Training Log Archive: iansmith

The NEOC Nobscot Scout Reservation red course. Overall, I was pleased with my performance. In general, I had good route choices, kept up a good running tempo, stayed in contact with the map, and effectively used my time for planning purposes.

I rolled my ankle, and my right knee was painfully throbbing along the course; the former I will probably treat with ice, and the latter with weight training (I guess). I was just on the verge of the 10 minutes /k goal, but I was within my (2 times average(Ross, Brendan)) goal. (Ross won in 54 minutes; Brendan did not attend).

Overview comments:
- I still suck at interacting with other orienteers. About fifty meters out of the start, I ran into a couple who were probably running yellow or orange; I transitioned into my "look like you know what you're doing" mode, and got lost ON TRAILS. Sigh. I estimate a four minute mistake.

- Lakes are awesome attack points.

- I find that when actually orienteering through woods, I find a set of attack points on the way to ensure I'm still in contact. In a curious correlation, I find that adding attack points makes my split time longer because I take time to verify hitting each one. This was true, e.g. on control 6 on 26 May Long course; I had a good route and stayed in contact, but my split was long.

In depth description:
Apart from my trail blunder approaching control 1 (I overshot on trails by about 250 m), that control was easy. Control 2 was steep, but obvious relative to a significant cliff. I initially didn't go far enough south, costing perhaps 1 minute. Control 3 was a difficult, treacherous approach on a steep, leafy slope; my route could have been better, but I did hit the two trails I expected to intersect in the correct places.

I was proud of my route to Control 4; rather than take the obvious trail (and add perhaps 150-200 m), I hit a field and beelined via two rock walls to spike the control. For control 5, I had a good route and should have run faster. Controls 6, 7, and 8 all had excellent lake attackpoints, bringing me to within about 100 m in each case. From 8 to 9, I decided to go over a spur rather than contour around and picked up the reentrant leading to the knoll near 9. I figured it was fastest; the other runners I talked to all went over (and I'm sure someone as energetic as Ross and the Saegers, e.g. would). The remaining controls were all fairly straightforward. I put a lot of effort from 12 to the end.

Red - Splits

Lori's Park-O at Fresh Pond. I had a harrowing adventure getting there because of a fire at Park Street that shut down Red Line service from Park Street to Harvard. Peter Chikov and I ended up getting a Zipcar.

I started the Park-O at about 8:02 PM, and it was essentially dark when I finished. The controls had been picked up and it was drizzling; I think I could have saved 4-5 minutes given more light and the presence of controls, but given my fatigue from the previous day, I was not overly displeased.

Lori set up a good course, particularly given the limitations of Fresh Pond.

My transient route to the Park-O; Peter and I walked to Park Street and discovered the station closed due to electrical fire. We then ran to MGH and discovered that station was also not operational. Then, while trying to find a cab to get to either Harvard or Alewife, we ran across the Longfellow Bridge and traveled via Main and Hampshire to Inman Square. En route, I decided cab traffic was swamped with the overflow from the T, so I called Zipcar and reserved a vehicle in Inman Square.

All told, I probably only ran about 60% of the distance; carrying my backpack and wearing jeans proved too much for me. Peter was going strongly.

DVOA Chasing the Star Long. I had a very poor course at the West Point classic (10.4 k), and ended up not finishing due to exhaustion. For this course, I was prepared with two Gus, but I still regarded it with much trepidation. I'm not really ready for this distance, and protracting the time with navigation and errors only makes it worse. In that sense, I'm glad I'm finished. My mood about and during the course was further improved by events.

My route from control ten to eleven was fairly straight - I went up onto the campus hill between rather than contouring around. However, when planning through the parking lot on the northeast side of the hill, I conveniently overlooked the ten foot cliff. Upon my arrival, I started sliding slowly down the bank towards the cliff because of all the leaves. The cliff itself was built up with a manmade wall about ten feet high. I decided to descend anyway; I found a tree growing out of the side and used that to get a grip on a column of the wall. I then fell about three to four feet onto a thick bed of leaves. Unfortunately, during my fall, my e-punch was clipped off of my finger by the column.

I could not find my e-punch. The leaves were very thick, and because the area below the cliff was inclined, I slid down and disturbed many leaves on landing. Because the e-punch flicked off (the potential energy of stretch the elastic around my finger released), I wasn't really sure how far it went. After a cursory search, I twice climbed the column and simulated the event with a stick. I became convinced that the e-punch had fallen near me and been buried. Given that the leaves were up to eight inches deep, this wasn't all that helpful. I reasoned that finding the e-punch was a far better recourse than going on without it; I wanted my splits from the first ten controls, I'd probably be DQ'd if I showed up at the finish without the ten controls, and I didn't want to replace my $60 e-punch. I tried many search efforts while contemplating what course of action to take, but just as I was about to give up, I saw its yellow tip poking out of the leaves. Words cannot convey the euphoria I felt at finding it; I had all but given up hope. I climbed down the cliff 1:23 after my start, and I found the e-punch at 2:07. I lost 45 minutes in my search.

At that point, I wasn't especially worried about my time, but I wanted to finish as quickly as possible, and the euphoria from finding my e-punch encouraged me to take some chances. Controls 12, 14 and 20 to the end were shaky. I took my GUs at 9 and 15, but felt exhausted from control 19 to the end. I made minor errors on 8, 9, 12, 14, 20, 21, and 22, and a major error on 10. Some of my route choices, while solid, were slow - 6 in particular.

While I wish I had been faster and more accurate (even if I hadn't lost 45 minutes looking for my e-punch, my time would still have been 2:40), I was satisfied with my race. I've struggled with long courses, and this was about as good as I could have expected at my current performance level. I need to run much longer distances if I expect to compete in such courses.

Congratulations to Ross and Wyatt in particular for making the US Team, and all the US Team members. I met quite a few people at this meet - Gerald Yip, Leif Anderson, Christoph Zurcher, Nikolay Nachev, and (briefly) Eric Bone. Most people with whom I do not interact regularly or at great length in the orienteering community do not know my name; that's not terribly surprising, but I mean to change that over the next year.

C • epic ! 2

Blue Long - Splits