Training Log Archive: bcsocal

Middle at U.S. Nationals at Letchworth.
Controls 1 and 3 killed me. I did better during the last few controls, but my lack of training and uncertain navigating hurt even during a couple of these legs. Wanted to finish under an hour, but the early legs killed that.

Cooler day; I ran with 3 tech shirts on and was fine once I got going.

Not many pics today.

Spent the afternoon swapping rental cars, after the one I had began issuing an oil-change warning. 2nd time this has happened to me early during an orienteering road trip.

Middle Green Y - Splits

U.S. Nationals long at Letchworth. My course was GreenY, 6.6K, 220m climb, 13 controls.

It was much cooler today, with intermittent rain showers. Luckily it didn't rain while most people (including me) were on the course, but later on it dumped during the awards ceremony and everyone had to dive under the shelters.

3 long legs, and each one cost me time. I navigated 3 to 4 quite well until reaching the actual thicket where the flag was, and I spent too much time too high, past the flag, before seeing people below me leaving the flag. 8 to 9 was the longest leg, over a mile, which I turned into a road run. My lack of conditioning came into play here, as I had a hard time maintaining the pace. 5 to 6 went through trackless woods, and though I got reasonably close relatively quickly, I had to go back and forth along the top of the escarpment which cost me time. I came in 19th out of 21 finishers, 25 entrants in my age group.

Today's pics

Tomorrow is an early start, 9:15, meaning I have to leave the hotel before 7:00AM to be safe (1 hour drive, + 1/2 hour to start). It will be chilly but hopefully dry.

Long Green Y - Splits

Event: 2014 US Nationals
 

So much for a relaxing start to my trip. Today's game plan was to catch up on my sleep. The hotel serves breakfast until 9:00. Also the registrar for the meet came to the hotel in the morning to distribute race packets (bibs, start times, directions, a couple of promotional flyers). So I awoke at 8:30, quickly shaved, went downstairs to get my packet, grabbed a bit of breakfast to go, and went back to my room to sleep. My start time was 3:30PM, and the race was nearby, so I slept until 12:30. I had to shoo away the housekeeper.

Today's race was the sprint, for my age group 2.4K, about 20 minutes. It was held in Genesee Valley park, a large city park. The weather was excellent, in the 70s, dry, and gusty winds.

My rust showed, as I made four significant errors among the 19 controls and finished 16th of 20 in my age group.

It began raining late this afternoon. Maybe it's the system blowing in from Chicago? The weather forecast calls for much cooler (50s) and rain for much of the weekend, so I'll get to experience true East Coast autumn orienteering for the first time during the longer races.

My pics from today.

As you can tell from the pictures in the park, fall colors are quite disappointing. Most trees still have their full complement of green leaves. Apparently it's been too warm through September.

Sprint Green - Splits

Flying through Chicago is no fun right now. Everybody was blaming last week's fire at the control center for disrupting air traffic around Chicago, which is still running below capacity. My flight out of OC was 1.5 hours late, but at least it was uneventful. At O'Hare the connecting flight to Rochester had not yet departed - it too was 1.5 hours late. So I waited, and waited. "Maintenance issue". Eventually the flight was cancelled.

Fortunately there was one other flight, scheduled at 7:40 PM CDT. With that flight it was issue after issue. First was "gate roulette" - I counted at least four gate changes, which meant hiking up and down the terminal building from one end to the other when they announced yet another change. Then, they couldn't find a crew. Then they said that the captain was inbound on another flight, but there were no gates for that plane to park. Then thunderstorms went through and shut down the airport for an hour. Then they couldn't find the flight attendant. The terminal area was jammed with people waiting for the Rochester flight and two others in similar circumstances. I wasn't absolutely certain that I would make it out of Chicago any time soon.

Finally we boarded, and the flight joined the long line of flights waiting to take off after midnight. We finally got underway about 12:30AM, arrived in Rochester after 2:00AM. Thankfully my luggage arrived, and someone was at the rental car counter, so I was able to get to the hotel about 3:00AM, at least 8 hours later than the original plan.

I sure hope that things are better in two weeks when I return.

Firing up the diary. I will write here more during the next two weeks.