Training Log Archive: cedarcreek

Tiomila---Planning to watch on streaming video...

Pulled controls for an event at Sacramento Bar, in Fair Oaks, CA, for a Gold Country Orienteering event. It was almost purely by chance that I was travelling, and a few days ago checked BAOC's website. BAOC would have benen out-of-the-way, but I was flying into Sacramento, so it was about 10 miles out of my way. Only 1 or 2 OCIN maps are that close. I knew I was going to miss the start window, but they agreed to let me pull controls. Event Directors really like it when you volunteer to pull controls.

Before I started, I insisted that someone show me what Poison Oak looked like, which was probably a *really, really* good idea. I really didn't see much, but if I didn't know, I would've gone pounding through a few Poison Oak patches.

10 x 400m with 200m walk recovery

1 lap warm up: felt stiff, and out-of-breath---about 5 minutes.
200m walk --- just dreading the whole idea of this.

400m 200m
run recovery
1 1:58 2:22
2 2:02 2:55
3 2:08 3:07
4 2:11 3:18
5 2:13 3:22
6 2:11 2:53
7 2:08 3:08
8 2:16 3:20
9 2:19 3:58 (prep for fast last 400)
10 2:03 5:40 (400m)

Tried to jog a few laps to cool down, but my legs were just toast.

The first few laps were terrible---I was way beyond my comfort level, and more into anaerobic than I wanted to be. The whole point, I guess, is to increase my leg speed so I can run a little faster than I have been. It feels like I'm stuck in low gear.

Around the third lap, I was starting to feel more comfortable, and the 400s actually got easier. I was going slower, though.

Around 6, I was really tempted to call it a day, but I decided to just do what it took to finish, even if it meant going really slow. I sort of zoned out, and it really helped.

Just before 8, I could tell my legs were loaded up with lactic acid---they were stiff, and heavier, and they had that pumped up feel.

I got through 8 and 9, then did a few seconds of stretching and breathing for the last lap. I wanted to break 2 minutes (yeah, that's right, I wanted to break an 8 minute mile pace for 400m). I didn't go all out, since I didn't want to go fully anaerobic, but I don't think I could've made up the 3 seconds anyway.

I don't know how much recovery intervals are supposed to have, but I decided on 200m because I really wanted to finish the 10x400m. I was really sucking air for the first 80-100m, and the last 100m I was breathing easy---My legs were still improving that last 100m though.

I'm not sure this will do me any good, but if the latter part of today's workout is any indication, it was a great workout. I was really starting to feel comfortable at the 8:40 min per mile pace, which, surprisingly, is a great improvement for me.

Side note: I tried to check my pace at 200m, before it got too dark to see the watch. It's really a let down to see 57 seconds for a 200m, when my PR for 400m (from high school maybe 23 years ago) is 57 seconds. At a sectional, I think, some bonehead took us out at 63 seconds for a 1600/mile first lap. I heard the timer counting off 62, 63, 64 as I passed, and I couldn't believe it. The leader was probably 59 or so. I have no idea how long it would take me to get there again, if I ever will.

Oh well. It really felt good to run fast, even if it wasn't *that* fast.

There were a million wildflowers out at Gov Bebb Saturday. I'm not the best with flower names, but I kept seeing "Dutchman's Breeches", which I remember 'cause it's just a funny name.

Green Course at Gov Bebb Park. I got there about 30 minutes after last start (I was getting spyware off my sister's computer---It was *infested*), and I was shocked at the number of cars in the parking lot. This was the annual Easter Egg O' with candy prizes, so that apparently brought out the people.

Mike let me start (with the strong hint that I needed to help pick up controls after). The course was a blast. It had some great legs, 7 climbs of about 25m each (sort of payback for my relay courses, I guess). The placements were very high and easy, and the fun part was the legs. Even some of the not interesting legs were surprising---One looked absolutely trivial---across a big field, but it turned out to be a lot trickier than it looked. I probably added 50m or so due to not figuring it out until 1/3 of the way across the field.

It was hot, and sweat was pouring into my eyes the whole last half of the course. The heat and the climb took it all out of me the last 1.5km or so---I walked most of that last mile or so.

Then I had to pick up 5 controls with my car, and another 4 in the woods. Just a great day to be outside.

C • Easter Egg O' 2

I have some photos from the ARDF (Radio Orienteering) US Championships at: http://offcycle.org/

The Day 2, 80m competition for the US ARDF Championships in Umstead Park, near Raleigh, NC.

It was a little cold in the morning, but I took my jacket off at the start, something I find really hard to do, and was only cold for about 2 minutes. It was a bright, sunny day, with a completely blue sky.

After my problems with underrunning on the 2m course, I planned to just attack the transmitters, and not lay back and wait. My number one goal was to get the order right. When I got the map, 10 minutes before the start, I could see that the start and finish were in the middle of the map, with areas to the north and south for transmitters. Since the finish was to the north a little, it was obvious that I should go south out of the start corridor.

When I started, it was over a minute down the corridor, and since you're not allowed to stop to plot bearings in the corridor, I did as much as I could to check the bearing for 1 and remember it before it went off. Since 2 was about halfway done when I cleared the corridor, I plotted it first, then 1. 1, 2, and 3 were to the north, and I had already committed to south. 4 and 5 were to the south.

Looking at the map, I decided to run down 5 and then run along a stream toward 4, allowing a good cross bearing, and avoiding the up-down-up-down getting to 5.

I got 5 in 18+ minutes (a little slower than Bob Cooley), and then 4 about 15 minutes later. I was really happy with these two times. I didn't stop to wait, I just kept moving and was really close when they came on right in front of me. (Well, I did delay about a minute for 4).

From 4, I needed to get to the north half of the map, and the best-looking way was about 2km along a public road. If I had one criticism of the course, it was making this road such a good route choice. I like orienteering in the woods or on trails. The one redeeming penalty of the road, though, was the powerlines. About 3/4 of the way up the road (uphill a bit), I realized the powerlines were affecting me---I had no null. I switched to tone mode and checked for peaks, and was able to find the peaks (for 1, 2, and 3), and plot them, but I was really worried---I plotted them because I had no cross bearings, and I needed something.

Again, because I'm now M40, I had to skip number 2, but I still wanted to know where it was. As I came up the road, I was looking for a way back into the park---There was a park boundary line, and most of the obvious ways in involved crossing private land. The best looking route for avoiding private land was longer, but the one I chose looked like it went straight off a paved road and along a powerline (grrrrrr!) into the park. I was hoping Charles and Nadia prepared the owners---I'd heard a story earlier this year of a control too close to private land that involved owners with firearms and complaints to the police. As I neared the end of the road, 2 came on off to my left. I probably could have gotten it within a cycle. (Gyuri did even though he didn't need to---his route took him right by it.)

I knew I needed 3 next, and then 1 last. My crossing for 3 was about 200m past the road, actually on the powerline, but I expected that to be wrong. It was---about 700m and 4 cycles wrong. The first cycle I was tentative on (stood around about a minute), so I kept moving through the second cycle. Near the end of the third cycle, though, I was heading downhill, and I didn't want to have to climb back up, so I delayed for about 2 1/2 minutes. Luckily, my gut was right, and it was behind me. I missed it by about 30 or 40m the first time by. (And when I say 4 cycles, I mean basically 15 minutes.)

Up to this point, I was in pretty good contact with the map. One thing I've learned about Radio Orienteering is that there is so much to do that you can lose contact to a level beyond normal orienteering.

I had a general area for where I was, but I had no solid fix. As I headed for 1, I couldn't find anything to let me relocate. I got turned 30 or so degrees really close to 1, and I missed it by a long way the first time by. Emily DeYoung ran by me like she wasn't interested in finding 1, so I figured she got it the last cycle. I probably should have turned around and ran, but I walked back looking for it. When it came on, I got it quickly.

Again, I wasn't really sure where I was, but I planned a route that would get me there regardless. I did mess it up by about a minute, at the end of which I knew where I was. This last section was a pretty nice leg by regular orienteering standards. I like that.

When I finished, I knew I only had a few cycles of mistakes---maybe 10 minutes. But I was worried about the uphill road route because I wasn't able to run all the way---I did about half walking. I knew it was going to be close.

When I downloaded, Gyuri had beaten me, and had gotten all five faster than Vadim, the fastest M21. Gyuri had neck surgery 3 weeks ago, and he wasn't supposed to be running. He said he ran really slow. Apparently, really slow for a world champion is about 30 minutes faster than my best effort.

I have real problems with 80 meters. I need to work *a lot* on running at a control during the minute it's on, and then getting a good bearing to follow before it goes off. I think I was generally sloppy for 3 and 1, when I was more tired.

I also need to work on getting long range, accurate bearings. I'm thinking about setting out controls along a road, and then taking bearings on a white piece of paper, so I won't be influenced by the map until I'm done. Either that or just run a lot more 80m courses.

I have been running with only a map bag, but I decided to use a map board for this. I hate hate hate navigating with a map board. It's impossible to thumb the map, so I expend time looking for my location every time I look at the map. Other people use push pins, and leap frog them as they move.

I decided to avoid drawing long bearings across my map, although I did once or twice. I find that my eye places too much emphasis on the long line, and too little emphasis on the generally more accurate "up-close" bearings. I drew most of the lines just over 2cm long---the length of my thumb compass straight edge.

After the grueling course on Saturday, I was sure I was going to be out-of-gas, but I wasn't. I did walk more than I'd like, but the course setting for the OCIN Flying Pig really gave me a workout this year.

I ended up second, about 30 minutes behind Gyuri, and 10 or so better than third. I think not underrunning is responsible for most of that 10 minutes.

My goal was to lose 10 pounds by this event, and I didn't meet my goal. I was down 7 pounds during the event, but I seem to have gained back a pound... I'm still planning to be 20 pounds down by September.

Finally, the woods and map were great, and Nadia and Charles did a great job both course setting and the event organization. (And I didn't see a tick the whole time!)

2006 US ARDF (Radio O') Championships, Raleigh, NC

US ARDF (Radio O') Championships, 2m event. (distance and climb are actual figures from my course over the ground.)

This is the most difficult (RDF-wise) 2m course I've run outside of the world championships in Brno. As a new M40, this was my first event to find 4 transmitters rather than all five. Unfortunately, transmitter 4 had issues for the early starts, and I was told to skip 4 as well as 2 (the M40 skip for this event), leaving me to find 3 transmitters: 1, 3, 5. (They probably should have switched the M40 skip to 4, so we could have found all but 4, but...whatever.)

From the start, you run down a corridor to the start triangle as transmitter 1 is on, and you have to decide what to do during the first 5 minutes, as the transmitters cycle on for 1 minute each. Since there is no transmitter within 750m of the start, the best thing to do is get 750m away from the start in some likely direction. The corridor pointed east, right into a nasty looking reentrant system (nasty because it would play havoc with the bouncy 2m signals, and would make it very difficult to find anything). As I ran down the corridor, it was clear 1 was to my left, and I took that as proof that I was supposed to go north rather than east. There was a convenient road to the north on a ridge that looked like a good place to take bearings for all five transmitters. Since transmitters have to be more than 400m from each other as well has from the finish, it helps to know where all of them are, so you can eliminate areas close to other transmitters.

As I was travelling north on the road, 1 and 2 were to the north, but 2 was weak. When 3 came on, it was clearly in the line of the extended start corridor, but it wasn't strong enough to make me change my plan to go north. 4 was weak and north or northeast, and not a bearing I'd draw---the signal was just too broad---clearly not reliable. 5 was east, and stronger than 2 and 4.

After a few cycles going north, 1 was strong and directly east. I got it first, then decided 3 had to be next, since I didn't have to go north to get 2. (As it turned out, 2 wasn't north, so it was good I didn't need it.)

I was overly worried about the climb, probably due to the 3m contours looking so steep, but it was usually quite nice. Part of the map was very steep, and I somehow managed to avoid that. Anyway, my worry translated into underrunning 3 several times. I should have kept moving the whole four minutes, rather than stopping and waiting after a few.

After 3, I only needed 5, and I suspected based on the sound that it was just on the other side of the finish circle. Since that is one of the steepest areas on the map, and not a place to be running around in, I decided to go north to a ridge trail to go east rather than pass through the finish zone and go up-down-up-down repeatedly. As I got to the ridge trail and headed east (actually kind of ESE), I did stop twice to check for 5. I was trying to pick the right spur/reentrant to go down so I could minimize climb. The first time I stopped (south of the trail on a high spot), the signal was less than it was on the trail, which really surprised me, so I checked the other side of the ridge line (north of the trail, again on a ridge), and it was clearly more east along the trail. I decided to keep moving east along the trail until I either got a bearing off to the side, or I overran it.

It turns out 5, which was pretty strong near the start at the far west of the map, was almost completely off the east side of the map, about 4km away. It wasn't particularly interesting getting there (mostly a walk/run on the trail), but it was interesting radio work.

Interestingly, the ridge trail I mentioned was filled with people doing a 36-hour limit 100-mile run. I was running by them thinking, "Man, these people are nuts.", and I'm sure they were thinking the same thing about us, as we ran by with our radio antennas and maps and O' Clothes, then disappeared into the woods.

At 5, I was hoping there was a shorter, technical way back to the finish that would be much shorter than the trail. I looked at the leg for about 30 seconds before deciding the trail was the only quick way back.

Again, it wasn't interesting orienteering, but it was an interesting course. Certainly one of the hardest I've seen (in my 3 years of doing this).

Umstead Park is a wonderful area for orienteering. The terrain is not too extreme (in most places), and the white woods is really nice. They had thousands of trees downed by Hurricane Hugo, which mean you sometimes get to bound over tree trunks, if you have the energy to. The map has most of the trees mapped using a little middle green symbol that even shows if the rootstock is there or not. I didn't see a tick the whole weekend, but I was *really, really* well protected. I got Lyme disease here last July, when I saw hundreds of ticks, and had a tactical mistake in my DEET protection.

There was a severe storm watch that never materialized, although we did get a few drops of rain.

My run (actually run/walk) got me first in M40, which I attribute to just making fewer errors than the others (Gyuri excepted). It didn't feel like a winning performance---I was off-balance the whole time. I did keep pushing, though. Having a lot of practice on 2m AM transmitters certainly helped.

Practice day for the US ARDF Championships (Radio Orienteering) in Raleigh, NC. I probably wouldn't have logged this, except the hills made my legs sore, so I feel like I earned it. I found the 2 80m transmitters, and I gave Mary C. a quick lesson in 80m radio use. Then I switched to 2m, and got 1 of the 3 transmitters, since I wanted to be fresh for Saturday, my legs were sore, and my back was aching a little. Besides, I've had quite a bit of practice in 2m AM.

Katie needed a third for jump rope. I skipped my every other turn, so they'd have more fun. It's the first time I've ever done well with other people swinging the rope. In the past, I've always done it single. This was a blast.

Picked up 19 controls from the relay. I got everything left of the big stream plus 177. Bill Swift got everything else from the relay and the sprint. I'm 95% sure every control was out of the woods by dark on Sunday. That's amazing. I'm ready for a break. That was a pretty crazy two weeks. Whew!

Probably the biggest surprise for me was how well the bib number/map number thing worked with my SportIdent set-up (the software class/course set-up), although it did take me a while to find a way to get the finish clock times out of it.

The 2nd biggest surprise for me was that the relay seemed to be as successful as it was. I thought it was exciting, with a fairly small event center so people would be packed together (which was my plan). About 6 or 7 weeks ago, I was standing in the ice-cold rain for about 10 minutes looking at that area with the restrooms thinking it was the place.

Something that is no longer a surprise is the level of support in OCIN to make something like this come off. It's like volunteers just show up knowing what they're supposed to do. I think Mike handles all the asking volunteers---It's pretty amazing.

I'll look for a better place to do this, but I really need to thank everyone who helped make the weekend a success. The one most visible to me was Wyatt Riley, who stepped in and helped in the transition area, but really, these events wouldn't be so smooth if there wasn't so much help. They wouldn't happen at all if there wasn't so much help.

C • Thank you! 4

Carried water to two water controls. (Probably not enough for the runners...) I got 90 minutes of sleep this morning, between 6am and aout 8am. I spent a lot of time last night basically making a spreadsheet to streamline the team entry process. It was so handy to be able to use a lookup table for names and various other information. When I arrived, about 80 minutes after the sprint first start, they were still accepting relay team changes. If I hadn't done the work last night, we would've had to run the relay with filler names and data, and then had to backfill in later. As it was, it was pretty easy to get the new teams entered and the leg changes processed. I'll be looking to see what people thought of the relay. Of everything I had to do, the thing that surprised me the most is probably the smoothness of the SI download. Although I should say I've got some issues with tthe first leg runners not showing up on results because they didn't punch start.