Training Log Archive: Lori

NEOC meet at Nobscott. Ran Red at Nobscott with Presto. The course was pretty badly designed. It was basically a long orange, which the occasional harder control thrown in. My wipe-out yesterday apparently had some longish lasting effects. My whole right leg is sore and my hip is extremely sore. This made running painful, which made the course even more frustrating because I should have been able to run the whole thing pretty quickly, but instead was forced to jog slowly and even walk parts. The course also had the apparently requisite "random control up the side of the huge hill and then immediately run back down the huge hill," which was even more annoying than usual in my moderately injured state. The only control I had trouble with was number 12, which was on a clearing. I found an unmapped clearing quite close to the correct clearing, which threw me off a bit. I wasted a couple of minutes looking for the correct clearing. Other than that, the course went quite well technically. Presto is yellow from all the pollen.

Quick 2m training after the race. Nick (M50 World Champ) set out 5 transmitters within an approximately 100m radius. The transmitters were hidden in trees and under leaves and stuff and we were supposed to use the receiver to locate the transmitter. I found 3 of them on the first cycle and 2 of the on the second. My problems were that I was trying to use my eyes to find the transmitters instead of just the receiver and that I wasn't rotating the receiver enough to get the best possible bearing.

Red course - Splits

ARDF at Breakheart Reservation. We were doing 2m today instead of 80m. The main differences are: the receiver for 2m is much bigger and more awkward than 80m and the signal can bounce off objects. Vadim basically told us that you have to be more or less in a "line-of-sight" to the transmitter to receive a correct signal. Presto and I went out first. I was a bit worried about following a reflection instead of the actual signal, so I went really slowly and cautiously to number 1 with lots of stops and stuff. I also realized that I have to keep my compass and the receiver as far away from each other as possible in order to get an accurate reading from the compass...oops... Anyway, after getting this figured out, I eventually figured out where I was and narrowed number 1 down to a single hill. I ran up the hill past the control, but Ian was there at the same time and he found it. I next couldn't decide whether to go to number 3 or number 4. There was a lake in the middle of the map and I figured some of the controls were on the other side of it but I wasn't sure which ones or where. I sort of wandered in the general direction of the lake for a while until I realized that I need to get a real bearing on the remaining controls, so I climbed to the top of a high hill near-ish to the edge of the lake and stood up there for an entire cycle just taking bearings. I decided to go to number 4 first as it was on the north of the lake instead of the opposite side from where I was. On the way to 4, I got an another bearing to 3, pinpointing which hill it was on and 2, narrowing it down to 2 different hills. I had a lot of trouble with number 4, maybe because of the powerlines, but I actually made it up the hill that 4 was on, then 4 randomly didn't signal for one cycle, so I came back down the hill and lost 2 more cycles after that (one when I slid down the hill and landed on my back and lay there stunned for a little bit) and one where I wondered why the control was up the hill I had just climbed to no avail. Les was there at the same time and assured me that the control hadn't transmitted for 1 cycle, so I went back up the hill and found it. I then went to 3 and then 2 with no trouble because I knew which hills they were on. I narrowed 5 down to 2 hills while at number 2 and checked out the wrong hill first. I eventually found the correct hill and number 5 just as I was going to have to quit to get the zipcar back in time.

Park-O at Cat Rock. I started off the race badly by going to the beginner 1 instead of advanced. I then went to my number 2, was informed I went to the wrong number 1, went back to my number 1, etc. It was a bad start to an increasingly bad race. I just did stupid thing after stupid thing. At the beginning this was because the scale was screwing me up (it was supposedly 1:5000 but was actually 1:10000), but eventually it was just me being sick and stupid. My brain wasn't really into it, and I was moving slowly because I still can't breath well on top of it. Oh well. I can only hope this has shocked me into paying more attention in the future...