Training Log Archive: Ari-o

My freshman year, it didn't snow in Minnesota until February. They're getting a foot tomorrow. I'm not bitter at all.

Orienteering. It hurts. Running 7 miles? Nothin'. Traill running 7 miles? Well, if there's a lot of elevation involved, yeah you can feel it. Running off trail for 7 miles two days in a row? My legs feel it. It feels good. (Except for my shin that met a rock.)

I have a very informal breakdown of 1 mile of running on a flat road = x. It breaks down as follows:

4 miles road biking
2 miles MTB
2 miles skate skiing
1.8 miles classic skiing
0.75 miles trail running (on a trail with decent footing; with steep rocky trails it goes down much more quickly, I figured that a pack up the Valley Way, 4 miles and 3500 feet with 60 pounds was equal to a half marathon)
0.6 miles orienteering.

I like making up numbers.

C • Units 6

So, very interesting race today. I ran way better than yesterday (winner was 8 mins faster, I was 28 mins faster) and cleaner. I also wound up running with the guy 2 minutes behind me most of the time, Gheorghe, and by running with I mean "leading in to controls." More on that in a second. I liked the terrain today way better. More contours, more bigger features, and less following vegetation boundaries.

So I started off slowly, following the trail and stream to 1, but not particularly well, having to come back to find it. Then went to 2 via more green than necessary, but found it as well. I bashed to 3 pretty well and then took a good if somewhat uncertain attack across the flat area to 4. I wound up seeing Gheorghe around 5 and 6 and orienteered to 5 pretty well but had gotten off north, and 6 okay as well. 7 I spiked well over the hill, and 8 was decent although I was now running with Gheorghe.

Gheorghe is a fast runner. The problem is that he doesn't seem to navigate too well. So every time I thought I'd dropped him, he'd catch up and then follow me in to a control. I feel like I led him in to half a dozen controls, and he led me in to a couple, and led me astray on a couple more. The thing is that he'd started 2 minutes after me, so if we finished together, he would have beaten me. (Although I beat him by several minutes yesterday, I wanted to win today, too. Small victories.) It's no the Billygoat!

9 was definitely one of these; I navigated off the contours and the spur-hill and led him (and someone on a different course) straight to it, and they both followed me as I punched. 10 I navigated down to a trail and then found the control with him. I got ahead of him to 11 and he returned the favor to 12 to the point that I actually caught up with him towards 13, then passed when I read the rocks (we were right) and found off the big rock-little rock pairing in the woods. Which of course he followed me in to.

14 I effed up. My mind wandered as I was contouring and I got to a big hillside which I failed to read. About a minute of standing around and I figured out where I was and navigated up to 14 fine but probably lost a minute or two. Then I went up to the fence and handrailed up to 15, spiking it around the (dry) pond, and Gheorghe followed me in. We ran together to 16, took different routes to 17 and 18, and the 19 struck. I got pulled way down, and wound up following Gheorghe to 20 (there were a lot of other people on other courses around) and went to make sure it was the wrong control. It was, but I was able to reorient well and run to 19, then back to 20. Lost four minutes, though, and a chance, if I'd orienteered well, to let Gheorghe overrun and get out of his line of sight.

21 we got to mostly together (I handrailed off the stream) and then 22. I bashed through the woods towards 22 and then reoriented off the trail there. I was a little north and wound up in the green line marsh, but Gheorghe was also a bit farblunget, and I pretty quickly realized where I was (having been caught by the line marsh) and bashed right to the control. Out of sight of Gheorge, I climbed to the top of the cliff, looked at my map, and dashed to 23.

I ran a straight line to 23, spiking the rock off the contours and the features, and then went down and found the trail to 24. Lost some time going way west, but at least I was beyond the visual field of Gheorghe. From 24 to 25, I ran down to the trail and found the rocks, spiked 25, and then ran off through the green and marsh to 26. While Gheorghe had managed to get ahead of me time-wise, he wasn't following me to 26, and while I lost some time getting to the control, I went in a conservative, straight line, and didn't lead anyone in.

To 27 I was north but then navigated well, bashed through green to 28, and sprinted in to the finish.

Beat Gheorghe by 9 seconds (having put 2:09 on him since the last control we had visited together). Since it's not the Billygoat, success.

Okay, I feel like I am being bitter. But it's rare that I actually navigate better than someone! I ran decently cleanly, but very cleanly for me. It was one of those days where I generally kept contact with the map and felt good about the run (the Billygoat last spring was similar, and similar terrain). I probably left a good 10 or 15 minutes out there, too, in navigation, and the rest in slips, falls, the huge black-and-blue forming on my shin, and such. But certainly better than yesterday.

C • Well done! 2

Run to the arena, bag drop, run to start.

Blue - Splits

Event: NEOC: 2014 Troll Cup
 

Long-ish run to the start.

So, orienteering when it's not 80. This is a good thing. I felt okay today and didn't make any huge mistakes, only really lost contact once, and raced the first half pretty well before falling apart in the second half. Which was too bad; I was feeling pretty good. Obviously I need a lot more training to really do well, and need to learn to move through the woods faster, but all things considered it was a decent race. Too bad I effed up the second half as much as I did. I was 15 minutes behind the leader at control 12 and wound up 50 minutes behind. Do the math.

1: Long-ish leg to 1. Getting a feeling for the map. Decided to skirt the swamp which was pretty dry, and then went up on a ridge next to the green. The stone walls were pretty overgrown, and I helped a kid on another course find his place (I've been there) before attacking the control. Brendan had run the road there and only beaten me by 2 minutes; that was probably a decent route choice.
2: Went up the valley. A bit nubbly running the stream, but not much green. Discussion afterwards about whether the road would have been a good choice, it added lots of distance but the other routes were certainly slower. Although not running the road helped me see the terrain.
3: Overran a bit on the trail but came around to spike it pretty well.
4: Used terrain but wound up getting caught by the trail, again went around the green.
5: Great attack up the reentrant off the road from the north, very spike.
6: Contour, rock, spike.
7: Used the contours and the vegetation, but some hesitation.
8: Zoomed down the trail, spike.
9: Vegetation and small contours, and a rock. Spike.
10: I got pulled right and wound up on the wrong spur, and ran by 11. This wasn't actually a horrible route, and I found 10 pretty easily.
11: Then back to 11.
12: And spikey navigation to 12.
13: Here things fell apart. I actually navigated pretty well towards 13. I took a good line through the woods and hit the trail running. My route choice of following the swamp was sub-optimal; I should have gone through white above it but the swamps earlier had been easier to follow. This one was light green on the map but denser than that. I immediately lost contact and hacked through it. Even the white swamp was very green, and I couldn't get to the big, runnable swamp from earlier. So it was up through some white, aiming to be caught by a trail, stone wall or water feature. I finally found a stone wall—the wrong one—with a huge boulder that was unmapped. I went the wrong way, then the right way and found the control. AP says I only lost 2 minutes, but I probably lost 6 as opposed to taking a good route. Also, I now know that black dots in white can mean a boundary between different types of veg (deciduous vs hemlock).
14: Things here went from bad to worse. I navigated well to the trail and attacked from a small, rocky spur to a big boulder and then planned to use vegetation and contours to find the control. Several issues: vegetation was thick(er than mapped) and indistinct. Contours were small, and often obliterated by vegetation. And the control was in what probably should have been a rock cluster, not two rocks (they were separated by less than a meter). I attacked twice from the big rock, and finally went back to the road and took a higher attackpoint and used a spur and vegetation to find the control. Easily lost 10 minutes.
15: Things got better for 15, but not much better. I was able to find the control with some difficulty.
16: Somehow I made two parallel errors and wound up two hills over, but corrected back to the control. Lots of other courses down here.
17: Spiked this one, at least.
18: This control seemed a lot greener than mapped. I mostly navigated there but then sort of bashed through white (the top was white, anyway) to find it. Not a spike, but where I expected it after I corrected for error.
19: Another loss. I navigated the first 3/4 on a straightish line, figuring I'd re-orient off the trail. Then I didn't. I just went in the woods, didn't find anything, went back to the road, found two big boulders, realized I was 100m off, ran down and found the control. 5 minutes?
20: And a minute or so here fumbling in the jumbly stuff.
21: Ran to the go control and in.

So, 20+ minutes lost on three controls at the end. All my fault, but all correctable stuff (and some of it was sort of map related; the green up top seemed differently mapped than down below, since the patches were much smaller). Tomorrow the goal will be to run the finer attackpoints better, that's where most of my issues happened, and not take silly attacks like through that swamp (although in my defense, it was white on the map).

Alex and I had rollerskis, so we went rollerskiing. I mapped out a nice loop up a hill. Well, it would have been nicer if it wasn't the detour for Route 119. But the downhill with the cars wasn't too bad, and everyone arrived home in one piece. Maybe a bit more rolling tomorrow?

Blue - Splits

So I skipped training yesterday because a) it was cold and rainy and b) I was going to do something early before the cold and rainy but I went to the Cambridge Boards and Committees reception which was way awesomer than I expected and had wine. And I may or may not have had just enough not to make a fool of myself. Then I had a couple of beers last night. I felt it all this morning. Being old is hard. And drinking season doesn't start until after Boston, so it is going to be real interesting.

Decent if a bit hungover run this morning. It hurt during, but was okay after. My shin is still giving me some trouble from a couple of weeks ago, so I took it easy on the downhills, and whenever we were on grass I bounded. At the end I did a few extra hills bounding. Bounding feels good. I need to find bigger hills to do it.

Everyone came to November Project! 1455 people, it was outrageous. And awesome. We took pictures. We ran stairs. Ridic. So much fun, guys.

Good run around the Longfellow and BU. Great night out there.