)
- 200+ bowling score by March 31, 2012

The top men in the World Cup long race in Liberec ran at sub 4:00/km pace (absolute speed, not leg distance/split) for the first leg of the race. So fast!

The Final Countdown, performed by the German brass, with gratuitous amounts of style. Note the impressive chops on the trumpet at 2:30.

C • Ski-o good things 4

Vetting controls at the Fells. I don't own a car, though I had one this weekend for the Night-O and a visit to IKEA. Route 2 is usually my standard for miserable commute traffic, since I witness it occasionally. However, Route 2 is dwarfed by the cesspool of gridlock and inefficiency that is Interstate 93. The commute into Boston was bad even at 8:45, when I drove home. I am quite certain that biking would have been faster.

Orienteering in the early morning is exhilarating. I will report statistics on control counts after the meet, but it was not a small number. I am considering making a "course setting/planning" category, because I have spent considerable time in the woods over the past year doing just that. While it's beneficial, it's not nearly as constructive as focused training, and my current logging inflates my O-time. Today, for example, I would often spend a minute or two in the control circle checking out features around me. I only ran at speed to "commute" between controls.

I weighed in at 185.6 after the session and some rehydration, though I imagine my current average weight is around 188-190.

One nice aspect of the Fells is that there is no poison ivy. The green briar found it and killed it all.

Control count = 129