Training Log Archive: PG

First time on the bike in a long time, but I still managed to get through it with no falls. :-)

Standard loop, Old Deerfield - River Road, gentle pace, not that I was capable of anything more.

I got an inquiry from Ian as to whether I planned to run any of my maze courses, and that was enough of a spur that I figured I might as well try the night one, having not been in the maze at night before.

Tried to duplicate the conditions others faced -- ate a good dinner about 6:30 pm, so the belly was still a little full, and then started at the same time, 8:15 pm, as they had. A bit of lightness in the sky, but once in the maze it made no difference, quite dark.

And it was really fun. Taking them in order, of course, using the east side highway several times and around the beak several times, not the shortest routes but opting for simplicity and speed even if the route was a good bit longer.

Hardest part was finding where on the map the next control was. Quite a bit of searching.

Nothing marking the control sites, of course, but I'm sure I was at all of them. Not that they were familiar, but all the twists and turns and junctions and islands and dead ends have their own distinct character. You know if you're right or not.

Glad I took my compass. Had to use it 3 or 4 times, lost my concentration for a moment and the compass came to the rescue. Probably 3 or 4 mistakes but not much time lost, a minute or two.

And really fun. :-)

C • Finding the next control 3

Night - Complete In Order - Splits

Event: 2014 U.S. Corn Maze Champs
 

Putting out the controls for the classic and part of the sprint. They are still working on the beautification, almost done.

Still have to put out rest of the sprint later, and then even later the trail-O, and then the night O….

Checking points in the maze, plus setting up and then taking down the model for the trail O. The maze beautification is progressing, but it may not be 100% done by tomorrow afternoon. We can deal with it.

And then printing maps. Everyone will have the choice of a roughly 1:1,000 map or a 1:4,000 one. I expect the elites will use the 4K one to help prepare for international competition.

Yeah, fat chance. :-)

C • Offset 5

In my attempt to determine what to do, if anything, about my deteriorating eyesight, visited the retina specialist today. Previously my regular ophthalmologist had said it was time for cataract surgery, and the cataract specialist had said getting the cataracts done would only solve 20% of the problem and I should think about retina surgery.

So now the retina guy said he wouldn't really recommend retina surgery, didn't think it would do much good, but cataract surgery might help a bunch. WTF.

After some discussion I got him to agree to call up the cataract guy and discuss with him directly (without me being an ineffective middleman) what made sense. So maybe I'll hear something in a week or two.

And then maybe seek a fourth opinion?

Meanwhile the road signs are getting harder and harder to read…. :-(

C • Surgery . . . 1

Very slow run around town with Dave. He was feeling his age, I was feeling the humidity. But good to get out before the rain came.

C • Wapack 3

I have this sinking feeling that we will never see complete results from last weekend. Today's blog post.

C • Au contraire 2

Testing courses at the maze. First was a possible "sprint" course. Seemed to be fine. One mistake, headed for a trail-O control at one point, otherwise OK.

C • GPS 3

And then a possible classic course. Also seemed OK, though my orienteering was a bit shaky. Trying to go fast makes it not so easy.

Both should be fine with just a tweak or two. As will the trail-O course. Still have to do the night course, but I have the gist of it already done.

Saw Mike's son, David, down there. I inquired about the plans for beautifying the maze, since I'd thought the work was going to start today but there had been no one there this morning when I went by. Well, they'd had some organic berry plants that really needed weeding, so that's where the crew was today. But tomorrow….

Told him I worry about such things, needed to be sure it was done by Saturday.

No problem.

By beautifying, I mean that right now most paths have a smattering of young corn here and there, two to maybe 5 feet high, that needs cleaning out. And then the edges of each path get trimmed. And maybe the ground raked. Right now it's a little rough.

Then over at the maze to do the courses, there was Mike. So we go over plans again. And he says he'll have the crew beautifying tomorrow morning. And then he drops a bombshell, he's going to move the viewing tower down the maze a ways, to the south. Wants to encourage folks to go down there where there are other activities.

Well, I don't let on that the tower will be an essential part of the trail O -- the corn is now 8 to 10 feet tall, and without the tower there will be no trail O. But I do say that folks really like to go up there to look out over the maze. So he says they'll try to have it done by Saturday.

I go off and run, and when I'm done he's there talking to his carpenter. Calls me over, good news, they won't start moving the tower until Monday. One less thing for me to worry about. And we go over finances, 10 bucks a head go to his farm, that's just fine with him and just fine with me.

And then we chat a little about orienteering. And he's seen the e-punch operation and wonders if there is a way to have an orienteering game of some sort using the e-punching, and wonders how complicated it would be. Always trying to add fun things at the maze. Pretty complicated, I say, but you could put out maybe a dozen controls and boxes, people could do as much as they wanted, main problem would be some running the operation. He's interested.

Anyone out there ever do anything similar -- have a score course of some sort with e-punching in an area with lots of people passing by? Any thing positive or negative about it. Here you've got the map which he gives to everyone, he gets a good crowd, but it's not the king of thing you can make self-service.

Just wondering….

Anyway, nice chat and we're good to go for Saturday.

C • epunches 7

A few thoughts about the rogaine.

First about the map. I was a bit surprised by it in places, but then I have never done a rogaine where that was not the case. And I have been on maps as bad or worse, and managed fine, and the competition managed fine. Such as the first WRC in Australia in 1994. That had all sorts of surprises out there.

I am perplexed how the roads came to be mapped as they were. We went out to the training area the day before, and the section of roads we visited was mapped virtually perfectly. Every bend was there. So I had reasonably high expectations for the main event.

The first blow to those expectations was on the way to our third control, 42. The main road up the valley was mapped fine, but the side road that we wanted to take wasn't, heading off first in the wrong direction. After a couple hundred meters it was back to going where it was supposed to, but it was still a surprise.

Second blow was the "road" we picked up leaving our fifth control, 105. Hardly recognizable, almost crossed it without realizing it, it was covered in grass. Surprised it was mapped, but it was.

Third blow was several controls later, on the way from 45 to 67. Up the main road, keeping careful track of where we were, intending to take the spur road heading north. Knew exactly where we were, but no road to be seen. Nothing. And nothing that would indicate that a road had been there anytime in the last 50 years.

There were several more such instances, always a surprise, but it's a rogaine so you go with the flow. The goal isn't to come back with the most and best complaints, it's to find the controls. But one is still left with the question just out of curiosity -- how could they do this? I have no idea.

The rest of the complaints about the map which I've heard don't strike me as valid. You aren't going to map fences. You aren't going to map vegetation. The contours are going to be generalized. It's not orienteering, it's a rogaine. Get over it.

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Next the course. It was big. I don't know if anyone got them all, but if they did, that is quite an accomplishment, given in particular the amount of deadfall that slowed progress significantly. And there seemed to be lots of choices, both strategic and tactical. Just what you want.

What I would question is a few of the control sites. Two controls we went to, 83 and 84, were reentrants on paper but just hillsides in fact, no reentrant to be seen. I have no idea why they were chosen, or if the location was correct. Both were found with a fair bit of luck.

Two other reentrants, 71 and 102, were so small that it's a wonder that someone found them to put a control there.

79, "a knoll" where the circle was centered on a knoll on the map -- did this mean, under the decades-old convention that "a" (as opposed to "the") meant the feature was not on the map, that there was a second knoll out there, not on the map, that we were looking for? Found the control, miserable thick forest, in the dark, seemed to be just a flat spot in the woods. Other uses of "a" in the description were equally perplexing, and yet there must have been a reason. Right? We nailed the control, but with a large dose of luck.

And others, nice distinct location, but the vegetation was awful. A good challenge, you want the points so let's make you earn them, but still. Why? Why as organizer, knowing that each site needed to be visited at least four times (initial marking, vetting, hanging, retrieval), would you do it to yourself or your crew?

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And the results, or lack thereof. For the moment at least, just a sad story that no one wants, not the participants, not the organizers, and certainly not the fans. I hope retrieval is possible. Though even then, the awards ceremony will never happen, nor the closure to an event that that signifies. Very sad.

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And then our own performance. And here I have to say right up front that despite everything said above, I still walk away from the event not only having had an "interesting" experience, but also a fine time. I can understand why others might be pissed, or disappointed, depending on what their expectations were or what their ambitions were. But that is not me.

I'm not sure what hopes or expectations Sandy and I had, other than to act our age and walk the whole time. Which we were quite successful at, walking almost the entire time, the only exceptions being when we were sitting. It was all very civilized.

I would grade our performance overall as a B+ or maybe an A-. By my count we got 1960 points. The things dragging the score down were several bits of flaky navigating by me and a general physical discontent for Sandy, maybe the altitude as she just arrived Thursday night.

Our plan was 34 controls, roughly 52K, just walking, don't come back to the hash house. We ended up skipping three of those, 43 because it didn't seem worth it, ditto for 34 and Sandy's knees preferred an easier way down the hill going from 40 directly to 84, and 91 because we correctly thought that we had neither the time nor the energy to get it.

We got all 31 we looked for. That was good. We did some excellent work at night. That was also good, and also very satisfying. The bad was in three places. First, 105, she kept telling me I was too far left, and then I went further left misreading the subtle slopes before being saved by the clearings to the west. Then, 73, thought we were just above the control, when in fact we were just below it. And finally, the one real moment of "I don't have any idea where we are", top of the ridge for 94, in the dark, miserable vegetation, I got turned around a couple of times, we finally figured it out but probably 15-20 minutes gone.

But still, a lot of good navigation, a lot of good adjustments to surprises on the map or in the terrain.

And so I walk away (not run, of course), with a feeling of a weekend well spent with a partner that has both gumption and smarts. And that is not so bad.

Almost forgot one other thing that made the rogaine more, hmmm, interesting. See the difference in how these two controls are hung (photos from the organizer's blog) --





In the second one, which is how most of the controls were hung as far as I remember, tied snugly around a good-sized evergreen (and usually a tree with a bigger trunk than the one shown in the photo), think how much of the flag you will see if you are coming from the other direction. Almost none. And how much of the reflector if coming at night. Definitely none.

I don't know what the current thinking is for placing controls at rogaines. Maybe this is fine, maybe not. Sure made a few night controls more difficult.

C • A knoll 2