Training Log Archive: barb

Commute

blue

Event: NEOC Spring Rock Festival and Intercollegiates
 

Notes

Very Shakespearian weekend, with people playing each other on the courses

Had to arrange shadows for 5 competitive kids & 4 recreational kids - and set up the grownups to each orienteer themselves - and have everyone come away wanting to do it again - tricky. I had spreadsheets with who was doing what when, and low and high estimates of finish times for the 9 people running competitively. I think it all worked. Thing One, for example, navigated accurately through two races each day. He was solid on the long yellow course, and was disdainful about the white courses in a muttering-under-his-breath-about-how-easy-it-was sort of way. Leah was psyched to do day 1 orange in an hour, beating some navy guy. The birthday boy was 90 minutes on long orange and made some well-considered route choices. Our fastest and youngest boy got a blue ribbon at his first competitive A meet. The girls who had been reluctant to orienteer were real excited to tell me that they finished in 62 minutes. Saint Nick got a mouthful of mud and a very bloody nose on long white, stopped to get cleaned up and then tore up the rest of the course. Iz hung out with her new friends from jr training camp. And so on.

Back home in Cambridge on Sunday evening I attended a shindig that included two of the families who'd come to Spring Rock. There was a buzz about it in the air; the people who had not ever orienteered were asking when the next event was.

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The Cambridge cheer designed by one of our party for the Sprint:
gay marriage!
universal health care!
[and so on]

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good flow

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daydreaming while on the course, about (eg) some bigger O project

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Running into Dave halfway through our courses. I see him in the distance, alter direction slightly to intercept, build a list in my mind for efficient info exchange. "When you finish, you can go ahead and take Iz to the birthday party." "Iz wants to go to the Antiphony opera tonight." "Yes, I'll take her after the party." "I put K's stuff in the van." "Have fun!" "See you at home." "Bye" By this time talking back over the shoulder. Convenient when they set it up so that red and blue pass each other a bunch. Imagine carrying on a whole conversation, with time to mull it over in between. Ran by K twice. Dave wondered later if we should try calculating pi from all the times we saw each other, like the ants and the loaves of bread.

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Saturday

I shadowed Iz at 7:30. She took a side path and floundered. Then I shadowed wrong and she got really mad at me. She was very frustrated and upset, and saying she hadn't wanted to do this course in the first place; and she was mad that she'd have such a bad time and wanted to DNF. I made her finish. I thought, parents should not shadow their own kids.

Meg shadowed David. He struggled at an early control. Then he caught up with Alex and the two of them leapfrogged each other a number of times. At the end, they had gone down a wrong road and realized it - Alex took the long way around on the road while David took a shortcut through the woods. Alex was faster, and David took this pretty hard, needing comforting after from Dave.

Dave shadowed Alex. He's pretty reckless and loses touch. For example, crossing the power line break, he was supposed to go on into the woods. He knew he was looking for a cliff and he saw one down the power line, so he veered toward it. When he got there, he didn't see his control, but he saw another cliff way in the distance across a marsh and started off for it. Dave shouted at him to use his map, and use his compass. Then he got back on track.

Guy O shadowed Theron. Theron was fairly methodical.

Isabel shadowed Benjamin. He had the fastest time of our group.

Nicholas was shadowed by Theron. They ended up asking an adult for help relocating.

I mentioned Leah earlier. Matthew had ankle trouble.

In the afternoon for the relay, the teams were:

_____, Benjamin W. Shadowed by K. K said B was "fast". Had trouble at one control. David lost his shoe in the chute and didn't like all the people yelling at him.

Alex Y, Theron W. I thought Theron should do Y because he's more experienced, but Alex really wanted to. I should have put my foot down. Meg shadowed Alex, and was an excellent shadow, which meant that Alex took a really long time. She described his technique as "gay abandon". Theron mass started and I shadowed him; he was solid, muttery.

I shadowed Nicholas & James on white, then ran their yellow course. Nicholas navigated and James gave up asking to look at the map. Nicholas did a good job. There was one place where several people got pretty confused - the obvious trail to the right looked to be roughly the right angle, and the correct trail was not visible from the junction; the kids weren't sophisticated enough to read the direction of the slope from the map.

Sunday:
Leah shadowed Isabel.
Meg shadowed Theron.
Brian shadowed Alex.
Katia shadowed Benjamin.
Jen shadowed David.
Brian shadowed Nicholas & James.
Jen and Guy shadowed Sasha & Hannah.

Theron, David and Alex then went out on the rec yellow shadowed by first Leah then Meg. Theron navigated the whole way; the other boys had their maps in their pockets after about half an hour. Good practice following stone walls off-trail. They had a good time; went slow, talked, checked stuff out; took 2 hours.

Shadowed Iz on white, 40 (emotionally) tough minutes.
Ran blue, don't know time, roughly 9:20 - 11:05 = 1:45.
Shadowed white relay, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, maybe 20 minutes.
Ran yellow relay, who knows, maybe 30 minutes.
Shadowed white relay, Thing One, maybe 20 minutes. Heard muttering, "this is harder," in an approving tone.

70+1:45 = 2:55

City biking, about 21 miles.

v~

To and around Fresh Pond. 7.8 miles.

Thought about how and whether to encourage the advanced orienteers to interact with the juniors more.

Also thought about Kerry. Kerry visited us last night for dinner; she's in town from California and is one of the nicest women I know. When she was a kid, she trained as an ice skater. She trained 6 to 10 hours a day, before and after school. She made it all the way to the top level of ice skating in the US. Her parents could not afford to support her doing competitions, so as soon as she got to that top level she turned professional. She landed a job on the Donny and Marie Osmond show; she was one of the ice skaters they had on every show. As she described her training, I flashed on some AP comments that were fairly denigrating about the recent Olympic ice skating. Kerry trained more as a kid, in a day, than many of our elite US orienteers train in a week. Then I remembered being at the start of the New Zealand first-O-in-2000 event, in some small town approaching midnight, with Peter Snell and the mayor up on stage. Orienteers in their funny outfits mingled with the townies. Some teenage kids were pretty derisive about the colorful and tattered O outfits on some of the men. We laugh at people and get laughed at in return, I guess.

The weight goal is not moving along very well. I've been enjoying dessert after yummy dinners. And I like snacking while hacking. But I have been eating slightly more healthy food, other than the ice cream.

Commute.

class

Weird machine thing at gym

v~

Wind and rain. Splashy.

Heart slightly goofy when I woke up - a couple awkward thumps.

Didn't get out of bed very quickly.