Training Log Archive: Bash

I'm about to head out on my first 1:15,000 map and my longest-ever O course (9 km), and I am SO sleepy that I can barely keep my eyes open. I'm sure that when this establishment was originally built, there were good reasons to put rooms right above the tavern, but they certainly weren't put here so that people could sleep through the night. It was almost 2:30 a.m. when I last looked at the clock, still listening to hits from the seventies being blared out by the live band below me and breathing the cigarette smoke that drifted up into my non-smoking room. I feel bad for Sudden and Wil S next door, who have an even longer race today. I barely feel safe to drive, let alone interpret tiny little features on a map for 2.5 hours.

Barebones Long - new White Earth map

I was sleepy going into this race, but quickly woke up because I had to pay close attention in this subtle terrain. My first experience with a 1:15,000 map went fine. I had to force myself to go a bit farther than felt right when I was navigating to the first control, but after that, it felt natural. I guess I do so much nav on 1:50,000 topo maps that this map still seemed wonderful.

This is a great area for orienteering - easy to avoid nasty vegetation, and lots of nice, dry, open woods. The only hazard is deadfall, which covers some of the open ridges, and can really slow you down.

This was my longest orienteering race so far, and I am reasonably content with how I did. My execution was far from perfect in some cases, but I think most of my route choices were good. I stayed closely in contact with the map most of the time, since I really wanted to finish this course and get to the airport for an afternoon flight!

One of the positives to take from this race is improved confidence in my relocation skills (although it's too bad I had to use them!) Typically, I have backtracked to a known place and started out anew. Today there were a couple of times when I knew things weren't right, and I was able to figure out where I was and attack from that point, rather than going back. It sounds simple to experienced orienteers, but usually I am afraid of compounding the problem if I keep moving forward, rather than retreating.

One of the areas that needs improvement is my rough compass work. There were a couple of controls where I wasted time because of this, and there is no excuse for it. I wonder if this will be easier with my new Spectra thumb compass, which should make its O debut after the North American Champs.

I was the last starter of the day, so it was quiet out there - and the awards started right after I finished.

It's been a fun couple of days - good to see everyone, and fun to compete on challenging courses in the toughest field of women I've ever raced against. Not surprisingly, I finished behind most of the younger, more experienced orienteers - which is how it should be. It was a great experience, and it was nice to see that I'm not too, TOO far behind them.

Barebones - Middle Distance - Wahstao

Another map with subtle terrain, but not as hard to understand as I'd feared. For me, this race had some really good parts, one bad control, and one truly horrible control. I spent 30 minutes finding 10 of the controls - and the remaining 32 minutes finding the other 2 controls!! First, to focus on the positives... I felt like I was making good time through the woods. A couple of controls that caused problems for the best women went fine for me. My injured ankle, knee and heavily-taped blisters weren't an issue. I think my route choices were good, but I had some problems with execution on those two controls.

I managed to run to #3 before #2 - about 200 meters too far. I was pace counting and knew that I should have arrived already, but I need to recalibrate my pace counting. I've been accustomed to going more slowly in adventure racing - and in orienteering too - and my conversion factor is obviously not accurate anymore, because I wasn't looking for features soon enough.

The second HUGE mistake was also an adventure racer-type goof. One of the things you have to do in AR is "forgive" the map its idiosyncrasies, errors and ambiguity, and today I foolishly forgave the map for depicting a trail's shape incorrectly. If I'd questioned it more, I would have realized that I was at a different trail more than 300 meters away. Looking at it now, I can't believe that I didn't consider the possibility. Anyway, I headed off into the woods from there, and compounded the error - sigh... The split for control #7 was 18:30, which is a heck of a lot for a middle distance event!

Barbie provided some good post-event coaching advice:
1) Don't just analyze the legs where things went wrong to learn how to avoid screw-ups. Analyze the legs where things went right too, and figure out the good things that you want to repeat in future.
2) If you don't live near maps with terrain as subtle as this, you need to play more Catching Features.

Barebones - Sprint 2 - Wahstao

The first leg of this sprint had a lot of people scratching their heads. The best route - I think - was very circuitous, avoiding thick vegetation and marshes. I overran #7 and #9, by 75 m and 125 m respectively, then had to relocate quickly and backtrack. Otherwise, there were no glaring errors - certainly not by this morning's standards! There was the opportunity to go quickly in places, but I felt myself being cautious with my ankle, not wanting to do any further damage. I'm reasonably happy with this race, even though many people went faster. I'm not a sprinter.

Event: Barebones 2006 & Team Trials
 

Flew to Edmonton this morning, then wanted to visit a map on my way to Smoky Lake for the Barebones meet. It was almost 30C, and I didn't like to leave my car parked on the side of a remote road with my computer and luggage in the trunk. So I did some low-speed Car-O along the edge of the Bruderheim map, interspersed with several 10-minute walks along major access trails to get a feel for the terrain. One comment on my first orienteering experience in Alberta... Wild Rose Country sounds really nice on a licence plate, but it's not as much fun when you encounter it in the terrain!

Then I headed for Smoky Lake, which feels like the wild west. My hotel room is in a somewhat seedy city hotel, above a tavern and beside a liquor store. Not the usual tourist experience! Amazingly, it has high-speed Internet, so I decided to stay anyway. (We can't get high-speed out in the boonies where we live.)

I started off the Barebones meet with an awesome middle distance time of 32 minutes! Unfortunately, this race was actually a sprint, which means I was slo-o-o-ow. I got off to a bad start when I thought I was starting behind Pamtastic, so I was keeping an eye on her, rather than the clock, and ended up being late. So... I stressed out, confirmed that I could start a minute late, rushed ahead and only had one minute to get ready. I used that minute to completely forget about the fact that the start triangle was somewhere ELSE. So I got the map and was totally disoriented. Luckily, Pamtastic was still waiting, noticed my predicament and shouted to me to head down the path. Well - I sure couldn't have scripted a more impressive start to my one and only national team trials! :-(

After calming down a bit, the race actually went fine. Not one of those magic races where every control appeared exactly where I expected it, but I was close enough in most cases. I just about blew it all at one point when I went into a depression adjacent to the correct one, and found an orienteering training flag. I touched it and turned to go, then thought "This can't be right" and went back to the other depression where I found the correct SI control - phew.

The terrain that had scared me when I reviewed the old version of this map was surprisingly understandable when I was moving through it. I guess the reason Hilton Falls West confuses me so much is because there are so many flavours of rock, not just because of the 2.5 meter contour intervals, which this map had too.

I managed to gouge a chunk from my knee - the same one that is still recovering from the Swan Dive Incident with K/O over a month ago. It took a couple of hours for the bleeding to stop, and I hope I won't need to remove the dressing until the meet is over, because it'll start again. Owww!!

Hung flags in Palgrave for next week's Caledon Navigators training night, which will be a 4 km adventure run format. (Don't you go snooping around, Crash!) I ran between controls (taking trails more often than I would in a race due to the ankle), then spent time fussing around the controls - ensuring the ribbons were highly visible, moving several controls after checking the terrain, etc. I ran into the middle of a depression filled with thigh-high stinging nettles - that's one of the controls that got moved! Mosquitoes were quite persistent. I sure hope my theory about being immune to West Nile Virus is correct.

GHO Adventure Nite at Crook's Hollow. As Griz said, you should darken everything on the map by one shade of green. It was nasty vegetation for someone like me, trying to be cautious with my sprained ankle and often not able to see the logs and rocks on the ground. At least the stinging nettles didn't get me, although they got the course setters, who had gone out in their shorts to hang flags - yikes.

In my continuing effort to prevent my injured ankle from healing, I arrived without insoles for my running shoes. It actually wasn't as bad as I'd feared, and the Active Ankle didn't give me any new blisters. I had a decent race, with the exception of #7, where I caught Backwoods Adventure Girl and ran past her. The catch is, she had her map oriented to north, while I had my map oriented to south. I ran merrily down a gravel road, then got suspicious when things looked wrong and turned myself around - sigh. Let's hope I get that map orientation thing right at Barebones - duh.

Around Palgrave West on a sweltering hot morning, heading out early enough to breathe in "moderate" smog, rather than the "poor" quality air we're supposed to get this afternoon. This was one of those "crap, I suppose I really have to run" days, and I left BulletDog at home because it would have been cruelty to animals to force her to do the same training I was doing. (Not that she agreed with me.)

The strange thing was, it felt pretty good, even though I usually become a total princess in heat and humidity. I extended a planned 30-minute run to 45 minutes, sticking to shady double track trails as much as possible, since I'd left my Active Ankle off to avoid further blistering. Today's focus was running up and over hills, so there were a few intervals of level 4-5. As soon as I got home, I jumped in a cold shower - mmmmm.

I've heard people talk about how hot it's going to be at Barebones, but the high temperature for Saturday is currently supposed to be 15C with rain - yahoo!

I've been looking at some of the maps for the Smoky Lake area, and I have this sinking feeling that the features will be so subtle and unfamiliar that I will just stand there frozen to the spot, squinting and trying to make sense of it. Gulp. Sunday will be my first time racing on a 1:15,000 map. Gulp again.

In the meantime, I'm going to look at the most familiar O map in the world (my world, anyway!), Palgrave. I need to design next week's training session for the Caledon Navigators.

Gotta get back into the regular routine. My ankle is taking longer to heal this time, and I'm going to have to work my way back up to where I was before.

Best line from today's Daily Show: "If God is really on our side here in America, why did He put all the oil under people who hate us?"

Hard Core Monday with 'Bent. Had to relocate our session to the basement for the summer, as it is too hot to exercise on the main floor of our non-air conditioned house. (Well, technically it came with an air conditioning system, but we are too full of enviro-guilt to turn it on.)