Training Log Archive: AliC

Event: SMOC Mill Lake
 

Met oodles of friendly SMOC folk in the parking lot/at registration before heading out!

SMOC Red course @ Mill Lake

Very, very happy that both my ankle and toe survived with no extreme pain upon dorsiflexion, woo! Had a great time out there, but I had a bonus adventure doing a 180 degree error that led me of the map and totally, totally confused. I'm not sure I've actually ever 180'ed so badly, but hopefully that gets it out of my system for next week!

With that error, guskov trounced me, and I just snuck in a half minute or so before Mark V.

Will write up in detail, because I haven't been doing much orienteering recently, so can stand to learn from each leg.

1- Undecided - saw the low trail, thought that looked nice, then kind wimped out about reclimbing contours. So stayed high and ran into an 'erased' trail - meaning it is (mostly) erased in the terrain and also (mostly) erased on the map. Ok, but probs the low trail is fastest
2- Up and over on bearing, then I hesitated becasue it looks like left reentrant was circled, but control was in the right reentrant, went down to check and my code, so punched.
3- Trail run, I turned off well.
4- Trail run, but I probably put too much effort into skirting the Crazy Hilda's Halloween House (= OOB).
5 - Trailed it again, after looking at some thick veg on the edge of the field.
6 - A bit thick at first, I found decent ways through though, then the most gorgeous and interesting bit of map! Nobbly and open!
7 - Hesitant, becuase I wasn't 100% sure I'd found the marsh crossing I wanted, but then other features lined up, so I had to have. Approaching control, didn't sense things lining up for awhile, so remained hesitant.
8 - Ug. So this time, I didn't find the marsh crossing I wanted to, so was initially confused, and so the going-south plan didn't work. Then something happened, and Aha! I figured out I had to go north??? except, I didn't... so I ran off the map. Took awhile to realize and then battled across a marsh to get back on the map. Phew.
9- Yeehaw, found the helpfully-marked-on-map new trail.
10- Went left of immediate marsh- maybe right was more direct?
11- Stayed on ridge, some running into thorns, ran through the graveyard... it wasn't marked OOB...
12 - Went on big trail and then in.
13 - Run, run, run, and then I missed the control because it was not right adjacent to stream-ditch as marked on the map. So went too far and then returned with a more-looking-up-and-around approach.
14 - More running, took the road, although I didn't get out to it very well, tried to cut a corner but it was thick green stuff.

QuickRoute

C • #1 = local's advantage 9

Control collecting. Chatted more before and after!

Post-SMOC meet, mosied over to IKEA. Mmmmm swedish meatballs. And a new dresser and bookshelf, which will do the immediate rounding-out of apartment. Next mission is to assemble them... for another day.

C • Meatballs and shopping 6

Ooh, so goofmuppeted this morning. Last night, I looked up and saw that the NEOOC night-o was a good 3h drive away and decided I wasn't quite up for that, given recent long drive from Poughkeepsie and the very-soon long drive to NAOCs. So I decided to go to a local 5k instead. Except, whoops, it's tomorrow...

So ran at Wildwood instead, did my tempo. 2 x 15 min, with sometime in the later half off-trail, trying to keep tempo intensity but running through the woods. The woods are really open so this is kinda possible. I think I'll know Wildwood like the back of my hand after 2 years here in Toledo.

C • Drive to NA's 9

Normal running drills. I so hope that both these and the ankle drills are helping the ankle strength get up to snuff!

Wee little run around the neighborhood. Listened to two Moth podcasts.

Core!

Physics colloquium today was about shooting lasers into car engines made out of glass so you can see how they work. Pretty cool. Given by a guy that now works for GM, just finished a MechE PhD last year. You get the lasers to reflect off tiny droplets of oil, take very high time-resolution pictures, then reconstruct how the air must be flowing using the oil droplets as test particles. Cool stuff. Also, if your car engine misfires at all, it's not meeting EPA standards. So they have to engineer that stuff well, the mission is to make the combustion engine even more efficient.

Anyways, afterwards went for a tour de Ottawa Hills, doing specific strength exercises here and there. It's a small neighborhood. I saw: 1) one of my two bosses, 2) the colloquium speaker 3) my officemate + son. The last set isn't really that surprising, as I live across the street for them, but still, small town times in the big city. =)

Ankle plyos! Go, go ankle strength!

Running to Wildwood, reading a map of Spackman Creek. Oooh, 1:15 is hard... magnifier please!

Yeehaw! Orienteering in Toledo! =) Thanks much to cedarcreek for processing the Lidar through Jagge's software to make the map. It worked, for the most part. Noticeably absent were the trails, but it kinda made it more challenging to find the contour features that I had circled, so better training.

The woods are nice and open, except right on the edges of open areas. There are bunches of benches, plus some rootstocks that could be put on the map in addition to the trails and it would be fine to use for orienteering.

A few 30 second speeds on the way back, and more map reading. Kept checking my Garmin for the pace while map reading, surprisingly hard to keep below 10 min/mi, jeez, I need to work on this!

Normal running drills.

Hammies + pushups!

And a little rollerski putter around the neighborhood. In search of hills, did a few speeds here and there. A nice eve, and it is suitable to rxc around Ottawa Hills, even if it's not the most fascinating. A few hills even have wee steep sections where V1 is applicable!

Hippity-hop, ankle drills! My officemate's kid watched as he took their dog out across the street, wonder what he thought...

Abs + back + SJJs, while listening to NPR talk about eating culturally-gross food. So for us here in the US, eyeballs and crickets and what not, but from Asia, apparently cheese is pretty gross... I guess, when you think about it, it is in away. Animal secretion that you inject fungus into and then wait until it's stinky. But mmmm delicious!

Made it back to Toledo! Ian and I drove starting at 4.30pm yesterday from Poughkeepsie and made it to Toledo at about 1.30pm today. A peaceful, non-eventful drive with a 10' UHaul and basically everything I own.

After unloading and starting some laundry, headed out to Wildwood to show Ian my new territory. Except we landed at a parking lot I'd never been to before, so was a little more exploratory at the beginning... =) A nice run, good running temp, bunches of xc kids and dog walkers and normal joggers out. Possibly also Toledo's elite running group who sped by at some point...

C • I assume Ian now has a NEOC... 2