Training Log Archive: jtorranc

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.