Training Log Archive: PG

Sunday at West Point, even warmer, well, to be honest it was just plain hot. The car thermometer got as high as 94F on the way home.

Green Y course, M60, straight-line distance was 5.2 km, advertised climb 195m.

A similar "run" to yesterday morning, a couple of poor controls, maybe a couple of minutes lost, and a lot of moving in slow motion, but still basically a good outing because I was pretty close to what I was capable of under the present circumstances. Which is all you can ask for.

I'll put my routes up in a while.

But first just something about the cadets that organized the weekend -- they did a great job. And you can't help but be impressed by all of them, they seem to be smart, competent, courteous, pleasant, and also, though they kept it hiding under the surface, tough as nails. Just a pleasure throughout the weekend to interact with them.

I also had a chance over to weekend to see an old friend, someone I hadn't seen for a while, Bud Fish. Bud is the guy that got the orienteering program going at West Point.

The first couple of times I orienteered at West Point were in the mid-70s. The maps were the military version of USGS. I have two recollections. One year the obvious route on one leg of the blue course was around the south end of a pond through a short section of crossable marsh. The marsh turned out to be crossable as long as you could swim. After I had gotten across I noticed a guy on the shore wringing out his jeans. Such were the O' fashions of the time.

The other memory was on the area we used today, again a leg on the blue course. Not many running the course, I think I was the first one out, and as I was running up a jeep road I noticed a van parked alongside it. And as I got closer I saw the sliding door on the van was open, as it was a warm morning. And as I got even with it I couldn't help but notice that inside the van a guy and a girl were having at it. I am not making this up.

Reports from later runners indicated the van was gone by the time they got there.

I'm sure the O' fashions have changed in the last 35 years. My guess is that this other custom endures....

Anyway, as part of getting the orienteering program at West Point established in such a solid way that it has endured for nearly 4 decades, Bud did something that at the time I thought was nuts -- he got West Point mapped. Mapped to the current O' standards of the time. I thought the place was too hilly and too rocky. Well, it is still hilly and rocky, and will always be hilly and rocky, but over the years it has been the site of some excellent orienteering.

Thanks to Bud.

He got a good base map from Sweden, it covered the area from Round Pond down to Bull Pond, and got Göran Öhlund, a world champion (relay) from Sweden to come over and map the north section of the area, around Round Pond.

Bud called me up when Göran arrived, got me to come down to go out in the woods for a day to watch Göran work. We drove out to one side of the area, parked the car, and headed up a dirt road to the interior of the map. His legs were twice as long as mine. I didn't have to run to keep up but it was close. He was looking left and right, occasionally saying things like, "I'll take this," or "I'll take that."

After we had gone maybe a quarter mile up this hill he stopped to look around, his map board in one hand, pencil in the other. I glanced at what he was doing, and only then did I realized he had already mapped the section we had been through, as far as he could see in each direction.

Welcome to the big leagues.

And then Bud talked me into coming down to West Point for a couple of weeks to map the south section around Bull Pond. And then Popoloppen in the middle got mapped. And they were all far from perfect maps, and certainly far different from maps of today. But they were real O' maps.

And Bud got it started. And that should not be forgotten.

C • Thanks for the stories 3

Green Y Long Distance - Splits

Event: USMA West Point A-Meet 2010
 

Early start to get to West Point, beautiful day but hot (mid-80s F), very glad I was not "running" a long course.

Hadn't run in 3 weeks (other then one day when I left a wedge at the first tee, didn't discover it until I needed it at the first green, and had to run back and get it), but things were not so bad as I feared. Heels moderately sore, energy moderately bad, skills middling. I did somehow manage to arrive with my 305 fully discharged instead of fully charged, so no data.

Ran in shorts. Definitely more pleasant than long pants. And an excuse to go very slowing weaving through the barberry to avoid getting torn up. Just one small cut.

I really have to look into getting a magnifier. I can read the map fine if it is still, but only poorly when I am running. A couple of mistakes today, maybe a minute to two total, would have been easily avoidable with better map reading.

Final time was surprisingly competitive. The others must be getting old.

Read in the meet notes about the new, more detailed, mapping standard at West Point. I remember saying to myself partway around the course, "Peter, just because the map is new, that doesn't mean it is any good."

To apologize for that snide comment, let me also add that the cadets seemed to do an awful lot of good work for this event. Just really nicely organized. In every respect.

My course. Not a very good photo (it's almost all white woods, not yellow), I'll do a proper scan when I get home.

C • Read in the meet notes abou... 6

Sat around for a long time, pleasant conversations, eating/drinking some. I had registered for the sprint but wasn't sure it was a good idea, but things didn't feel sore enough, and overall I didn't feel wasted enough, to justify a DNS. So I ambled off to the start, my mind pleasantly diverted from the task at hand by a little pro bono tax consulting....

Had a pretty good run, just the aforementioned problem reading the map on the run, I get some info just not enough. But no mistakes of any significance and a decent effort under the circumstances. I did have the advantage of having set courses here before, but much of the time the orienteering was pretty easy, just count the buildings and keep your eyes open.

Were I running faster it would be more difficult, the main challenge under the circumstances being to make sure I went to all the controls and in the right order. Which I managed to do.

A good result.

And then totally wasted afterwards, napped a little before dinner, still wasted. Tomorrow may be a struggle....

My course, same disclaimer as above.

Green Y Middle Distance - Splits

Or/Br/Gr Sprint - Splits

A day of triumph, disaster, and triumph.

First triumph was nailing down virtually all the travel plans for the Big Muddy Rogaine. No small matter. Done by late morning, feeling great!

And done just in time to head off to the golf course for a get-together with Mike Fritz and Peter Goodwin, plus Gail. A gorgeous day, fine company, but one of those days the golf gods take a big stick and whack you on the head, and then do it again, and again, and again,....

And while my behavior was not nearly as bad as it would have been a few years back, it was far from as mellow as it should have been. Work still needed.

And then, after a fine dinner by Gail, with excellent company from my fellow PG, with good conversation about all that is happening in the world of O', it was time for another triumph....

The issue being, what are we going to do the last weekend in June, the choice being the wedding or the Berman champs (i.e. the SML champs). So a good discussion about life and what's important and before long the decision was clear, except we were already too late for the cabin deal in Yosemite.

But a quick check there, space still available. Next the flights. And it took a couple of hours, but the result was something worthy (perhaps) of the real travel wizards (Cristina?) -- Hartford to SF for $150, a good deal on a car, then SF non-stop to Calgary for $95, another good deal on a car, and then home, Calgary to Hartford, the fares on this leg exorbitant, roughly $500, so go to the mileage bank and extract enough to cover it.

Awesome. This anti-procrastination week is really working.

Off to West Point in the morning. I have very low expectations.

But, almost forgot, still time to vote on the logo....

C • logo 1

Back from Northampton after leaving the car for service. Windy, mostly cross.

Just finished a fascinating home visit with a fellow named Ben from MassSAVE, an operation sponsored by the electric utilities if I understand things correctly. Ben's outfit is actually called the Center for Ecological Technology, quite a nice name.

He showed up for what was planned as a two-hour visit to check out our house. It ended up closer to three.

First is a tour of the house, bottom to top, figuring out all the places we are losing heat in the winter and what can be done. That takes maybe 30 minutes.

Then after a couple of trips to his car to bring in several big boxes of florescent bulbs, we are put to work replacing all the incandescent bulbs in the house. That takes us quite a while, an hour anyway. By the time we are done we have installed 51 new florescent bulbs, about a dozen different styles depending on where they were going, at a total cost to us of $518.70. Except there's also a rebate, and the rebate is also $518.70, meaning it's all free. This is really quite cool.

Ben meanwhile has pulled out various high-tech gear and he is testing various things -- the safety of the heating and hot water system (it passes), their efficiency (so-so), some sort of air pressure tests to quantify the amount of air leakage, checking the oven for CO (fair, definitely not as good as it should be), and who knows what else.

And then he is at his laptop (not a Mac, but he has a Mac at home, so he's OK), and after a while papers come spitting out, and then he's calling up his office and by the time we're done we've contracted with them to come spend a day air sealing the house (plugging all the little holes), and duct sealing, plus Ben is coming back for a diagnostic visit to look at solar possibilities and I think some other stuff too.

And the cost of the air sealing is $592, but it has a 100% rebate just like the light bulbs, and the duct sealing is also $592, and now, well, you knew it couldn't all be good news, this has a rebate of only 75%, so we are going to have to fork over $148. The calculated payback period is 6 months, that's pretty good. And we can get a 0% interest loan if we want.

And we are also looking at possibilities for a new furnace and/or hot water heater, and something will hopefully happen in this regard this year.

This is all very fine. I was quite amazed when a MassSave appointment was available right away. We also had a guy from our oil company over this morning to see what he would propose, and another guy coming in the next day or two. This is all part of my new program to minimize procrastination, and if it ends up with us paying less for oil and electricity, that would be so much the better. We are already ahead just with the new bulbs, and feeling very virtuous too.... :-)

And in the meantime, the wind has shifted from out of the west at 10-15 mph, to out of the NW at 25-30 mph. If it could just shift all the way around to the north, then the ride to Northampton to get my car would be very quick. As it is, I might get bounced a little....



The pile of empty bulb boxes (with still more to go) is leaving little room for Ben and his laptop.

C • bulbs 9

And the ride back to Northampton was quicker, mostly good quartering tailwind except for a couple of early miles, though it seems I was working harder too.

One of these days I will have to see if I can do a ride without trying to work hard, keep the pulse low, just out of curiosity.

Injury report --

No, not what you might think, the injuries in this case are were a sore back and blisters on my thumbs, both left over from last Saturday, when there was "Volunteer Day" at the course where I play. The maintenance budget is very tight, so about 40 of us showed up to do hard labor for about 4 hours, in my case raking and pruning and pulling out briers.

And I am not used to hard labor.

There is a wide difference between people who work with just with their minds (and maybe their fingers tapping computer keys), and those that work with their muscles (and also their minds). And as hard as it may be for the former to do the hard physical work of the latter, it is probably also as hard for the latter to sit at a desk all day long.

The blisters and the sore muscles are healing. And what remains is actually a good memory of a group volunteer effort to improve the place we play.

And I've been thinking it would be nice if a similar effort could take place in orienteering circles.

Spent my daily walk checking out the NE corner of the Mt. Tom map. Should I post my route? :-)

Wore my 305 for a round of rogaine practice just out of curiosity -- 5.49 miles in 2:49:26, would have been a few minutes faster except for traffic at the end.

So it's clearly not CV exercise if my pulse was never much over 100, and that was just walking up a couple of hills. Though I'd guess it's useful rogaine practice, just being on my feet for a while, though I really should be playing two or three rounds a day.... :-)

Cool and cloudy for the first half, then a squall came through, rain and wind and the temperature dropped about 10 degrees. Just added a little to the challenge.

Out to the local art house again, this time to a French flick, 35 Shots of Rum. Interesting enough, but the whole thing was just too much filmed in slow-motion. Didn't mind going, but can't recommend it.

C • Movie recommendation 23

Modified River Road - Old Deerfield loop as part of Mill Village road is closed for repairs to the riverbank.

Start of a new program (not training, life). Time to get my shit together.

C • Time 6