Training Log Archive: expresso

Event: CSU Pine Hill A-meet
 

Beautiful day but a bit hot for me. This first day's courses were in a great area with a great new LIDAR-based map. I enjoyed the experience despite making a large number of mistakes.
First, the good things:
- route choices
- map contact, except in rocky areas
Bad things:
- ability to decipher/translate rocky areas with black on map
- skipping planned attackpoints
- looking down at map (or descriptions) in vicinity control and miss seeing it
- physical stamina in hot weather
After my year off, my comeback is progressing much more slowly than I planned. At times, my orienteering is just awful but that will change. I just have to keep visiting challenging terrain and quality meets like this.

Tried to cool down between races by staying in the shade but as soon as I got back in the sun I felt my temperature rising. On the jog thrugh the first few controls my high HR limited my clear thinking and I started making mistakes right away. Forgot the contour interval at 1 and searched too far down the hillside when I was basically on top of the hill. Stood next to 2 but did not see it so I looked at my map and could not fathom how I could botch such an easy leg. Dylan walked right by me and punched on the other side of the tree. My fuzzy brain could not figure out the rocks and cliffs around 3 & 4 but I was very close and again stood near the control, looking at my map, and wondering where else I could possibly be. Both were on the other side of a nearby cliff. 4 was in the sun and I was physically drained at this point so I decided to walk the rest of the course. Once I cooled down and my HR lowered, my cognition returned and the course was as easy as it should have been for me.
Same good and bad stuff from my earlier race. As Sunday was going to be even hotter, I moved down to the red course and got an earlier start time.

Saturday Blue Semi - Splits

Saturday Blue Final - Splits

Jog to Wellington & back. Nice evening. Looked up the hill though the open woods and wished the weather had been better to get up there on the paths but many of them are glorified stream beds so they would be very wet.

Lap round the lake. Yucky day and I was not motivated to do this but good to finish.

West Point A-Meet - Classic
Great course, nice cool temps. Felt pretty good but my concentration & confidence was just not on today. Lots of errors, some small, some big. I found myself navigating correctly to almost every control but, when I didn't immediately see it, I'd move to relocate only to discover later that I'd been on top of it. Confidence rattled by this enough that I decided to walk the last half of the race to completely concentrate on navigation. This helped but further killed my time. Rocky terrain has always been my nemesis. I wish I could practice in it more often.

C • Hudson Valley terrain 4

Classic: Red - Splits