Training Log Archive: jtorranc

Event: QOC Patuxent
 

QOC Patuxent Long Score-O - a good run physically, though I'm not quite in shape to maintain the intensity I started out at for 90 minutes, and fine technically until the second and third last controls I punched, on which fatigue/time pressure/carelessness resulted in two significant parallel errors, without which I think I might just have made it in under 90 minutes. Official time was 94:02 but I always start my GPS before punching the start and stop it after punching the finish so the start and finish must not have been quite synchronized - I was robbed! Of 5 whole points. Since Ken seems to have been unconcerned with the time limit and Boris appears to have run with Alli, that still put me well in the lead in points. It was a better designed score-O than I initially realized - I thought at first it wouldn't be a problem to clean it in 90 minutes provided I avoided large errors but it seemed pretty clear as I crossed Croom Airport Rd having finished off the northern side of the map that I certainly wasn't going to have time to pick up the 5 pointer on the east edge of the old airfield and getting either of the ones south of the field was questionable. Still thought at that point that getting all but those 3 within time ought to be doable but that didn't reckon with late errors.

Just lucky that #11, one of the three I didn't try for, was the one control everyone seemed agreed was seriously mishung.

Really enjoyable running through mostly very nice woods. Unfortunately, in my haste to be late as little as possible, one of the less nice bits I traversed was light green just west of the finish, in which I fell headlong, resulting in a sore left wrist (no swelling and still functional so not a repeat of my last November broken right wrist) and a punctured on a protruding bit of deadfall left cheek which required and received immediate first aid at the finish - one advantage of injuring oneself only in the last minute of a race. It bled pretty freely initially - fortunately, it was only the skin that was punctured, not the lining of my mouth, so I didn't have to taste blood in addition to having the lower left side of my face covered in it.

More tidying up at Fountainhead. Dismayed to find that even the new/rerouted/abandoned mountain biking trail network changes Nadim had noticed a few weeks back and I added to the map understate the hyperactivity of the trail construction program that's been underway since I initially mapped Fountainhead East this past winter and spring. I found at least a couple hundred meters of new areas where trails that used to cross the tops of spurs now contour around their edges and found a new trail under construction - literally with a small earth moving machine parked at the end of a raw gouge into the earth. Will have to go back and add all that to the map this coming Saturday and even so, will have to have in the course notes that we can't guarantee the trail construction program won't progress further between then and November 16th. Fortunately, the not yet completed, never been ridden trail in progress is pretty easy to distinguish from the long established trails.

C • Biking trail networks 2

Event: HVO/WCOC A-event "Love The Lakes"
 

More tidying up of the map at Fountainhead.

Commute in.

MBT time trial southbound on the way to work.

Kind of sad not to have written up the US champs or NAOC, even tersely, not that my performances were all that much to write about but it was two excellent weekends of orienteering even if I orienteered less than uniformly excellently. But A meet directing consumes a lot of time, more so when you're also half or so of the mapping/cartography team. Expect sparse to non-existent logging from now through mid-November.