Training Log Archive: iansmith

Event: NEOC: Powissett
 

An abbreviated warmup.

Red course at Powissett, set by Jeff Schapiro. The day was fantastic - temperatures of about 10 C, with clear, sunny skies after a morning drizzle. The forest was dense; while visibility was good, there was plenty of undergrowth thick with green briar.

I generally orienteered cleanly and fast, but there were two noteworthy errors. On the way to 4, after skirting the edge of the private property, I chose to leave the stone wall handrail and punch straight through the woods on a compass bearing. I drifted, and while my time loss wasn't heavy (perhaps 30-45s), I lacked confidence. While the vegetation pushed me around, I should have been more accurate and confident with my compass.

At 6, I drifted too high, and while I corrected, I misjudged the shape of the target reentrant and overshot for a loss of about 75s. Most of the course wasn't difficult, but I executed parts of it solidly. The footing was rocky and poor in many places. Few of the serious contenders showed up, so I comfortably won.

C • The forest was dense; while... 13

While I had considered trying to race all three advanced courses, I decided to stop after red because the navigational challenge would probably be reduced after running red, I banged up my right knee falling on the run-in to the finish, I didn't want to "show up" the other runners, and I only had about an hour before control pickup was to begin. Had I shown up at 10 or 11 instead of noon, I probably would have given it a shot - Jeff was comparatively conservative in his course lengths.

To pass the time before control pickup, because I felt ok physically, and because my mileage has been weak this week (largely due to some lost time making my Halloween costume), I decided to go for a nice trail jaunt. My map ended well to the west of where I ended up running, so I was lost for part of the run before cruising back east.

Jeff, Pia, and I divided up the controls. Mine had two water stops (aw), but I negotiated this by dropping everything off at one control and circling around to pick up the remote controls before returning. I ran into two pairs of people who were interested in what I was doing, and after some pleasant conversation, I gave them the NEOC website. Hopefully they will come! I was wearing US team regalia at the time, which hopefully adds to my street cred.

Red - Splits

To warmup, for this training at Pawtuckaway, Giacomo and I ran controls 1-12 of the Brown Course from Saturday's 2013 Camping Weekend. His friend Alex is making a documentary on orienteering, and he spent some time setting up to film shots. Giacomo started first, with Alex following him with a headcam. Note that this training does not fit the "Secret Ninja" variety, as those are exclusively solo training expeditions, preferably in the snow while wearing black.

I ran back to das auto and picked up a map to give to Alex while he camped out at a control location, then met Giacomo.

Giacomo and I ran a truncated blue course from 2013 Camping Weekend. It would have been nice to get the entire course in, but we had already spent a lot of time with filming. We split up a few times - particularly on the long leg, but were near each other for about half of the course.

As I designed the course, I was intimately familiar with the control locations, but I hadn't run the routes before. I had one really stupid error en route to blue 14 (split 11) where I drifted far off my compass line to avoid some green. After my discussion with Peter about my Boulderdash performance, it was exactly this sort of leg that I hoped to execute well. I really need to practice these more. I did ok on the longish leg (5), but even that needs work.

Obligatory Halloween costume picture: None shall pass.


I'm invincible!

C • chainmail 5

CSU Training - Danehy Park, three leg one-man relay set by Giovanni. My light was pathetic, which made it challenging to read my map. Time and distance are a guess because I had forgotten my Forerunner.

Unplanned rest day, but I have been feeling somewhat "meh" this week, and taking a day off is a reasonable prescription if the remainder of my training is better for it.

In thinking about my map technique, I noticed that I nearly always fold the map parallel to the edges of the paper, and that I use this to get a tangible sense of whether my map is oriented. I expect the compass to line up with the edge of my map; this can throw me off if the edge of the map is not aligned to north. (e.g. 2013 Highlander map 2)

C • folding 3

Easy run, cold: ~4 C. Listened to The Kite Runner.