Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

NEOC meet at Nobscot. Boris had suggested that I draw my own map for the first 30 minutes of orienteering and then do the last part of the course without a compass. The map drawing part was fun, and I think I did a pretty good job actually. My map was not sufficient on the first control only, where I got very lost ( had to look at the real map twice). I hadn't bothered to draw in some of the trails because I was planning on using the shape of the reentrant to navigate up the slope. Well seeing the trails on the ground really threw me for a loop, and the reentrant was rather a bit more vague than I expected.... which meant that I lost confidence and checked further down the trail than I should have. 6 minutes lost to that, before things settled in.

After I got back to the real map on the way to 10, I forgot to take off my compass and so it was only 12- the finish where I was working on that skill. It really messed me up going to 15, as I expected to come out on a different trail and had no good way of checking the direction.

A good set of exercises though. Very pleased.

The second part of the exercise was to race the Orange course as fast as possible. I did okay here, but had a few minor troubles. Mostly brought on by blurry contact lenses that were super annoying. I almost mispunched #2 as there was another control on a similar feature on the line, but I checked my codes and recovered.

Drew a course at Blue Hills East for Sam and I to run together. I wanted to go pretty long and be in the woods, and Sam agreed to come with me. The vegetation was actually quite nice, but it still seemed like a hard effort. We switched the lead on each control and kept moving along nicely.

Running to work, and then from work to the T in central square, as I went off to have dinner with Dan and Anna. Then we played cards and went to the new X-men movie. Not a bad evening at all!

Event: Park-O #7: Menotomy Rocks
 

Running to work and then from work to the T and from Alewife to Menotomy rocks. I was in charge of the Park-O tonight, and as usual I was running late.

Still had just enough time to put all the controls out there though.

4 loops of hanging out flags for the park-o. My hands aren't big enough to run with more than about 7 or 8 stands at once.

Will need to get the weekend properly logged soon. But one of my goals for this week is more sleep, and I'm already failing, one day into it :) So stay tuned, and I'll write up all my races tomorrow evening.

Thanks for lending me your Garmin, Ken, and thanks for adding the tracks already.

Rest day because I was arranging my schedule to be home at 5:30 to let our landlady into the apartment. She ended up not coming, so the house is clean and I got to go grocery shopping and cook dinner.

Did my best to add my routes to routegadget for the weekend. I drew in the sprint and long, and tried to use the GPX track for the middle, but it gets pretty choppy near the end. I will see if scanning and Quickroutes will do a better job.

C • gps at bm 1

Running to work, then from work to the Harvard track, late as usual. legs feeling light and happy, rest of me feeling like there's a lot to do in the next few weeks.

Missed the first interval, so I did 5x800, 2x400 with the group, 200 jogging rest. Today the group was Terry, Andy, and Sam (SGB decided not to swim over from England) with another group of runners including Brendan, doing a modified version.

Feeling zippy, so I was out ahead of the group. warm day, cool breeze, ideal.

aiming for 2:32 and < 1:12 for 5k and 3k paces respectively.

2:34
2:30
2:32
2:30
2:32
1:08
1:07

a few laps cool down. Wondering if I should join the team for the Rhody 5k on Sunday, before the Nobscott meet. Logistically challenging, but maybe worth the trip. Been feeling a bit busy recently, so maybe I should be cutting back, but it sounds like fun and since it's a Grand Prix race, my entry would be covered by the club.

C • don't do it 10

I really love 2.5 k jogs to the start because they get my legs feeling zippy and happy. I ran with Boris to the start and really felt great going into it.

I started clean along the line, but got a little hesitant when I got into the circle, but I was in the right spot and the flag appeared just in front of me. I was a little rushed leaving the control and headed out towards #2 at the wrong angle, skirted the wrong pond, but then sort of figured it out and sort of just knew that my cliff was farther south, so I ran sort of recklessly down checking cliffs along the way. Very sloppy, and I lost about a minute on this leg and was shaken, but tried to be smooth to the next one. Looked down and noticed that I no longer had a compass. I went back up to the last place that I had fallen down and glanced around to see if it was lying amongst the leaves, but no luck. Realized that I didn't want to waste any more time looking and ran on towards 3. I got to the saddle and thought that my cliff was off to my left, when really it was to my right, I had just visualized it wrong. I then over corrected and dropped too low, and had to work my way back and up again. Another 2:30 lost and still frazzled. Pushed hard to 4, got too far right, but I was reading the cliffs and vegetation so I knew where I was. Attacking the boulder through the light green vegetation was a poor choice, because I missed it and dropped too low and had to climb back up 2 contours. I avoided the swamp on the way to 5, and used the trail run to compose myself. Hesitated just below the control trying to decide where the low hilltop was. A steep climb on the way to 6, but along a nicely defined slot, which lead me right into the control. It was a crazy cliff jumping down to the 7th, and I was focused and reading well so I spiked it (when I came back during control pickup, I had trouble on this one). 8 was a trail leg, and then 9 was easy apart from my initial attempt to leave the control at the wrong angle ( I had my eyes up and saw that the pond was off to my left). 10 was a tricky one, and where I might have tried to go straighter I didn't trust myself without a compass and so I wanted to attack from the trail to the left, past the ponds, so I wended my way past the swamps and around the hills pretty well. To 11 I stayed right and spiked it no problem, contoured as much as I could on 12 to minimize extra climb. To 13 I cut out to the trail and then side-hilled around the whole hill to the reentrant. An easy finish control and plenty left for a finish sprint.

A really rocky start, and a very methodical, routine, smooth end of the course. Even with a super clean course, Anders was well out of my league today. Some of it may be running speed, but I suspect it's more an effect of awesome flow.



After awards I snuck back out to retrieve 4 of the controls near the top of the hill. The woods are even more beautiful when you can relax and jog through them instead of having an intense battle.

Blue - Splits