Training Log Archive: barb

Ah, the long-O. This *is* my thing. Lovely runnable woods. Mmmm....

C • Your thing 2

Awards ceremony









David couldn't get his admiring younger cousin Charlie to stop orbitting around him.

Short-O is not my thing.

A nice evening get-together of junior juniors and their families.







Piotr, Mom, Dave, Alar


My brother Doug, Aunt Linda, Uncle Carl

Travel day. We went to the Garden of the Gods and did part of the Trail-O. It was hot.

We went on to the Olympic training center.



David, Charlie, Isabel, Julia, Theron, Lucy

Picked up some night-O controls early in the morning. Got to see the very nice sunrise from the plains. Got a ride from Rich Gostenik in his british landrover type car; he had fun going fast and we nearly busted right through a closed wire gate. I love being out with a map on gorgeous terrain early in the morning.

I had thought that it might be fun to try out my "mass transit-O" or "bus stop O" game at junior training camp, and talked about it with a few people. I got discouraged and decided against it when J-J said he wouldn't participate, but changed my mind and went ahead after he relented, and others showed interest. So we did it! And it worked!

5 adults were busses, each walking a different line-O (their "route"). Along each route were 5 bus stops, with times at which the bus was scheduled to leave each stop. The bus could arrive early at a bus stop, but could not leave early.

The 5 teams of kids each had a map showing all the bus routes, stops and schedule. Their task was to intercept each bus once. (I will post the map when I get a chance.) In other words, it was like a score-O with precisely timed moving controls. The teams had a little time to plan their strategy before starting. If they arrived at a bus stop early, they could walk the line-O backwards to find the bus. And if they arrived late, they could run the line-O forwards to catch up to the bus.

Brendan was one of the busses, and was able to leave one of his stops just before a team got to him, because it was time, and they had to chase him to catch him.

All 5 teams found all 5 busses. No bus was caught by all 5 teams much before the end of the bus line, so the timing worked out well. Teams got practice working on strategy, doing line-O, off-trail navigation, and in some cases reorienting. And some people even said it was fun!

I want to do it again. I'd been thinking of doing it on a larger scale in September for my 80-student junior high outing. And maybe we could try it in Pawtuckaway?

The kids continued to have fun playing together outside of the official junior junior training camp.

Night-O. Came in first, thanks to others struggling, and my ability to just keep plodding along slowly and steadily. My headlamp was highly inadequate; just before the race I gave away a couple other lights to people in our party. I could barely see the stuff on the ground at my feet - reminded me of biking in Vienna when the bike lamp was weak. I could have gone faster if I'd had a better light.

Doug and Dave were razzing me about orienteering better at night - they suggested I try closing my eyes during daytime orienteering.

Nice long hike with John and Dave in Castlewood Canyon. Gorgeous. Can't figure out why I don't have any photos. Didn't I take any? Hm.

Interesting to see the powerful downstream effect of the sudden release of water when the dam failed.

There wasn't any organized activity at the convention for kids age 8-13, so the parents got together and created one; Brendan Shields also helped. We had Stephen & Nicole Koehler, Julia Z, Isabel, David, Maya Rounds from Boulder, Zach Lyons, Adam (Phil's son), Julia Doubson (7 years old, from BAOC), Tiivo & Aanika Ruutopold, and Scott. Christoph Zurcher let us use the yellow and orange controls from the weekend, and we got leftover orange maps to use.

Today we started off with Bob's 100-meter pace-counting exercise. We held a discussion about what was easy and hard for the kids on their courses from the previous day, and what skills they were interested in working on. Then we focused on fine map reading with a line-O designed by Brendan, meant to emphasize the ability to read contours, and a reorienting exercise by Phil, where we took the kids out into the terrain, then gave them a map and asked them to figure out where they were and get to a specific control location. Some of the kids were into it and others were hot and tired and a bit whiny by the end of the reorienting exercise when it was time for lunch. My kids were among the latter group.

In the afternoon, the kids played together and were not bored or whiny at all! The older girls in particular (Maya, Nicole and Aanika) have a magic touch with the kids. They were very inclusive, and suggested and organized all sorts of games like capture the flag and murder and so on. The main goal for me was for my kids to become better friends with other O kids, so that they'd be more interested in going to A-meets, and this goal was fully met! Yay!

In the afternoon some of us went horseback riding.



Julia Z.

Skipped the first ("progressive") Zero-to-Orange exercise, because Dad and I had early start times and it didn't work to change them.

For the orienteering, really felt the heat and altitude and was moving slowly.

Early start so I could go to the airport and meet Theron, arriving with the Koehlers. Pulled a 180 coming out of 3. Lost a lot of time on it.

Last day of Zero to Orange. Took the final exam.

In the afternoon, we tried out archery:




Isabel throwing the atl-atl

Day 2 Green A - Splits