Training Log Archive: LoriIn the 1 days ending Sep 17, 2010:
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Friday Sep 17, 2010 #
ARDF (2m) 2:12:13 [3]
shoes: Cascadia Orienteering
4th place at the ARDF World Champs in Croatia!!!!
2m at the ARDF World Champs. I'll write more later, but suffice it to say that it was pouring rain, cold, really difficult, and awesome!
Ok, here's the more :-).
I got up just after 5am to eat breakfast to make the ridiculously early bus ride to the start area. The hotel was right on the ocean, so I woke to the sound of rain and waves crashing against the shore. Not the most welcome sound for the start of a race with equipment that isn't waterproof... We got to the start assembly area at about 8:30am and after making sure all the radios had nice little plastic skirts on them (we still had to be able to get our hands in there to tune them), we put our radios in the nicely soggy impound. Impound finished at 9:30am and my start wasn't until 12:50pm. Ah...planning. I settled in for the long, cold, damp wait for my start. Some of the teams already had the map and had trained on it and stuff (don't ask...), so they decided to post the map for everyone to look at before their start. I made a plan for where to go once I started and discussed with Vadim and George where they thought the transmitters would be placed. I was finally called up to get my radio and map together and stare sadly at the muddy mess that used to be the start corridor. I slogged off down the start corridor, which unfortunately wasn't really heading in the direction I had planned to go and was flanked on both sides by incredibly thick green stuff. By the time the forest was remotely runnable, I wasn't entirely clear on where I was and my map was starting to disintegrate. I started just taking logging trails in the general direction I was hearing control 2 from and hoping that I wasn't getting too many reflections. I eventually ended up on the trail I initially planned to be on and after about 10 more minutes of circling heard number 2 really loud and clear. A couple of minutes later I stumbled up to number 2. Yay!
The main road on the map boundary was only about 20 feet away, so I headed there to run down to the south side of the map to see what I could hear. Controls 4 and 5 were pretty loud, but I still hadn't really heard 1 clearly and 3 was sort of on and off. I got 3 quite loudly on the road and cut off on a main trail towards it. As I got into a large field in the middle of the map, I noticed that all of the sudden 1 was audible in the southeast corner. Grumble. Back where I came from. I turned around and headed back for number 1 and found it after a minimum of crashing around. It was also quite near the road, so I headed back to the road to get to the rest of the controls, since I figured that would be faster than slogging along wet, muddy, complicated trail system. After a couple of minutes I came to a large hill and decided to stop and take bearings on 3, 4, and 5. Five was coming basically directly from the finish, so I decided to go to that one last. Both 3 and 4 were coming from a very large hill on the northwest part of the map, and I figured only one of them was actually on that hill. The other one had to be a reflection based on exclusion zones. I also knew which age categories took which controls and from that figured that 3 must be somewhere in the middle of the map and 4 must be up on the huge hill based on course lengths. I went back to the road and then took another road through a small village up towards where I thought number 3 was. No circling this time, just straight into the control :-).
I got back to the trail and headed up the hill towards number 4. I decided to run along the trail until I heard number 4 turn 90 degrees to one side or the other but pretty quickly realized this wasn't going to be possible because of all the reflections, so I took a trail that sent me further up the hill to try to get a better bearing from above. There was a bit of wasted climbing and a small amount of circling, but it eventually came on nice a strong to my right and I tore off towards it. Only one control left!
I knew number 5 was really near the finish, so I headed off down the trail towards the finish. Every time it came on it was sounding closer and closer, so I figured I was going in the correct direction. On the cycle before I found it I knew I was really, really close, so I headed into the woods to see what I could see. Nothing. Ok, back to the trail. I then found another trail that looked like about 200 people had run up it. Aha! I headed down this trail and when number 5 came back on I was about 10 feet from it. Yay! Done with the transmitters. Now just for getting to the finish!
I set back off down the trail and into the exclusion zone for the run into the finish! Woohoo!
2m at the ARDF World Champs. I'll write more later, but suffice it to say that it was pouring rain, cold, really difficult, and awesome!
Ok, here's the more :-).
I got up just after 5am to eat breakfast to make the ridiculously early bus ride to the start area. The hotel was right on the ocean, so I woke to the sound of rain and waves crashing against the shore. Not the most welcome sound for the start of a race with equipment that isn't waterproof... We got to the start assembly area at about 8:30am and after making sure all the radios had nice little plastic skirts on them (we still had to be able to get our hands in there to tune them), we put our radios in the nicely soggy impound. Impound finished at 9:30am and my start wasn't until 12:50pm. Ah...planning. I settled in for the long, cold, damp wait for my start. Some of the teams already had the map and had trained on it and stuff (don't ask...), so they decided to post the map for everyone to look at before their start. I made a plan for where to go once I started and discussed with Vadim and George where they thought the transmitters would be placed. I was finally called up to get my radio and map together and stare sadly at the muddy mess that used to be the start corridor. I slogged off down the start corridor, which unfortunately wasn't really heading in the direction I had planned to go and was flanked on both sides by incredibly thick green stuff. By the time the forest was remotely runnable, I wasn't entirely clear on where I was and my map was starting to disintegrate. I started just taking logging trails in the general direction I was hearing control 2 from and hoping that I wasn't getting too many reflections. I eventually ended up on the trail I initially planned to be on and after about 10 more minutes of circling heard number 2 really loud and clear. A couple of minutes later I stumbled up to number 2. Yay!
The main road on the map boundary was only about 20 feet away, so I headed there to run down to the south side of the map to see what I could hear. Controls 4 and 5 were pretty loud, but I still hadn't really heard 1 clearly and 3 was sort of on and off. I got 3 quite loudly on the road and cut off on a main trail towards it. As I got into a large field in the middle of the map, I noticed that all of the sudden 1 was audible in the southeast corner. Grumble. Back where I came from. I turned around and headed back for number 1 and found it after a minimum of crashing around. It was also quite near the road, so I headed back to the road to get to the rest of the controls, since I figured that would be faster than slogging along wet, muddy, complicated trail system. After a couple of minutes I came to a large hill and decided to stop and take bearings on 3, 4, and 5. Five was coming basically directly from the finish, so I decided to go to that one last. Both 3 and 4 were coming from a very large hill on the northwest part of the map, and I figured only one of them was actually on that hill. The other one had to be a reflection based on exclusion zones. I also knew which age categories took which controls and from that figured that 3 must be somewhere in the middle of the map and 4 must be up on the huge hill based on course lengths. I went back to the road and then took another road through a small village up towards where I thought number 3 was. No circling this time, just straight into the control :-).
I got back to the trail and headed up the hill towards number 4. I decided to run along the trail until I heard number 4 turn 90 degrees to one side or the other but pretty quickly realized this wasn't going to be possible because of all the reflections, so I took a trail that sent me further up the hill to try to get a better bearing from above. There was a bit of wasted climbing and a small amount of circling, but it eventually came on nice a strong to my right and I tore off towards it. Only one control left!
I knew number 5 was really near the finish, so I headed off down the trail towards the finish. Every time it came on it was sounding closer and closer, so I figured I was going in the correct direction. On the cycle before I found it I knew I was really, really close, so I headed into the woods to see what I could see. Nothing. Ok, back to the trail. I then found another trail that looked like about 200 people had run up it. Aha! I headed down this trail and when number 5 came back on I was about 10 feet from it. Yay! Done with the transmitters. Now just for getting to the finish!
I set back off down the trail and into the exclusion zone for the run into the finish! Woohoo!