Training Log Archive: iansmith

Event: NEOC Hale Reservation
 

NEOC Hale Reservation blue course, set by Jeff Schapiro. Major errors at 1, 7, 11; catastrophic error at the penultimate control. Not a great race for me.

Warmup for blue.

Blue - Splits

Day two of the BGR A-meet in Greenbush, WI. Given my clean run yesterday (easily the cleanest classic course I have ever run) and the knowledge that today's course would be less challenging, I decided to run more aggressively. Overall, I'm pleased with my performance - while this terrain is technical and requires concentration, it is not subtle, and I do not have much difficulty moving confidently. My run was clean by my definition - no navigational errors more substantial than the occasional 30 second bobble and hesitations - though I'm sure better orienteers would consider some of my actions mistakes today.

My run today was less impressive by its own merit and quality than yesterday's, though I think I did slightly better relative to the field. Examination of splits reveals that I'm generally consistent (though I do fluctuate more than the elites), though slower. Again, some of this is physical, but I think the largest component is technical simplification and hesitation. I will practice this over the winter.

I had one moment (control 13) where my zone of uncertainty grew quite large, but I spiked the control nevertheless because of my safe route (up high along the edge of the depression). I made a small parallel error at 8, but I immediately realized it and was not off my line by more than 30 meters or so - probably a 20-30 second error in total.

As I was leaving 18, I heard Ken Walker Jr closing behind me; I intensified my physical and mental efforts to try to stay ahead of him. I comfortably beat him to 19; the go control was on the other side of road along very obvious tracks. I pushed hard bailing out to the road, but I missed slightly to the north, and Ken and I reached the road simultaneously. I sidled along behind him to the go control and outkicked him in the finish chute (though he barely seemed tired, whereas I was dead). I had another modestly entertaining encounter while I was running to 14; I ran into Ross crossing my path. To my surprise, he followed me into the control. It turned out that he had gotten confused en route to 10 and used me to relocate.

I'm particularly pleased with some of my long leg route choice; while my splits on these legs relative to the leaders were not significantly better than average, I had simple, safe, and potentially fast routes (usually along ridges). That was true today on 3, 9, and 17. I suppose this is the norm for someone who is truly proficient rather than merely competent.

Other finishes of note: I was 2 minutes behind Jordan, 3 behind Wyatt, 12 behind Ebone and Clem, and 17 behind Will and Ross.

Blue Day 2 - Splits

Event: Middlesex Fells Skyline Scramble
 

US Championships Classic course by the Badger Orienteering Club in Greenbush, WI. The medial moraine terrain (as Leif told me) is very technical and difficult; relocation is not trivial. At the "model" local middle distance terrain yesterday, I noted that hills made good attack points because they are easily distinguished and are visible from a distance. I decided that my strategy was to sacrifice speed for accuracy; I wanted a clean run at almost any speed.

I succeeded in that goal; I had an immaculate run. I'm sure I lost time with poor route choices, and I was not as fast as the top runners, but every time I expected to find a control, I found one - usually directly in front of me. There was a cost to moving through the terrain; it required a lot of mental work and focus, but this was one of my best races, and about as good as I can realistically hope to do at present. Simplifying was very challenging. On a few legs, I planned a roughly straight route, then tracked from feature to feature on a computationally intensive path.

I lost 26 minutes to Will. I estimate something like 50-75% of that was from mental challenges (simplifying, e.g.) and hesitations, and the rest was from not running as fast. I was 16 minutes behind Boris, Eric Bone, and Ken.

I think this may be my first 80 point classic run; we'll see how the numbers come out. More analysis later.

C • Spectacular effort 3

Warming up while reading the model map before the US Classic champs. I mostly visualized running various combinations of the existing controls from the model course. I think running the model map the previous day and spending time getting into the map helped me during the race.

Blue Day 1 US Champs - Splits

Event: US Individual Champs 2009
 

Running the 4.5 k middle distance course at the Badger Orienteering Club local event; this course was essentially the model event for the US Champs.

I took my time reading the course, stopping to examine features and think in detail about my route choices. The forest is clear, and the contours are both informative and tricky. I only made one mistake, losing about thirty seconds, but I wasn't moving at race pace. The terrain is gorgeous. I was focusing on running cleanly in an effort to simulate tomorrow's race, and I was pretty good at picking good attackpoints to get to the controls. Deciding at a glance which was is down or up in a particular contour region can be difficult, so I may spend more time reading my map tomorrow.

Long run in the prairie near Mary's apartment.

Running on the Fermilab bike path at 7 AM. I warmed up for 25 minutes, then ran 3x (3 minutes on, 2 minutes off). The morning was beautiful; in the distance, I saw the very distinctive main building (Robert Rathbun Wilson Hall).

C • Fermilab 5

C • Was the main building in th... 1

Event: Québec Championships
 

Warmup at low intensity for hills workout. Oxford St to Cambridge St. to Beacon St.

Hills intervals up Lowell St. I had initially planned to do 5, but then thought to add a sixth. I know I should do more than 6 in a workout, and I will do that in the future - this workout is very convenient for me.

I started slowly, since I usually push way too hard on hills workouts. I had negative splits, if with a bizarre distribution.

Splits: (Up/recovery)
1: 216 / 226
2: 205 / 321
3: 148 / 235
4: 138 / 304
5: 136 / 253
6: 130 / 400

I think 140-145 is a reasonable target for my hills workout; 130 was way too fast (I threw everything into that last split, as though it were a finish chute).

3x weight cycles:

20 pushups
20 jumpies
45s side plank
20 squats
45s plank
45s scissor legs
40 crunches
20 calf raises

Event: Hudson Highlander
 

Hudson Lowlander. Analysis to come; not a good run.

Lowlander - Splits

The final event of the training camp on Saturday afternoon was the 1993 WOC Short final, which was won by Petter Thoresen of Norway in 2234.

I had a good race; while the course was less technical than the modern Middle Distance, it still had some formidable challenges. I had excellent flow and moved faster than usual; the top North Americans finished in the 32-34 minute range, and I had an improbable 5 minute error at the Go control largely due to map discrepancies. The biggest difficulty I have is consistency; at virtually all the courses we ran at Harriman, I had a few controls that I massively erred on. I think my technical orienteering is weak enough that I make ten to twenty second errors easily and five minute errors with unacceptable frequency.

On the short course, I blew up at controls 4 and 14. On control four, I intended to attack via a saddle just right of the line, but I got pushed around the right hill and went right of some cliffs. I got confused and lost contact as I passed the cliffs, and while I had a general idea of where the control was relative to my position, it was essentially lucky that I stumbled upon the control while moving in that direction. On control 14, discrepancies in the vegetation and trails confused me; what should had been a 1 minute run became a six minute search. I should have inferred from the green vegetation that I was in the wrong spot, but Sam made the same error which assuages my grief.

Had I not erred at the go control, I would have had a very respectable 41 minute run. Ross, who started 4 minutes after me, came into sight just as I punched control 4, and I managed to stay ahead of him until control 7.

Splits:
1. 152
2. 251
3. 556 (right of the swamp, attack from the reentrant with the big boulder)
4. 512
5. 48
6. 223
7. 111
8. 421
9. 407
10. 146
11. 152
12. 350
13. 319
14. 553
F 112

The morning exercise was a two person relay designed by Tero (the idea of which I hope to replicate). There existed three short 1-2 km legs, and each relay team ran some permutation of those three legs. The second runner would run exactly the same leg as the first runner, and they would alternate through the three legs. The fourth and final leg was a short, 4 control 800 meter course that again both runners on a team would run successively. I was teamed with Alex, who continued making friends with Harriman.

Peter posted the results here.

Map. We had a solid warm up, and I was really pumped for the relays. I stayed warm before my first leg, but I had reservations about stamina, so I was largely stationary in the subsequent gaps. My first leg was leg B - controls 5-9. I attacked controls 5 and 6 solidly. On control 7, I attacked right of the line via a set of small hills, then got confused after I went over a saddle into the green. I stumbled on control 7 somewhat luckily. Control 8 was fine, but I was too high and left on control 9, where I lost about a minute.

My second leg, controls 10-14, was the most disastrous; I lost about three minutes looking in the circle for control 10. I attacked via the big boulder just inside the circle, but I didn't see the flag on the cliff I expected. I wandered around a bit looking; Andrew Childs arrived and started his own search, and eventually led me to the flag. I was very sluggish moving to control 14.

My third leg was ok; I didn't have a great route to control 3. I went right of the line to the south of the spur with the cliffs, over the hill east of 7, and up the reentrant to the control. My route past the cliffs at the start of the leg left much to be desired. I also lost about twenty seconds on control 4.

I ran the final leg without a break, and I did reasonably well. My biggest problem was on control 2, where I hit the elongated knoll just south of the control and decided to push through the green rather than backing out and going around.

Splits:
(First leg: 1338)
5. 131
6. 103
7. 421
8. 31
9. 146
F. 426

(Second leg: 1553)
10. 556
11. 256
12. 120
13. 145
14. 300
F. 100

(Third leg: 1605)
1. 135
2. 115
3. 727
4. 152
F. 355

(Final leg: reported as 705, but my splits read 634)
1. 107
2. 254
3. 101
4. 111
F. 21

Harriman 2-man relay - Splits

On the afternoon of the second day of the Harriman training camp, we ran the Middle Distance course from the 2003 US Team Trials; the winning time was Brian May's 31:30. I was fatigued from an exhausting morning, rainy weather, and insufficient sleep during the week. I was not moving very fast in general, but I did have good flow in the second half of the race.

We self started; I started a few minutes ahead of Andrew Childs and Emily Kemp, both of whom are both faster and more technically sound than I. I got into the map fairly well, and had only minor difficulties on controls 1-5. On control 6, I had a major error and lost about five minutes when I made a nontrivial parallel error; Alex Jospe ran past me and told me I was in the wrong spot just as I was moving to relocate. I then had a very solid race on the last 8 controls with good route choice and flow; I was especially proud of how I handled control 11 by attacking through a prominent reentrant system to the left of the line.

I talked with French team member Francois Gonon on the way back from the finish. He some interesting commentary; foremost, he noted that contours are by far the most important and reliable feature on a map, particularly with the advent of Lidar. With n mappers on a region, you will get ten different maps, but the brown lines should be invariant. The complexity of maps is growing with time, making it all the more difficult to read the contours.

I really enjoyed interacting with the French team in general, and François in particular; despite the vast disparity in our abilities, he was amicable and instructive.

Splits:
1. 254 overshot the control (30 seconds)
2. 239
3. 143
4. 604
5. 256
6. 944 overshot, parallel error (5 minutes)
7. 946 route to the right along the stream, up the reentrant, over the hill
8. 159
9. 505 slow through the green
10. 134 attacked too high (20 seconds)
11. 837
12. 203
13. 319 too high; hit the narrow cliff corridor and had to backtrack (1 minute)
14. 233
F. 39

C • Contours invariant? 4

Harriman morning exercises, including a partner drill and a middle distance course. I ran the partner exercise with Emily, which was a lot of fun. She is extremely fast, and it's informative to get a sense of how good people more skilled than I are.

The Middle Distance course was not particularly successful for me, though I took it as a training exercise and tried to focus on reading the map.

Afternoon exercises at the Harriman training camp, set by Eddie Bergeron. The first exercise was a window-O, requiring precise compass work. I was passed by Thierry Gueorgiou during this exercise, which was really cool. His kinetics look effortless, but he covers ground really quickly.

The second exercise was a control picking course, at which I did better comparatively. My compass skills are lacking.

On the evening of the first day, motivated by a spontaneous suggestion by John Fredrickson, a large contingent of our posse went bowling, including Linda Kohn, Peter Gagarin, John Fredrickson, the four French guys, Andrew Childs, Emily Kemp, Hannah Burgess, Brendan Shields, Alex Jospe, and myself.

There was generally good cheer all around; we nominally divided into three teams (since we were assigned three lanes) and played two games. François Ganon turns out to lack proficiency in bowling. Emily is too sweet to attack the pins with the requisite force. Andrew Childs posted the high score of the nine with a 187 and only two open frames.

My scores were:
70 4/ 70 72 33 7/ 80 81 90 81 = 99
90 90 13 70 X X 70 90 X X8/ = 137

I was using a 14 lb ball for the first 14 frames; I switched to a 16 lb ball for the last six remarkably successful frames. The weight was near the maximum I could control; any more, and I would have slid around during my release. Counterintuitively, I bowled far better.

For what it's worth, I have finally found something at which I am better than Emily. Tero's scores were 99 and 85.

CSU Training Group Street-O in Newton, MA by Alex Jospe.

While waiting around in my office, I did some strength training. I was not clad appropriately or well equipped, so I kept it brief.

32 pushups
1 minute wall sit
20 v-sits
20 jumpies
45 seconds front plank
5 burpies (total pansy)
25 calf raises (both legs simultaneously)

Review of 2009 Boulderdash:

I have only run one other 2-day classic meet - the NEOC 2008 October Mt. Tom A-meet. I have been improving, as the results will show. Unfortunately, it's difficult to strictly compare the Mt. Tom meet because the conditions were different. In particular, Mt. Tom has much more climb and had fewer linear features (and legs along linear features). Both Eddie and Ross are top runners who are fairly consistent in their results who were at both meets. I think Ross has measurably improved in the past year, but the assumption that their results are constant is approximately good.

The ratio of my time to the average of Ross's and Eddie's times for the four races:

Heart and Troll Day One	1.619
Heart and Troll Day Two	1.527
Boulderdash Day One	1.284
Boulderdash Day Two	1.327

Day 2 of the UNO Boulderdash A-meet, a classic race. The course was much more technical, with a shorter average distance between controls. There were fewer linear features, though linear options existed on many controls. I fared less well comparatively because of an eight minute error on control 12.

Brendan in particular had a strong race - I was just over 33% back of his time, and in terrain this technical (in which he has consistently performed well), I can't realistically compete with him at my present ability. Emily showed her strength and superior skill on technical terrain by obliterating me by 14 minutes. I surmised that I would be less likely to be competitive with her on technical terrain. She started two minutes after me and caught me between controls 7 and 8. Adrenaline kicked in, I ran on a trail a bit, and I put on a surge of speed to beat her by about 20 seconds to control 8, but she punched ahead of me at 9, 10, and 11. I messed up 12 as I took a different route to 12 and didn't see her for the rest of the course.

Surprisingly, the activities from the previous day didn't seem to have a significant effect on me. I felt strong throughout the race and ran aggressively on the legs with trivial navigation at the end, like 18 to the end.

Much like yesterday, I struggled on some technical legs. In particular, in the absence of particularly obvious route choices and major features, I struggle. Legs of this type included 7 and 12. Controls 15 and 16 were somewhat of that form. Unfortunately, control 12 was a cataclysmic error (fortunately my only error of that form this weekend). The terrain was difficult and hard to interpret; the control was nestled in a small reentrant on a slope. I had a decent (though not perfect) attack, but I missed within 50 meters of the control. The "I've made a mistake" alarm that Ross has spoken of went off in my head, but I knew I was near the control and thought to reattack. That was a mistake, since I didn't know where I was. I tried to relocate off a huge boulder - an obvious attack point, but I was on the wrong spur. I eventually decided to bail and relocate off a trail, and I stumbled on the control. Had I immediately relocated or taken a safer attack, I would have reduced my error significantly.

I took a poor route choice to both 15 and 16. The first controls were good, though I was hesitant and inefficient on my way to controls 6 and 7.

In discussing our routes to control 8, Emily said to me that she didn't think she could keep up with me on the trail (she took a more direct path through the woods). I think that she overestimates my speed, but it was an encouraging thing to hear. I will work on my absolute running speed and wood speed in an effort to improve this apparent advantage. Her process and speed are higher through the woods, as I discovered en route to control 9.

My impression was that control 18 was further north than indicated on the map, though it's possible I was off on my bearing. The route was sufficiently safe that speed was a higher priority than accuracy.

Warmup for the race.

Blue day 2 - Splits

Day 1 of the UNO Boulderdash A-meet, a classic race. The course had many linear features, and technical races are not my strengths. Overall, I moved well and aggressively; through control 11, I was only 4:30 behind Brendan. I fatigued on the long uphill leg to control 12, and lost about ten minutes relative to what I'm ideally capable of in the last 3.5 km. I spent 42 minutes on these last legs.

In a tragically amusing result, I finished 16 seconds behind Emily (who was sick). While I had hoped to beat her, such a close result is significantly better than my usual performance. Ross crushed the field with a 72 minute result - six minutes faster than Sergei. I beat some of my usual targets, like Jeremy Colgan and Nick Lewis-Walls.

Good results: I had good flow and process during the race. I made generally good decisions, and my errors, while nontrivial, were not severe and were exacerbated by fatigue rather than technical incompetence.

Areas to improve: I still lack the vitality to push hard throughout a race. I moved strongly on the trail legs - controls 9 and 10 - but either consequently or independently lacked energy to push as hard afterward. My technical skills are not strong enough to compete at the highest level, and I still am not sufficiently good at synthesizing pertinent information from a map. I do not do well navigating in the absence of obvious features, and my two worst legs - controls 13 and 14 - were among the most technical.

I was tentative and hesitant at times on the first eight controls, but my only errors of note were on the second control (moving through rough open, I drifted left) because I was not yet into the map and on the eighth control, when I made a poor route choice decision and went right to the field. My route to control 3 was not very good.

I attacked control 12 via the rock wall on the edge of the map, which was safe and fast. I should have pushed more aggressively, and a straighter route rather than one that went directly to the wall would have been faster. On control 13, I navigated on the side of the hill poorly, overshot, and relocated off the top of the hill. On control 14, I checked off cliffs and contour features to the trail, but somehow drifted about 80 meters right. I pinpointed myself off a big boulder in a reentrant, but clearly my compass work and reading of less obvious features needs work.

Additional remarks in the split comments. Controls I failed to spike were 2, 7, 8, 13 and 14.

Warm up and run to the start. I arrived at the start well in advance of my start, so I had lots of time to prepare.

Picking up eight controls near the start. I was out about fifty minutes, but I was only moving for the time logged.

Blue day 1 - Splits

Event: UNO Boulder Dash
 

UNO Sprint - 1 second behind Emily Kemp.

My default easy run - a loop through Porter, Harvard and Inman Squares. Uneventful. This week has been very trying, which has had an adverse effect on my training.