Training Log Archive: RLShadow

Event: Canal Cities Challenge
 

Green Y Middle at Sprague Brook Park. As seems to be my usual, I had two bad controls, although bad controls at this venue are nowhere near as bad as bad controls at Happy Valley. I think I lost 3 minutes on #5 and 5 minutes on #10. Lost a little bit on #9 from a non-optimum "micro" route choice (I knew where to go, I just went further left than I needed to).

On #10, I knew I had to descend a very steep bank, and for some reason, I headed straight down the bank, instead of angling on a compass bearing right for the control, which both Stina and Peter D. assured me was a moderately easy way down. To make it worse, after going down the steep bank, grabbing for any little tree I could to prevent a free-fall, I attempted to re-group and figure out where to go next. I realized I didn't have the map in my possession! I looked back, and I saw that I had dropped it at the very top of the embankment. D'oh!! So I got to climb the nice steep 4-contour line slope, and have the adventure of descending again. By that time, I really didn't have a good idea where I was, and I went the wrong direction, finally got straightened out, but it still took a while to navigate to the control.

I think I finished around the middle of everyone doing Green Y, but near the bottom of my age group.

Warmup before the Sprint.

Sprint 2 at Sprague Brook. For once, I didn't mess up, but the orienteering was pretty easy. I had a few micro-route choice bobbles that might have cost 5-10 seconds each, but the AP split analysis said I had no lost time, which is certainly a first. I was running pretty hard the whole way, except I backed off just a bit on some of the middle controls (3, 5, 6, 8) that, while not particular hard, were potential screw-ups if I was paying no attention at all.

If I were to re-run the course, I don't think I could do more than 30 seconds or so faster, in my current state of conditioning, anyway.

I think I may have won my age group, which is another first. I was something like 16th out of 70 people on the course.

Still, I was a good 3 minutes behind PG. On the one hand, that's the closest I've ever been to him percentage wise, so that's good (but having very easy orienteering sure helps). On the other hand, it was humbling to run a clean race, and push about as hard as I could, but be about 25% slower than him. Still, I'm pretty happy with the result.

Middle Green-Y - Splits

Sprint - Course 2 - Splits

Tried the rec trail-O course at Highland Park. What can I say except I suck as bad at trail-O as I do at real orienteering! 17 controls; 6 correct answers. Not much better than I'd expect by chance alone.

C • 6/17 1

Checking out just a few of the many controls that I got wrong in the trail-O rec course, to see if I could see the error of my ways. In a few cases, I did, but only from an (illegal during competition) off-trail examination of the flags. Speaking of which, I spotted a couple of people, one of whom is a real mainstay in our club, blatantly violating the no-off-trail-travel rule. I won't mentioned any names, but they know who they are ... :) (Note that they were also in the rec division and not the US championship division, so the import of those rule violations is non-existent.)

C • Yup 3

Setting out controls for the Webster sprint and training exercises. A bit of confusion/issues which led to running a bit closer to deadline than we would have liked, but we got them all out, on time, and correctly, thanks to help from Stina, Linda, Rob S., and Bob B.

Mass start drill #1. I think I had map A1. While the orienteering was pretty easy, thus it wasn't that hard to not be too distracted by orienteers all over the place going in every which direction, I still thought the drill was useful. Hopefully when the navigation is a little tougher, I'll be less flustered from having people around me, having shown it's possible to stay focused in a pretty big crowd of people.

Plus it seemed like decent general Sprint training -- it was short enough that I could actually run pretty hard (note that in my case, running hard doesn't mean running all that fast) for the whole course, and could read the map and navigate on the run due to the fairly easy part of the park we were in.

Also, the head to head nature of the drill encouraged me to push myself a lot harder than when I'm running on my own. I was going back and forth a bit with Soupbone (a few years younger than I am, from Wisconsin), and knowing he was right behind me the last couple of controls gave me motivation to push pretty hard.

Mass start drill #2. Really feeling the effects of having run hard in the previous drill. Wound up, again, on the same course as Soupbone, but this time, he was ahead of me all the way and I could tell I wasn't going to catch him. He beat me by around 15 seconds. There was a long run in across the field from the footbridge, and I absolutely had no kick left in me.

Mass Start drill #3. Felt slower still. But still good practice.

Picking up controls from Stina's O course that she set from Stewart Lodge at Mendon. Congratulations to trailsnail for winning the event!

C • Why didn't you do it? 2

Sprint at Durand. No major bobbles; speed mostly limited by lack of good endurance. Finished 19th out of 58 (wish I could have done remotely that well at the US championships at Happy Valley this past weekend .... Guess the difference is that I do OK at relatively easy orienteering but I kind of fall apart when it becomes technical!).

My one non-spiked control was, of all things, the finish control. For some reason, I was expecting it to be on the east side of the shelter, since that's the direction that we were approaching the shelter from. In spite of the map showing clearly that it was on the north side of the shelter. Probably lost 10 seconds in my confusion.

String-O. 30 controls in about 180 meters.

The GPS track is one I did while walking the course at the end. The distance is from Stina's GPS, as she had hers reading every second and is presumably more accurate than mine (on smart read or something like that). See Stina's log http://attackpoint.org/sessiondata.jsp?sessionid=2... for a much better track (done while we were both walking the course at the same time); she hit "lap" at each control, so you can better see where the controls were placed.

This was my first run was 2:03, which was pretty poor (bottom third of the standings; way behind the leader who did it in 1:22).

Despite the short time and distance, it was actually a very intense workout.

My second run of the string-O. I took 14 seconds off of my time, nearly a half a second per control. I was still pretty far down in the standings, but slightly more respectable (maybe almost to the middle of the pack).

My biggest improvements were on the following controls:

2: 4 seconds vs 6 seconds (33% improvement!)
3: 1 second vs 2 seconds (50% improvement!)
12: 3 seconds vs 5 seconds (40% improvement)
16: 2 seconds vs 3 seconds
21: 4 seconds vs 6 seconds

On the other hand, there were a couple of controls where I was a second slower on the second run -- not sure what the excuse is for those.

I was a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to shave any time off of the long leg of the course, control 25 (7 seconds each run). I guess I need to work more on my endurance.

Durand TDS #2 Sprint A - Splits

Sprint at Mendon.

Corridor orienteering exercise. I didn't have the energy, given the hot day and having done the sprint, to complete the course, so I took a major shortcut. I'd like to get back to the park and do the whole thing, it seems very useful.

Dusk to Dark O event at Mendon. With trailsnail. I accidentally stopped my Forerunner for a few minutes so the time and distance are both a bit low.

I think we finished 28th out of 67. Really poor strategic choice on a group of three controls cost us the chance to score a few more points.

Mendon TDS #1 Sprint A - Splits

Event: 2011 OUSA Convention
 

Day 2, Green Y. I really didn't think I could do worse than yesterday, but I managed to. "I was sucks" to use an expression I've heard on AP. I really don't get this sport. At some point I need to either accept that I'm terrible at it and focus more on something that I'm slightly more competent at like running, or else see what I can do to improve myself, but I'm not certain that's possible (can't teach an old dog new tricks, comes to mind).

I accidentally stopped my Forerunner for a few minutes, so I need to correct the time (which at this point is taken right off of the FR).

My course and route below. A few comments probably coming later. As can be seen from the route, my major downfall controls were #2 and #8. When looking for #8, it looked like I may have once again been barely off the map, but it may be an artifact of the scanner not being quite large enough to scan the whole map. In any event, I was very close to the edge.

From GPS tracks

C • Your new trick = 2

C • Don't be too sure... 1

Day 2 - Green Y - Splits

Event: 2011 US Classic Championships
 

Green Y, Day 1.

Two very very bad controls. In one of them, I think I was off the map for a bit. That's how bad that one was.

I counted 8 controls out of 10 as spikes, using my loose definition of a spike, but the 2 non-spikes were really major non-spikes.

My course and route below. The big problem spots were #5 and #8.

From GPS tracks

No issues with 1, 2, 3, or 4.

From 2 to 3, I had to figure out whether to go around the funny-shaped pond on the left side or right side. I started to go left (when I got to the trail), but only for a bit, because I decided the navigation might be easier going right. Just as I started heading back on the path, to go right, I saw PG come out of the woods, and could tell he was going right also, which made me feel better about my decision to go right. And I actually felt good about him catching me when he did -- he started 4 minutes behind me, and I had fears that he would blow right past me when I was about 5 minutes into my run! As it was, I was 14 minutes into my run, which meant he covered in 10 minutes what I covered in 14 minutes. I have a goal of someday being within 50% of his time, so at that point in the race, I was 40% behind him, not bad (at that point!).

Big problems going to 5. I decided against taking the straight line route, being a bit worried (needlessly, I'm sure) about crossing a marsh which also was green. The problem was, when I started heading towards the control, I wasn't sure exactly where I was. It turned out, from my GPS track, that I was very close to the control on my first approach, but I obviously didn't know it. I wound up somewhat off of south edge of the map, finally decided to find the stream, and after a few more back and forths, found a stone wall near the stream which identified my location. From there I made my way to the control, finally. 26 minutes on something that should have been maybe 8-10 minutes.

No issues with 6 or 7.

Big problems again with 8. I see from the GPS track that I was on the right track at one point, but got pulled to the right for some reason (other orienteers in the area may have been a factor). I finally wound up, to my dismay, on the trail. From there, I found a point where I knew where I was, and took a bearing towards the control. Once again, I was on basically the right track, but got pulled off again. Finally, more through luck than anything, I found it. 23 minutes on what should have been around 10 minutes.

I decided to take the easiest route to #9, even though it was very long. I had had my fill of wandering around in the woods with no idea where I was. This took me 18 minutes; I'm guessing that a well-executed straighter line route would have been 12-14 minutes. I think I over-estimated how difficult a straighter route would have been, and under-estimated how tired I was and how long of a distance I needed to cover on the trails and road. I did a lot less running and a lot more walking than I had expected.

C • two very very bad controls 2

Day 1 Green Y - Splits