Training Log Archive: David_Waller

Control pickup at Rentschler

A pretty good run at Rentschler, with only a couple of moderate-sized mistakes. There were a lot of good route choice options throughout the entire course. After analyzing some of my mistakes from previous events (e.g., #8 the night before) I decided to try to default more often to the trail-based options. With only a couple of exceptions, I'm pretty happy with most of these decisions.

There were a lot of people running the red course, and I intersected them at #1, #5 (here, a group was standing at the control, planning their next leg), #7, #9, and #10. I saw Matt Bond at #7, and thought that I was ahead of him. Unbeknownst to me, he passed me from 8 to 9, though, and only gained on me from there.

My biggest mistake was my route choice and execution from 8 to 9. I took the road all the way to the trail in the south, but overshot the trail and lost 1.5 minutes having to double back. I also had to stop to tie my shoes at a trail junction. I also botched #16, and probably lost 30 seconds there. Everything else was relatively clean, and whatever time I lost was due to either poor route choices or generally slow speed.

Red - Splits

Event: OCIN New Year's O' Fest
 

Fun Night-O at Rentschler. My controls went: 68, 33, 64, 63, 59, 60, 61, 62, 35, 37, 44, 68, 65, 67. I was quite clean and moderately fast through the first 7 controls, My glasses fogged shortly after punching #7, and I removed them, right before the hardest leg of the course, from 7 to 8. Even so, I think that I executed most of the leg pretty well, veering south of the line to try to stay in white (which was not always white). I probably mistook the long reentrant west of the control for the short one next to it, though. After struggling though the woods there, I ended up on the indistinct trail and decided to bail down to the main trail to get a fresh start. From there, it was relatively easy, although even when I saw the correct downed tree, I stupidly went around it instead of heading straight to the rootstock. I easily lost 8 minutes on this control. I also screwed up the next control (2, #35) quite badly, which is a shame, because it should have been very easy. Lost another 4-5 minutes on that one. The rest was relatively clean. All in all a very fun outing.

Field checking at Gov. Bebb. Checked southern control locations first, then northern ones, and was surprised that I could tell that different people had mapped either region.

C • Congratulations! 1

3 x 1-mile repeats on the Talawanda H.S. track. Snow drifts on the backstretch slowed me down somewhat. But my general lack of fitness probably slowed me down much more. Time is approximated, and includes 0.5 mile warmup/cooldown.

C • Mudrocks on a track... 2

Nice run at Hueston Woods. I felt pretty strong, but was thwarted somewhat by wind and bad footing.