Training Log Archive: iansmith

Barebones race, long advanced. The terrain was quite flat, with subtle undulations in the terrain and a trail network. I spent most of my time on trails, as the woods were marshy and slow. Kevin Fisher caught me at 9, and I held him off until he passed me at 12. It was a pleasant outing in the woods despite my plodding speed. My left calf was tight after the race.

A small warmup jog.

Barebones 4 - Splits

After lunch, Boris, Katie, Danny and I played minigolf in what clearly was the most important competition of the week.

Results:
Ian - 38
Danny - 42
Katie - 45
Boris - 46

TCP Fundraiser Score-O, Parc Naturel du Lac Jerome.

Today's event was a fun score-O with 36 controls and a 60 minute time limit in a marshy, vague area. Unfortunately, I forgot my watch, so I had no idea what the time was. I started out on the same route as Boris. I was in a pack with him for the first five minutes, when we took different routes. I bumped into him again at 20 minutes and 28 minutes. The woods were extremely wet, with large puddles on basically all the trails. The controls were also surprisingly technical, which made for an interesting challenge. Basically all my legs were 2-4 minutes. I plodded along, and lack of zip in my legs meant it was quite slow at times. I came back to the finish to discover I was 15 minutes overtime. Still, I had a great time in the woods and no particular competitive aspirations. It looks like I collected the second most controls besides Boris, though I did have extra time to do so. I only collected four controls in my bonus time.

Katie and I went into Ottawa and wandered around Parliament Hill before driving to St. Jerome.

Warmup jog with Boris before the qualification sprint in Confederation Park. It was steadily but lightly raining.

O-fest knockout sprint qualifier in Confederation Park. This was a nominally 2.1 km urban sprint among buildings and grassy areas. I started reasonably well, and was in 8th place after 10 fairly trivial controls. I then decided to skip 11; I somehow thumbed to 12, which was quite close by.

The mispunch aside, the rest of the course had one glaring challenge. There was a stairwell on a long leg from 12-13 that was in bounds on the map, but barricaded off by caution tape and a fence. The start had made a note about a OOB stair that was mapped as passable, but it claimed that this would not affect route choice. In fact, the stairwell was the obvious route to 13 and 15-16, and avoiding it meant running an extra 2 minutes around a building. I concluded it was OOB and ran around, but this was not universally the case. I then misread another route existing from 15-16 (which was just the stairwell); I estimate this cost me four minutes.

Other than that, I was just slow. Had I not MP'd, I would have finished 12th with my staircase adventures. Without my staircase adventure, in the best case, I might have finished around 8th, about five minutes back of Danny. It looks like six of the top seven finishers in my heat took the stairs.

The course was nominally 2.1 km with 20m of climb, but it had a 15 minute winning time, even using the staircase.

We spent about 90 minutes hanging out in a U Ottawa building (Jock Turcot Centre) before the knockout sprints. At first, it wasn't clear if I would be able to run another sprint, as I was not listed on the consolation sprint heats, but that error was apparently rectified.

The quarterfinals were from 1-2, so I spent some time spectating before my consolation heat at 2:20. Eric Kemp had also mispunched and was in my heat, so it was fairly clear who would win. The race had a few traps, especially with high and low controls, but was mostly a physical battle. BigE had run away from me by control 4, and I merrily plodded along at my pace, battling with a number of other racers to the end. I was one of the few runners not using an SIAC, so I had to punch like a luddite.

After taking 97 minutes on a 4.7 km/290m course, I had absolutely no interest in testing myself against a 9.9 km/580m course in the same terrain. The best case scenario would have been survival.

Katie and I spent the day around Gatineau instead, going for a walk in La Baie Park and along the Ottawa river. We got some work done, then went for bubble tea and another park walk before meeting Taco and Boris for food after their ordeal.

Event: Canadian Orienteering Champs & Ottawa O-Fest
 

Warmup. Katie and I left Toronto about fifteen minutes late, and I stopped twice for around 30 minutes because I was a bit sleepy. As a result, we missed my assigned start. We changed and sauntered over to the start, where the O-Fest start crew were kind enough to give me a new start.

I registered for M35 for the first time because Boris had done the same, though it turned out that our courses were identical to M21. This seems silly, as the only reason to register for M35 is to avoid running M21. I was not feeling great at the start, operating on not enough sleep and basically no training.

This was my first time orienteering since November of 2022, and with the dearth of physical training in 2023, my expectations were very low. I planned to take the first control carefully to get into the map, then chug along at my best speed. I chose to attack control 1 from above, which was a poor choice - there were about a half dozen cliff features in the circle, and while I passed within a few meters of it on my attack, I didn't see the flag. I also doubted myself despite knowing exactly where I was, so I lost about six minutes questioning everything. Running low initially through the reentrant would have been smarter.

I settled in for 2 and 3, which I executed as cleanly as I can expect right now. Control 4 was a slog, especially on the last third, and I was very tentative on my ascent. I was smoother on controls 5 and 6. I took the easier but probably slower route right to 7, going up the river gorge. The footing was slow, and I was also sluggish. I felt quite checked out even at 7, and I just plodded my way through the rest of the course. The climb to 8 was painful, and I was a bit sloppy on 9 and 10. 11 and 12 were clean but slow, and 13 was probably my best control. I doubted myself attacking 14, and ran around to 16 on a trail rather than climb 10 lines on the 400m straight. The last three were fine, but slow and uninspired.

Obviously my result was disappointing. Today's course was brutally physical, and the footing and undergrowth were also slow. The winning time was 27% over expected, and no one was moving especially fast. My tendency was to overestimate how far I had traveled and stop short, and I struggled to make sense of the contours and marshes. It has been rainy recently, and many small dips in the terrain are wet, giving the appearance of marshes. Both my technique and fitness are trash at the moment, which is a natural consequence of total lack of maintenance of either.

That said, I did enjoy getting out into the woods and pushing myself into discomfort. I remember what it was like to be effective, and I hope to return to form.

O-Fest Middle 8 - Splits

Easy run around the neighbourhood. I guess it's time to start training for Canadians. I saw two coyotes on the Kay Gardner trail in a somewhat suburban part of Toronto.