Training Log Archive: Linear Ice

Met up with Leslie and had a slow walk with the three dogs (and one other that we picked up for about a mile) along the river and up the hill, chatting all the way about her trip to Ireland, my trip out West, and everything in between.

Sprint at Community College (or Center?) in Cranbrook, Canada.
This sprint was completely different from the sprint last weekend; it was flat, around some buildings and open woods surrounding them, no rock gardens with magic mirrors, started and ended on a track.. a fast run, and the winning times were several minutes faster than mine. Very good practice in making quick (easy) decisions and moving along.
I had some good legs, and ended up middle of the pack, with a heck of a lot of Canadians ahead of me. Stuck around for the awards ceremony, it was so good to see Soupbone get his first place, North American Champion, and to see US beat Canada. On our National Holiday. Seems fitting.
What an experience, all of this. Loved it.

I think I've said this before, but it is just so striking to me how the O-folks are so generous, inviting. In addition to seeing friends from previous events -- it's so easy to meet new people too. In particular, it was a real pleasure to finally meet more of the women in my running age category, getting to know Eileen after having heard about her from her brother Kean. And, Peggy was so nice to introduce herself to me and the encouragement from both of them meant a lot. With my truly inconsistent running, comparing my split times with theirs gives me such a good yardstick, and it's just great fun to have competitors who are the same sex and/or not 20 years younger..... seems at least a bit more fair!

Sprint - Course 3 - Splits

Definitely a better race than yesterday, after a parallel error on easy first control, and a bobble on 2nd control. Okay, so it didn't start so well, but after that.... things went smooth, was able to run a good bit of the way (balanced by walking when I needed to be careful) and the map, terrain, and I were all in agreement on where I was. So much of a better feeling than yesterday's Middle event!. The pieces are slowly coming together.
Didn't place well, but felt content.
Terrain was amazing, with very nice footing in very runnable woods. Good steep hills, interesting but not frustrating contours.
With 400 comptetitors, it still was possible to run longish distances (in the right direction) all alone. What a great feeling.

Walk from/to parking area, and warm-up to 1.2 k out remote start.

Long - Course 6 - Splits

Event: North American Orienteering Championships
 

NAOC Middle
an "M" looks an awful lot like a "W" upside down, and so I grabbed the M45+ clue sheet instead of the W45+ at the start.
Which degenerated into mind loss, as I ran straight to my Control 1 on my map, happened to see the men's numbered control on my Clue Sheet, and thought..."wow, that was a bit quicker than I expected". No worries that there was no cliff where there should have been, cause I KNEW where I was. I was at control 1.
So I took off for Control 2 (women's control #2, but starting from the Men's #1 Control). Not so easy to do, but since I am getting good at relocating no matter where you drop me off, it only took 45 minutes or so. At one point, I had a great view overlooking the whole NAOC arena; me and the big Orienteering flag at the tallest hill around. A great place to see what's going on. Easy from there to find #2, just two hills over.
#2 to #3 was easy, except the #3 Control Number didn't match up (looked at armband). So back to #2, where I finally realized that my armband was the wrong one.
#3 to #4 was legitimately a difficult control
but after that, everything was great!!!
Ended up with an MP (first control) and a DNF (overtime)

Sidenote: MNOC jersey brings out all the Minnesota people. Ran into more ex-MNOCers, Brian and Abbie Bell.

walk to start from parking area, and back, and warm up run

Thomass event, like the one that we had at Night-O in OTNT, where there are X number of controls in a box as part of the course- to be found in any order, and a handicap.
In this case, there were 16 controls, and my handicap was 6, so I had to get 10 controls, followed by a sprint (and map exchange).
So, I got 11 controls, and got them pretty quickly. Just wanted to make sure I had at least 10. There were so many squirrels running around, it was easy to find controls if you were within even 100 yards. Kind of a crazy just run hard type of event.
Then the sprint... a bit of a line of people just to follow, since the sprint was only broken into "short" or "long" depending on your age/sex group. I was in "long". About half way through I decided to go a slightly different route, caught up with the group again, then at Control 8, realized I had missed 5. It was UP the hill again. I ran back UP and then back DOWN at least didn't get a mp or dnf. And learned (again) to just follow my own plan and pay no attention to that stream of people who may or may not be going where I want to be. Yay?

Long sprint - Splits

Met up with my daughter, Kelsey outside of W. Yellowstone...
she's still in partial recovery mode from Colorado tick fever, which put her in the hospital! for a couple of days. (before they realized what was wrong).
She's now a convalescent, will start her ranch work again in about a week, still taking it somewhat easy. So a short slow hike was a good way to get her system started again.

Left Kels with some food and a book while I explored ahead a little, got legs stretched out.