Training Log Archive: iansmith

Event: The 35th annual Billygoat Run
 

2013 Billygoat, my third. I orienteered neither well nor fast, and my performance was very disappointing. More to come.

Cool down jog. Displeased with myself.

Billygoat - Splits

Event: Speedy Goat Sprint Relay
 

A few notes on the Speedy Goat:

First and foremost, PBricker was fantastic. When I proposed a Speedy Goat sprint relay in the vicinity of the Billygoat (keeping with the past two years), Phil critiqued the possibilities and offered to set courses at Cemetery Hill. The courses were magnificent - challenging and avoiding running into high traffic dog and frisbee areas.

I was not sufficiently organized. A combination of an hour long traffic delay and not enough initial planning led to a convoluted but successful relay system. Had there been a significantly larger number of teams, it would have been prohibitive. The specific issue was handling the map exchanges per team. My unfamiliarity with the relay software led me to push back the start 30 minutes (when I really only needed 5). It is also advisable to have at least two people working the meet site: a competent results person and a director who can keep everything flowing smoothly. I was able to fulfill both roles because attendance was low.

Event location: holding the event in conjunction with the Billygoat is a reasonable idea (though I think a sprint relay other times of the year would work at least as well). It's not necessary that the Speedy Goat site be near the Billygoat, and this can be prohibitive if people have to travel more than an hour to get to the site. Unless plentiful, inexpensive housing is available, most people will want to return home on Saturday night. I think this year's SG would have been much more successful if help near Boston or Hartford, both in terms of the absolute number of attendees and the number of Billygoaters who attended.

So, while the organization and logistics (and hence attendance) were a bit lacking, the event went off well enough, and everyone seemed to have a good time. Thanks a bunch to Phil, to Alex, Anna, Anne, and Jeff Saeger, and John Eric Nelson for their help with registration, control pickup, hauling equipment, and logistics, and to Ed for taking the time to teach me the meet software. And of course, thanks to PG for making the weekend happen in the first place.

C • Thanks Ian! 4

In loose shorts. I slowed to a walk for a few minutes to check attackpoint.

In response to my post in the obligatory thread about the ED, I tried to think of a few ways I thought OUSA could help NEOC.

1. Hire an OUSA mapper, contract him out to clubs. Words cannot convey how useful this would be. I imagine that a club with mapping needs as large as NEOC would still need to find other mappers, and OUSA could help by offering advice on what was needed rather than letting everyone invent their own wheel. Smaller clubs could hire the central mapper.
2. Publicity. NEOC has an adequate schedule, but it really lacks publicity infrastructure. This is something the board is currently working on; OUSA could be helpful not by posting some generic materials somewhere, but by explicitly offering a set of instructions on where to advertise and with what materials. What has worked for other clubs? The process could be made stupidly simple: I don't need to talk to Joe Orienteer in Podunk Junctionville, ST about what he did; we need a set of snazzy pdfs or whatever in which we insert our event data and send to a list of places recommended by OUSA. Surely a blanket publicity kit would gain significant traction virtually everywhere, and clubs would just customize it to their particular set of events. Clubs could then refine the materials as needed; we're starting from scratch.

What ideas do you have? NEOC is an enormous club with lots of orienteering expertise; smaller, less established clubs probably have many more needs the federation could help with. We have a fairly coherent product and system with a few specific challenges. Our big initiatives are:

1. A robust local schedule
2. A regular A-meet schedule (presently stalled)
3. The mapping needed to support both of the above
4. Outreach and education - scout activities, possibly a junior development program
5. Mutually beneficial relationships with neighbor clubs

I suppose there are a few other possible avenues, e.g. more support for elite orienteering. I don't think most of the membership is conscious of what is happening in elite orienteering. I would really like to see NEOC muster more activity on the national stage, including A-meet attendance and teams in the relay champs. It doesn't help that CSU siphons many of the most competitive people; a 4-pt team may not be realistic, but NEOC can definitely assemble solid 8-pt teams. As an aside, perhaps we can tautologically make the relay champs more relevant by making the relay champs more relevant.

Warmup after biking over.

CSU Park-O #1 at Danehy. Danehy is not a very interesting place to orienteer, and it only partly compensates with convenience. Still, my plan for today was a threshold run, and it's more fun to run with a map than without. The race was over a bit too quickly; I think in the future, I will either run the course again or run it backwards to get a full 20+ minutes.

I ran reasonably well, without mistakes, but I didn't have quite as much zip as I was hoping. I will try to do better in the future.

Cool down + extra distance.

Control pickup.

Park-O - Splits

Easy warmup run with Dave and Victor. We dropped Victor off, and Dave decided to come along for some of my intervals.

'Disappointing' doesn't adequately convey the magnitude of my sentiment: A senate in the gun lobby's grip

Interval session. The plan was a pyramid of 4, 8, 12; 12, 8, 4. Unfortunately, there was a big lacrosse game happening at the MIT football field with many spectators, and I decided that running on the track would not be appreciated. Instead, I did a set of Vassar St intervals. The long section of the road that borders Briggs Field is devoid of cars - no driveways or cross streets - and is about 830m long. I six before calling it quits to meet up with Alex and Ed. I'm a bit disappointed with my splits; I was hoping to sustain 3:30/km or 2:54 for each 830. I suppose that's a bit fast for my current fitness.

Workout: 400, 6x830
Splits:
400: 74
830: 2:49, 2:58, 3:00, 2:55, 3:01, 2:58

I think next week, I shall run Nx400 in an effort to bolster my lethargic quickness.

Easy recovery run to Davis and back. I bruised my right knee at Pawtuckaway while climbing over a felled tree, and that was a little stiff today. I took this chance to break in my new NB 860s, which feel ok.