Training Log Archive: iansmith

Brendan and I arrived at Lynn at 7 and met up with the arena crew. We had five boxes still to set - one at a nearby cliff, the two Go stands and the two spectator stands. After getting some extra equipment from Ed, we drove to the northern lot and set a saw horse that Will had requested at a site because the stand was too low to match the description. Brendan set off to wake up and verify the presence and codes of the northern controls (which he had previously vetted), and I drove down to the arena and worked my way north.

We found everything to be in order - no controls were stolen, all the codes were correct, and all the controls were awake by 9:15. Brendan noted that the second saw horse lacked a backup punch, so I ran to set it via the start (dropping off some equipment on the way). Everything was ready by 9:45 - a bit close for comfort. Had there been a problem, we could have fixed it by the start time, but we had little room for error. A third control-verifier would have been valuable.

My job for the A-meet was solitary, and if I did it right, it would go unnoticed. After an arduous day on Friday with only Will for company in the afternoon, it was great to see everyone at the Middle arena. Brendan and I mingled until around 10:30 or 11, when we set off for the Fells to help set controls for the long.

Eric Weyman happily asked me if we needed any help setting controls - unsolicited, without incentive, purely because he wanted to help and is absurdly cool. We sent him to rendezvous with Dean, then bought rubber bands for the WCOC e-punch mounting system.

Upon arrival, Dean assigned a sector of the Fells to each of us. I was assigned 19 controls, with 18 WCOC stands. I greatly prefer the NEOC stands - they are light and very simple to set up. The back-up punch and flag are attached; the only task is to place the stand and clip on the e-punch box. While I'm grateful for WCOC letting us use their stands, they are much more time consuming. Apart from deploying the stake and planting the stand, the flag, back-up punch, and e-punch plate all had to be mounted to the stand. I was tremendously fatigued and hungry from the past two days, and I had a philosophical crisis while plodding through the woods. As I had plenty of time to think, I resolved it satisfactorily, and fought on to finish the day's work. There was a potential crisis when four e-punch units dropped from my bag (the first time this had happened to me), but I was able to reconstruct my path and find them scattered in the forest.

Brendan and I then helped Dean set water, and retired to Cambridge to shower before going to the banquet.