Training Log Archive: bishop22

I know I entered this already, but it disappeared.

We hiked up Pikacho Peak (or Peak Peak as we say north of the border). We were about 63 minutes going up and about 49 minutes coming back down. To get back from the peak you have to do a surprising amount of climb to get back over the saddle and head down.

Day 2 of the Texas Stampede. The most disappointing result of the day was Nate's MSP. He punched wrong for his penultimate control - it was at a trail / road junction, and so was the control he punched - only 70m away. Since the minimum separation for 2 controls on similar features is 100m, he filed a protest, so that a zero will not be factored into his rating (the Green HS varsity results from Interscholastics will be included in the Red M-20 ratings for JWOC selection). We had to leave before a jury was convened, but it's clear that, at a minimum, he will receive a SPW. After he punched the wrong control, he had to run right past the correct control to get to the go control, so I think the jury has the option of reinstating his result (although the rules are [intentionally?] ambiguous about what precisely can be done). He would have been 3rd on the day, and that would have moved him up to 4th overall.

Zach had a very nice run, finishing 6th for the day in 34 minutes (8 min / km). I think most of the kids that beat him are 9th graders, so he is spotting them 3 years.

My run on Blue was quite awful. I was fine on C1, but I overran C2, once again because I was excited enough that my pace count took me much further than usual. The recovery wasn't too bad. C3 was short and sweet. C4 was a big problem. It was a long leg (~1300m) without any good trail options. I went quite a bit left of the line in the first half, popping out in the ride at the Yellow/White callup line. I then went north (after going to the right to avoid some green) and took the trail way right of the line and back, rather than cutting thru green (which would have been half the distance). I was way too imprecise cutting off the trail for the control and had to come back down and try again.

I tried to follow the indistinct trails that wound towards C5, but I wound up popping back out on the power line, so I took that up to the marsh S of the control at which point I saw feet running out of the woods. Quite disappointing, since he had started 12 minutes behind me. For C6, I was moving slower (depressed) but executed well (picked up indistinct trail at hilltop to fence to stream. C7 was fine and I don't remember C8 at all, so it must have been OK. C9 was a major disaster. I was wearing the Garmin, so I'll have to check the tracks when I get home next week, but my biggest problem was that I had forgotten that the contours were 3m, not 5m, so I was looking for a deeper large depression (and now looking at the map, I can't tell whether those are contours near C9 or just form lines). In any case, I floundered around in the green for awhile. There was a junior at my control, who was so far from his course that I let him see the location of my control (while telling him that I wasn't supposed to help him). Accidentally followed the line (wanted to be left) to C10, so I got a bit hung up in marsh and junk. C11 and 12 went fine, so did most of C13, but I got lost at the last moment and had to retry from the road.

Lost some time drifting right to C14, but then I was quite happy with my C15 execution. Had to stop for a drink on the way to C16. I started to leave for C17 straight, but then decided I should take the trail to the north, but then I lost that, so just angled to the waterside trail. I left it at the junction before 17 and pace-counted carefully, but missed left and somehow didn't see the building (ruined, I guess) that housed the control. C18 was annoying because I climbed to the top, missed my control, saw the other one that couldn't be mine, but climbed down and over to it anyway, then back up to mine. The rest was clean (just slow as I was running out of gas).

Not a good start to the orienteering season. I had to relearn too many lessons that should be ingrained by now. Too often I make bad decisions about how aggressively to go after a control by not taking into account how I would recover from a miss - wandering aimlessly trying to relocate in green areas is a bad idea. I needlessly take precise bearings at times when there are plenty of map features, while I foolishly use rough bearings at other times. Well, there is a few days to get prepared for the Tucson meet, so there is hope that I can be competitive in M45+ (I'm thinking I won't finish dead last next weekend).

minimal w/up

Blue course at the Texas Stampede. As well as yesterday went for the family, today didn't.

Zach hasn't gone over his course with me yet, but he was about 15min/km, so he's back in 9th place in the Intermediate school category. And Nate had a 10 minute error on his C13, which probably dropped him from 2nd to 7th pretty quickly. At least Walt finished (and not too slowly), and Patty ran very well on her Green course, perhaps 66 minutes.

C1 went quite well and gave me false confidence on my reading ability on this map. I blew C2 by over 10 minutes, mostly due to unrewarded attempts to read the vegetation after I somehow lost the main trail that would have taken me within 40m of the control. I was all over the place, trying to relocate, and finally stumbled across C9, or I may have still been out there.

C3 thru 11 were in the southern part of the map, which seemed to be relatively easy to navigate (except when the vegetation chased me away from the line to C7 and I lost at least 2 minutes).

C12 was the long leg, to get to the N part of the map, and I ran mostly on the dirt roads to the left, for a nice stretch of pure running. I took my time leaving the road to find the indistinct trail thru a nasty section of "light" green. Leaving C12 also required a bit of zig-zag thru medium and dark green to find another indistinct trail, but then I did quite well thru C16 (perhaps running a little farther than I had to, to take advantage of trails and rough open.

First half of C17 went well, but then I ended up running over the hill to play ot safe, when I should have run around. C18-C21 went quite well, except I was quite tired running uphill thru rough open to get to C20. C22 was another miss - I drifted left (unknowingly of course), so when I got to the trail and saw a cairn on the other side, I was shocked when there was no flag behind it, but I corrected when I saw another cairn on the map. I lost at least 2 minutes trying to go relatively straight to C23 without noticing the uncrossable fence. At that point, I should have gone right, but I panicked and went left, which added even more time. And then I stopped at the control before mine, distracted by others (and my clue sheet had been torn off, so I didn't know what I was looking for), before moving on to the water slide.

w/up included getting Z to the start (alternating 1 min jog / walk), jogging back to the car (1100m), some brief jogging and jogging back to the start.

w/dn was not worthy of logging - my legs were pretty worn out.

Oh, I forgot to do my whining: I made a rare 90 degree error on one leg that cost me a minute or so. The map has some printing - the club name I believe - that is not aligned to the north, but to the west. I thought all text had to point north, and I left a control with the map folded and using my baseplate as if it were a thumb compass, so I got a bit away from the control before I realized the text was sideways.

I can't find a rule that actually covers this, but I thought I had read that sometime in the past. Perhaps its just another thing I have to note when I flip a map over.

Event: Interscholastic Champs
 

Whew, what a freakin' long day. Since Chelsea's game went late and then their bus wasn't able to start up to bring them home from Greece, we had to go back and get her and yada, yada, I'm packed and in bed at 1 and up at 3:45am to catch the flight to Texas. That would be Houston, TX (Hobby, to boot), which meant a drive of over 3 hours up to the meet site. The start was closing at 4, we got there at about 5 of.

Nate started a minute ahead of me. I ran fairly clean (too far left on 8 cost me time) and Nate had goofs on 8 and 9, so I saw him punch 9, at which point the navigation was basically over, so I couldn't close any further. Nate picked up third in HS Varsity. His competition seems to be pretty tight. A kid named Huw seems quite tough, and Greg A was just ahead of Nate and Gabe S was just behind him. And there are a couple more kids that are in the running.

Zach had a very fine run. Before we started I had snuck a peek at the results and someone pointed out that a Primary School competitor had gone about 17.5 minutes. Zach is doing Intermediate this week, since his school is grades 6-8 (and we want him to stick to Yellow now), but the Primary school kid was also a '96. Zach went out and did 16:45 or so - and the course was 2.0k, only slightly shorter than Nate's and my 2.2k. That snagged 2nd out of IS competitors (first place is 2 years older than him, 3rd place is 3 years older). Knocking on wood would be in order here, since the weekend courses are likely to be a fair amount tougher than today (Zach said there were some key streamers laid out today, although he chose to ignore some of them to take shortcuts).

5 min w/up (luckily I forgot my SID card at the car, or the w/up would have been even shorter.

Got 8 min in with Nate afterwards.

Sprint A - Splits

Tight schedule again today, but I squeezed in some gerbil work before we had to get to Chelsea's hoop game (they won - to win the "D" bracket of Counties). 7.0 to 7.5 mph during the first 1/2 mile, then did 4x100m strides at 9.0 mph during the last 3/4 mile.

HR gradually rose from ~135 to ~145 while running 8:00 pace, not very encouraging.

C • heart pace 2

So much to do, so little time before the 6am flight on Friday. I had to make the trip down to Bristol and back again today, during another long lunch, to see Nate compete in the Sectional relay. He did pretty well for being on classic skis for the 2nd time this year (and perhaps 6th time ever), and his "B" relay beat Irondequoit's "A" team in a nice see-saw battle.

Got home shortly before the Sabres-Leafs came on TV. I was supposed to be at the game, but if there wasn't time to train today, I certainly couldn't afford the extra 3 hours of driving.

In the good news department, I found my missing Garmin, compass and O-shoes. The law of conservation of lost items means that I seem to have misplaced Nate's thumb compass. I'm not sure what else will turn up missing when we pack.

But the most exciting news is that I have a new niece, complements of brother PJ (well, Cynthia did just about all of the work). That makes 17 (well, counting nephews) - 15 on my side of the family to 2 on Chris's side.

Took an extra long lunch to see Nate ski at Sectionals (39th, despite starting out too quickly), and left work just in time to get to Chelsea's County playoff game (they beat Spencerport for the third time this year). And I still hadn't really eaten when I got home, and the Sabres were already well into the first period, so there was no way I was squeezing in a workout.

At least I wasn't a total slug today.

And I did run between my car and the ski meet 4 times (over 2 minutes each time!).