Training Log Archive: David_Waller

Checked a few advanced controls and made some map updates at Umstead

Jog out past Reedy Creek Lake and back

The Blue Ridge parkway was closed-off on our way down to Sam Knob Summit, so Noga, Sadie, and I just walked along the road for a bit, found a trail at milepost 395, and hiked out and back.

short and difficult hill workout

Didn't have time to do Asheville's 5K Beer run, but repeatedly had the same thought that I'm sure every orienteer who ever visited the Biltmore estate had.

C • Biltmore 6

Event: OCIN Apocalypse O
 

Three nice miles at Umstead -- out Reedy Creek and back on Loblolly

Checked about seven control sites, mostly for the yellow course, on my way back in to the parking lot.

Started field checking for my meet at Umstead on 13 Jan. A few advanced control sites are looking really great, and as ever, the white course is a joke. At least there is a new trail that may enable me to loop the white course around somewhat gracefully. Jogged the Loblolly trail for about 1.5 miles

C • White and loops 2

Two laps of the Al Buehler, very slow.

BOK, Blue course at Umstead South. 12 controls, with 4 or 5 legs longer than kilometer -- a perfect complement to yesterday's middle-ish run at Piedmont. This one was really a blast. Umstead is such a gorgeous place to run -- one can actually run through the woods without having to slow down and fight vegetation. I made a couple of typical second-half-of-the-race, concentration-getting-harder type mistakes, but recovered okay.

Event: Orienteering Meet (Piedmont Enviornmental Center, NC)
 

Red course at Piedmont Environment Center (COK meet). 26 controls artfully set within 1 square kilometer made for a fast middle-type red course. I was very smooth through the first 17, but then botched 18, 19, 20, 23, and 24, some very badly. I lost concentration after the miss at 18, and never really was able to get my head back into it. I also fell hard a couple of times, and will probably be bruised on my shin and wrist tomorrow. I do enjoy Josef's course-setting -- very fun.

Steady longish run up Turkey Creek at Umstead -- a great day to be out.

Whew. . .a grueling Bubba goat. Very much like yesterday's run, but twice as long, a bit hotter, and a bit more humid. Both the race's highlight and lowlight happened for me at right about the same time. Lowlight: the 'rough open' leg from 4 to 5 was a brual slog through some very dense vegetation. It was open, true; but I really thought that much of footing was so bad that it warranted some green vertical lines on the map. This early difficult leg basically taught me to stick to the trails as much as I could; which I did, pretty successfully. The higlight: while slogging through this undergrowth, I stumbled into a band of wild pigs. Thankfully, they went their way and I went mine. But it was an unusual and fun sight.

The course designer did an excellent job of taking runners to all sorts of interesting places: palmetto thickets, sandy trails, citrus groves, etc. I saw tons of gopher tortoises, both alive and dead. Perhaps for the local Floridian, this is all boring; but for me, it was really fun seeing all of these new sights.

The race started with a handicapped score-O prologue before a map exchange and the start of the goat proper. Based on age, gender, and experience, competitors had to punch between 3 and 7 controls before the map exchange. In spirit, I like the idea of handicapping a race like this, but in this case I wasn't such a fan of it. Part of the fun of a goat event is to enable good runners who are not great navigators to hang with a good orienteer, learn a few things, and have a successful day. More generally, it's nice in a goat to run with an ad hoc team for a while. I think that this prologue spread the field unnecessarily at the beginning. Perhaps if it had come in the middle it would have worked better. I'm also a little miffed in a very egocentric way that, because of the layout of the score section, punching 6 controls (which I had to do) was significantly longer than punching 5. Yet punching 7 was probably not significantly longer than 6. So M45's were unduly punished. Waaaa!

This is the first time I've ever run a goat in which I feel like my skip worked well. I lost a couple of adventure runners around control #6 when I went too far and had to double back to punch it. They skipped 7 or 8, and I'm sure had a pretty good lead on me from 7 to 13. I skipped 14 which enabled me to run through the finish the wrong way, watch Mike finish, check out 16, punch 15, and then double-back to 16 and the finish. It was very gratifying to see the adventure runners coming into 15 as I was leaving it. I suspect that if I hadn't come back around the other way, that they would have seen me coming and been able to keep in front of me. So I think that my skip (and route choice)bought me two places in the race. Sweet!

C • Punishment 3

Event: Florida Orienteering Championships and Bubba Goat Race
 

Event: Annual Goat Race
 

Red course at the FLO championships (time estimated). Ran fairly well despite the heat and humidity, which I could have done without. This was my first time orienteering in FL, and I like it quite a bit -- enough to come back next year if FLO sets another two-day B meet. The lack ot significant relief in the terrain provided me good practice at navigation via vegetation differences. Thankfully, there was a good variety of vegetation, and it was pretty well-mapped, so there were no big navigation problems. The park (Lake Louisa) also has such an extensive network of trails -- and where there are not trails it tends to be completely impassible. So it's nearly impossible for a course designer to set controls in very difficult places. The result was a course that ended up feeling more orange than red. Definitely a runner-friendly area, which I appreciate. All in all, it was very fun, and I'm not sure that I could have run it that much faster, given the shape I'm in.

Jog down Loblolly @ Umstead

Al Buehler; nice day to run, but felt pretty sluggish

Through campus to the Al Buehler and through the Center for Integrative Medicine on my way home

Event: CVOC Pocahontas meet - Swift Creek North section
 

Orange course at East Fork. What a pleasure to be able run (instead of fight, fall, or get cut-up) at East Fork. A long orange course is about as fun as it gets, and was definitely the best way to be out in the woods (for me) today.

C • Time 3

US_Ultralong_2012_3 Orange - Splits

Red course at relay. After some fairly bad mistakes at #1 and #3, I slowed into a decent rhythym, and finished solidy, if fairly slowly. Way too much green, too many burrs, and a bit too much climb for my tastes -- these elements (along with many other non-course related issues, such as being bitten in the ass by a pit-bull) seriously detracted from my enjoyment. Probably won't run red tomorrow.

C • bitten!? 5

Red - Splits