Training Log Archive: PG

My favorite snippet from an otherwise too lengthy Board discussion about GPS was the following --

There is rampant cheating at these events. (from board Amy Williams, who is involved with orienteering in schools and was referring to events with lots of high school teams participating.)

By using GPS? (from another Board member)

No, not at all GPS, the old-fashioned way (meaning collaboration).

And then the Board quickly moved back to GPS, not wanting to handle that hot potato. Better to deal with the problem that might be than the problem that is.

Well, certainly not an overall wonderful day. But at least there was a good bit of pleasure to compensate for a bunch of shit.

Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first, and that would pretty much cover the 44 minutes starting at 12:30, when I started today's M65 course, until 1:14, when I slowly headed back to the finish, limping badly, having trashed my right Achilles, trashed my right hamstring, and taken 26 minutes to find a control that should not have been any problem if only it had been where it was shown on the map.

On the good side, a number of good conversations, a fine dinner with a BAOC group and my local regulars (Charlie, Phil, Gail), and a 10-0 Board vote in favor of a "carry but don't use" GPS policy.

Back to the orienteering. Perhaps the best thing I could have done was to remember my activity of the evening before, when a little searching had uncovered a blog that mapper Sam Smith had kept in the 3 years he had worked on the map. And as I read through the blog what struck me most was how much time he had put into it with what was apparently either a lousy baseman or no baseman. What I should have learned was not have high expectations, and orienteer according.

But, foolish me, I kept thinking that something on the map meant that there was something similar in the terrain.

Got to 1 and 2 OK, though feeling quite uneasy. To 3, followed the major ride (unmapped) that seemed to go about along the mapped vegetation boundary (nonexistent). Slightly to the left on approach, corrected quickly, and then managed to find the control in the wrong reentrant with the help of others.

To 4, not sure how I got from the first campground to the second when I was aiming for the control, but I did somehow. To 5, ran a long ways down the streamers to #11 before deciding that maybe 5 was a different direction. This one was surely all my fault.

But these were all minor matters. Got about halfway to six, was descending a short steep slope, and stepped in an animal hole, toes jammed up, nothing under my heel, sharp pains in the Achilles. Kept moving, it hurt but not so bad I had to stop. Got close to the control, well, I think the best analogy is to O's sister sport, golf, where a pro once was asked to explain how he managed to take 5 putts on a hole, and he replied succinctly, "Miss, miss, miss, miss, make."

I think on 6 I was "miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, oh no, why is my hamstring hurting, oh no, my hamstring is killing me, miss, and then make." Much worse than the 5 putts, but then he knew where the hole was. I thought I knew where the O' marker was, silly me, I was looking close to the river, at the top of a slope, and on the edge of a green patch, whereas the flag was quite a ways from the river, nowhere near any slope, and nowhere near any green. Quite obvious if you just knew where to look.

I found it by happenstance, and then very slowly walked in.

Certainly a good day to have a GPS track. I found the control about 46:30 after I started.

Thought about protesting, didn't, decided I was hurt before I got there and might not have finished. Leave it to someone else. And then I listened to a few other sad tales of woe there, people wondering if it was them or the map, not sure, relieved to know it was the map.

And still the question -- what do you do? Protest or not? People seemed scared to. You don't win any friends by protesting. It can be quite lonely. What do you do?

C • protesting 26

Event: US Individual Championships (Sprint/Middle/Long/Trail)
 

Here is Course 3 (Brown, M65). Course 5 (Red/Blue) and Course 4 (Green) went the same general routing, just generally had some legs that required going further off the straight-line, so the effective distance was a good bit longer.

Click on the image for a larger version.

USA Sprint Champs at the University of West Georgia. Beeline distance was 2.9 km.

Pretty good run, had to stop about three times to be able to see whether there really was a passable gap where I thought there was. Twice there was, once there wasn't. Actually on the latter, I really wasn't sure, so went around just to be on the safe side.

Sometimes the narrow gaps are really hard to see well. The map may be 1:4,000 as it was today, but it's just as hard to read as the 1:15 regular maps because the line widths and the gaps are small. But I guess that is just the way the powers that be like to have the maps.

First half was mostly dealing with the usual college campus stuff, last part had longer legs with significant route choice. Overall the course seemed fine, just longer than what a sprint is supposed to be. My guess is if you took a poll of everyone there, you'd actually get a majority in favor of being a little longer -- and therefore getting to do more orienteering -- but that is just a guess.

And I think that my course (Brown, M65) was a good bit shorter than the Blue/Red and Green courses in terms of optimum route, so the absurdity of the beeline distances (Blue/Red 3.1, Green 3.0, Brown 2.9) was lessened.

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On the 305 front, two items. For those of us not in the WREs, there was the option of taping the displays, and tape readily available. When I started, and I started fairly late, according to the start person no one had taped up.

Second item is the result of my research on whether my 305 helped me at all, and there the answer is clearly that it cost me time, maybe something on the order of 10 seconds. The reason for this, perhaps not a reason expected, is that for whatever reason, maybe negligence on my part, maybe a side effect of my recent slimming, whatever, by the time I had done 2 or 3 controls the chest strap for my heart rate monitor was slipping down. I'd pull it back up as high as I could, a minute later it was falling again.

I repeated this perhaps 5 or 6 times, then gave up, it spent the last half of the run around my race and recording some awesome numbers. But I can't imagine the time spent concentrating on the strap helped my concentration on the map, and for the first half of the course I several times felt like I was not paying nearly enough attention to my orienteering. Fortunately no mistakes, but I had the sense of going a little slower than I should have.

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Beautiful afternoon, nice event set-up, good karma. Spent a while visiting pre-race with the first aid guy, figured maybe going there before would mean going after wouldn't be necessary. A very nice guy.

My only disappointment was that I was hoping that one of our controls would be on a statue of Newt, since this is where he got his start as a historian/consultant. But I guess plans for that have been suspended....

Sprint - Brown - Splits

Usual trails, more sprint training.

Entertainment from Freakonomics about quitting, very interesting, will have to remember to listen to the last 20 minutes. As usual, although the creators I'm sure don't realize it, there were numerous items with relevance to O', including an item from former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who on quitting his post lamented that while other cabinet members got to go to exotic places around the globe, the Secretary of Labor ended up in places like Toledo, or St. Louis on a good day.

If only he knew those were two orienteering hot spots (one future, one past?)....

C • Woo Toledo! 10

Just trying to do a little sprint training in preparation for Friday (similar time and pace)....

L&F is progressing very slowly, but it is progressing.

I see the course lengths for Friday's sprint are --

Blue/Red: 3.1 km
Green: 3.0 km
Brown: 2.9 km
Orange/Yellow: 2.3 km
White: 1.8 km

As someone running the Brown course, I'm guessing there is a typo there. Or have the Brown course runners just gotten a lot faster?

C • Well, now that you're runni... 30

Usual trails on the ridge, reasonably uneventful except for one dog encounter, and it was no big deal. Just that I came up behind a guy out walking with his dog, and as usual I made enough noise when I was still 50 yards away. He looked around, saw me coming, then after a moment deliberation, reached out to grab the dog's collar to hold him while I went by.

I said my usual "Thank you" in such circumstances, trying to encourage good behavior.

I got about 50 yards down the trail when I heard a bark, and then a bark a lot closer, as the dog, now freed, was heading right at me at full speed.

I suppose the owner would say it just wanted to play. And perhaps it did, for it didn't hit me or bite me, just scared me and caused me to cuss rather loudly. And then it retreated back to its owner.

Should I change my greeting in such circumstances to "Thank you, so far"?

I wish this stuff didn't bother me but it does. I've been lucky, but I've heard of too many bad outcomes. And once the bite or the injury is suffered, no amount of apology or explanation can ever undo it.

Maybe I should just run with a can of Mace?

C • My 'favourite' owner like t... 13

Feeling very sore this morning all around my hips and butt, enough to remind me that my immediate gene pool had three of four hips replaced and that the assumption has to be that I'm heading there too.

But after a day of no serious exercise it seems that I feel substantially better. Perhaps along with the not-so-exciting expectation of reverting to childhood as you get older also comes the side benefit of things starting to heal faster?