Training Log Archive: jtorranc

Bike in. I went downtown in the evening to see Roman Polanski's "The Fearless Vampire Killers" (aka "Dance of the Vampires") at the Goethe Institute. Just me - Dan couldn't get there from work in time.

Hanging the white and most of the yellow courses at Bowie and pickup of 9 controls after the meet. Courses were mostly well-received (Eddie referring to the Blue course as a quagmire being a notable exception) though it appears the number of controls I threw at the brown and green courses may have been something of a shock.

From force of habit I neglected to mention in first logging this that this was Dan's first orienteering meet (background: take about two thirds of the films and dance performances mentioned in my log since August and add that I was going to them with a petite woman named Dan (not short for "Danielle" but for "Dan Tam" - Vietnamese for "Good Heart" apparently)). She has quite lovely running form with everything moving backwards and forwards rather than side to side (not that I'm not biased) but has greater directional challenges when it comes to whole body movements, i.e. she did the white course with a couple of moderately epic takings of the wrong path out of a junction and then about half of the yellow course with fewer of those but other difficulties before she abandoned it to make the deadline for reporting to the finish. Not a bad first outing.

Biking out to Bowie to finish vetting my courses and hang all the advanced controls.

Very slow vetting of the control locations I didn't manage to reach last Saturday plus hanging about 40 bags and putting water at the four water controls. Six hours less half an hour stationary in the meet director's car once he arrived less time for standing still at controls.

Run into work through Rock Creek Park.

C • Commute 1

Bike home loaded with controls which I sorted into the planned hanging order before heading to bed. No stretching - backsliding already.

Commute in but not home - took Metro to classical recital at University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts, soon to be Heidi Onkst's employer.

Another standard commute with a stop for groceries enroute. Also a repeat of the stretching at home.

Utterly standard commute. Did some stretching during the evening - time to do something about my belief that my recent hamstring problems are likely related to a loss of flexibility as my time dancing and warming up for same has gone down and my running has increased.

C • 7

Commute and grocery shopping.

A leisurely paddle upstream on the Potomac from Key Bridge. Wore gloves this time so no repeat of wearing a hole in my left hand as in Venture Quest.

Cycling to and back from Bowie. Much of this in light to barely misting rain but better while cycling than in the woods.

Vetting about two thirds of my intended control locations at Bowie (fortunately mostly the more difficult two thirds since I'll have to finish up next Saturday before I can draw master maps and finalise control descriptions). The wetlands were generally fairly full but nothing like what I'd feared, mostly having edges pretty much where the map showed them. I ran into a lot of large puddles on trails but none of them were impassable. Though my feet got quite wet over the course of the day - all praise neoprene socks. Just over 5 hours in the terrain but very little running, mostly walking and a great deal of standing still looking back and forth from the map to the terrain so I'm logging about half of it. I forgive myself for every time I've ever found Bowie confusing while running - it's confusing at a snail's pace. Especially in some but not all of the more complex areas - from what I saw, at least one field checker did an exquisite job of representing the more detailed areas and someone else did a rather less satisfactory job in one detailed area in particular. I also found myself disagreeing with the use of the broken ground symbol in one instance - I would have preferred the use of a formline hill. And the areas of utterly flat floodplain with nothing but shallow ditches and watercourses as features were great fun. I was thinking "I can't put a flag there because I can't be sure that's the mapped knoll/precisely where the mapped ditch ends (or ended when the map was made)/etc." a lot.

C • Mid-Atlantic's 5

Normal commute. Got home and finished sketching out courses for Bowie then got to bed early.

Run to work through Rock Creek Park - seemed like time to do some running again.

Home by bike by way of PCRM. No rain yet but I'm developing concern that rain this weekend plus the week of rain leading up to last weekend may have the terrain at Bowie (for which I'm to set courses for October 30th this weekend) largely flooded. I suppose I'll have to make the call as to whether to go ahead with the meet this Saturday. I'm not sure whether to root for cancellation or not - since it's supposed to rain most of Saturday vetting my control locations could be painful but I dislike cancelling or postponing a meet as much as the next orienteer.

C • Bowie 4

Commute in but not home as I took Metro downtown to listen to the Borodin String Quartet at the Library of Congress.

Advanced course results being in from Prince William, it appears I at least didn't need to make the 'Long-O' courses any longer or harder (my blue was about the length of the blue courses at the 2002 US Champs on the same map so probably a couple of kms longer than a typical QOC local meet blue on this map would be - red and green also about 2km longer than usual - brown perhaps only a km) - not an enormous number of DNFs except on orange but no one finished any of the courses in less than 90 minutes. Still unknown whether I made the yellow course adequately or overly difficult.

Commute and grocery shopping/library visit. Had intended to go to the library Board of Trustees meeting but decided it was too far and would take too long and I really ought to start sketching out my courses for the event at Bowie in twelve days.

A grocery shopping trip while laundry dried then off to the Kennedy Center for Ann Hui's "Goddess of Mercy", one of the films screening as part of the Festival of China.

Weekend in Madison, WI for a second cousin's wedding. Training free. My mother and I visited Taliesin for the bulk of our tourism, though we ended up touring Hillside rather than Taliesin itself - the shortest Taliesin tour would have taken two hours, the schedule wasn't favourable, and we had to get back to town for a dinner with most of the Canadian contingent of wedding invitees.

Damned if I remember whether I cycled or not.

Mirror image of yesterday - cycling home but not in. Finished master maps and clue sheets for QOC event this Sunday then left by way of the AFI for a session of a pointlessly evil Tatsuya Nakadai very stylishly killing large numbers of other samurai - in a triumph of style over plot they didn't even bother explaining who the endless supply of men attacking him in the final scene in the burning building were.

Bike in but not home as I took Metro to Georgetown to see the utterly delightful "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" in the evening

C • Curse 2

Cycling home from work - Metroed there from the airport having done my usual time with sister, brother-in-law and nieces maximising first flight out of Pearson in the morning.

O-Cross - an easier race so better technically although I dropped 3 minutes with one big error - a very bad bit of rough compass work leaving a control on the second loop. Also better physically though I was definitely slowing down by the third loop - good thing I had Brian Graham nearby for most of it to remind me I needed to run hard.

Ontario Champs Long - not a very good race technically or physically but I hadn't realised just how not very good it was while I was running. Will have to analyse splits and see whether some of my errors were much bigger than I realised or whether I was just generally slow and sloppy.

Event: Ontario Championships
 

Ride in then left my bike at work for the weekend. Had to rent a car and drive out to BWI for work so kept it through the evening to get to modern dance performance at Kennedy Center. Very late night what with returning it and then getting home - not ideal race preparation.

Work commute and a separate excursion to the library. I must say my training specificity on weekdays is leaving something to be desired. Though I can claim I'm tapering for the Ontario Champs right now.

C • Your Ad 1

Work to Dave Onkst's to catch a ride to the QOC BOD meeting then home late at night.

Cycling in but not home as I took Metro downtown to have dinner before the National Ballet of China performance at the Kennedy Center.

C • Ballet 1

No ride in as I had to return the rental car that made course setting over the weekend logistically possible. Cycled to Takoma Park in the evening to shop for food while the laundry I hadn't managed to do anytime in the previous week was drying. Nice to no longer be scrounging in corners for clean socks that escaped earlier sweeps.

QOC meet at Chopawamsic Creek. Very stupid parallel error on 3, otherwise more or less clean.

Streamering white and yellow courses to go with the advanced ones designed the day before. Fortunately, the trail network hasn't changed significantly so very little in the way of adjustments to my plan were required. This was particularly fortunate since I needed to get shot of this so I could get to the Kennedy Center for the Millenium Stage performance by the Inner Mongolian Chorus. Which was cool though I would have liked more throat singing than they did. Saw the performance by the Chinese National Acrobatic Troupe after that, which was positively stunning.

Course setting in Prince William Forest Park. Streamered 29 control locations to cover orange through blue courses. There are a surprising number of unmapped pits out there and also a surprising number of vanished pits - perhaps they're moving about.