Training Log Archive: TomN

Event: QOC Patuxent
 

The Goat at the QOC Patuxent meet. This course was my suggestion, indirectly. I thought a long intermediate course would be a good idea for this National Orienteering Week meet, thinking it would be something for the AR crowd to sink their teeth into. In Nadim's hands it turned into a Goat, with a fork and a skip, and it turned out to be pretty good. The navigation was plenty hard enough, no controls on point features, but the reentrant systems in this park often have a lot of detail that makes them tricky. The forest seems a lot whiter than mapped, and offered really fine running except for a few areas of downfall. The course, or at least my route, avoided most of the mountain laurel, but I hear it was rough on Brown.

I ran with Dave O. and Victor Lin for the first few controls. Dave took a wrong turn before #5, and I shouted something to him but he didn't hear. Didn't see him again. I caught up with Victor after a couple more controls, but then he took an early skip at #10 and he stayed ahead of me after that.

I skipped 18, which looked good geometrically, but with no good route from 17 to 19 it didn't turn out that great. I maybe saved 2 minutes over the full 17-18-19 combo. Interestingly, when I was backtracking towards 16 on the Blue Trail I passed a long line of runners on the 16-17 leg, not just on the goat, but other courses too. Popular route choice.

Only one mistake, leaving 15 I got on the wrong trail and paralleled the field for way too long before realizing the mistake, backtracking, and taking the Blue Trail towards 16. A couple minutes lost. Happy with this run, pretty competent navigation overall.

Picking up controls. Walking the whole time.

QOC Goat - Splits

Same same again.

Same run as last time. Pace and speed felt consistent this time around.

Meant to run yesterday, but time got away from me and then it rained. Overcast and cool this morning. Legs felt heavy, and pace was slower than it felt like.